This is Dance Mix Watch. I’m posting the best dance mixes coming in right now.
DMW #6 comes from North Carolina based DJ/producer/internet anthropologist GRRL, whose extensive yet very curated music taste shines as a catalyst for the dancefloor and a prediction for future trans-genre dancestyles. Though there have been appearances of many labels and parties at least partially inspired by the mainstream successes of Night Slugs, PC Music, and the like, it is still rare to see these two new genres: grimy, patterned club beats and computerized bubbly pseudo pop; completely intertwined. Producers Swick (with the Sophie-sounding club track “Rubber”) or Kane West (with his house beats made out of cheap, cheesy samples) come to mind, but there’s still much room for this club/computer hybrid style to grow. In this minimix, GRRL veers more towards club sounds, but if you look through his many mixes and his extensive reposting of Soundcloud tracks, you can clearly hear his interest in both these movements, and by placing them together, GRRL shows the how much these movements have in common (intricate sound design, use of silence, repetitive and/or soulful vocal sampling).
The real beauty of GRRL’s mixing though, is never the fact that he’s trying to force very different styles together- the mix is extremely clean from one track to another. We start with some very sparse, odd grime tracks, move into a few very intense club tracks (GRRL’s own production “Go Up”, forthcoming from Car Crash Set in August, is the major highlights), some from producers like Nobel and Margaret Antwood who are making club music with bizarre sound design, and we end with some slower, R&B influenced grimy club. And while this may be a common (or at least, not rare) journey for a mix to take, every track seems to be respecting and critiquing its own genre, and using a similar palette of sounds to glue everything together. If the same DJ can mix an all Jersey mix, a mostly PC Music live set, and this mix while still maintaining a cohesive sound, we’re defitinitely behind them.
• GRRL: https://soundcloud.com/grrlmusic
• Nest HQ: https://soundcloud.com/nesthq
More about: GRRL
