Laurel Halo - DJ-Kicks

The Quietus

In a time of relentless live streams, and archived podcasts, radio sets and live recordings, the mix CD has had to look elsewhere for inspiration. It’s no surprise, then, that some extraordinarily challenging and interesting ones have been released over the past few years, particularly Objekt’s relentlessly innovative Kern Vol. 3 and Nina Kraviz’s fabric 91 which gleams with near-peerless peculiarity.

Not many labels are better suited to capturing the different in electronic music than vaunted German label !K7 and its DJ-Kicks series. Kicking off in 1995 with a slew of club-focused mix CDs from the likes of Joey Beltram, Claude Young and Stacey Pullen, the series moved into experimental territory two years later when it commissioned a mix from Scottish singer-songwriter Nicolette, which inspired further out-there entries, especially Rockers Hi-Fi's lush and languid May 1997 release. Laurel Halo’s latest DJ-Kicks dovetails these approaches, a fleet-footed, hour-long mix that dishes out slow burners and gut punchers in equal and effective measures, remaining engaging and weird throughout.

A compelling aspect of the mix is its lack of linearity, which is also evident in Halo’s general artistic approach. Her dynamic back catalogue conveys everything from ambient, fever dream feelings (‘The Sick Mind’) to vocal-led, gelatinous pop (‘Jelly’). One particularly locked in, tech-centred section of the mix, which includes Final Cut’s armour-clad ‘Temptation’, is bridged by the peaky jazz of Geoffrey Landers’ ‘Brian’s Having a Party’ before dashing headfirst into Via Maris’ ‘Side Effects’, which churns with Timedance otherworldliness.

While including exclusive tracks in a mix CD series is hardly a new thing, DJ-Kicks has always led the pack in this regard, giving a more holistic sense of the artist’s curatorial clout; all the better when the artist in question is as interesting as Halo. She includes two of her own vastly different productions (‘Public Art’ and ‘Sweetie’) and other great picks, including fellow Hyperdub star Ikonika’s belting ‘Bodied’ and Machine Woman’s deceptively-titled ‘Just Made Some Jazz Music’.

The tracklist, and the fleet-footed manner in which Halo mixes these selections, provides an excellent snapshot of 2019 dance music, one that is being propelled by a unrelenting tide of weirdness. It never quite reaches superlative highs or lows but it ticks along tirelessly, getting better with repeated listens. For now, the mix CD is safe.

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Drowned In Sound 80

So don't get flummoxed when you witness her wringing and twisting the bejesus out of the sixty-eighth edition of the DJ-Kicks mix series, on which Halo expertly shuffles musical microclimates like a card shark elbow greasing a three card molly hustle.

Presenting 29 tracks in 60 minutes (DAMN), she drags friends, unknown artists, and leftfield thinkers to walk through this door with her. Like a car mechanic dying to use EVERY tool in the garage, the amalgam captures a specific eagerness: with tempo, dressed in polychromatic tones, throttling past our eyes and ears. Halo, caters the style of the mix to the terrain of the song. Manoeuvring through fierce arpeggios, ruff bass lines, space-age micro-house, and machine-like landscapes.

It's always the exclusive tracks on these mixes that paints a Venn diagram of whom the curator is choosing to share the spotlight with. So championing the swirly heaviness of Rrose, the 128 bpm peak time physicality of Machinewoman or the Tetris-like pressure of ‘Penny Rut’ by FIT Siegel adds insider info to this high-speed delivery system.

But taking a step back, it becomes simple. This entire patchwork advances in suites. Songs plucked to work as an interwoven collective, become instruments. Yes, the concept of the DJ-Kicks series should always do that. But Halo, wielding this polychromatic light, never really emphasises where one song ends and another starts... things stay fluid... into and out of one another during this entire 60-minute conversation.

It's only the blissed-out half time deconstructions, which link the 4/4 driven segments, that offer breathing space. In those post-Drexciya, liquid pressurised moments, things creep gently. Dreamlike. And just as we catch our breath, BOOM. Halo is off again, hustling forward through tribal notions, cavernous Berlinesque stretches and finally vocal environs where the music starts to smile through a Chicago house swing.

Damn that DJ made my day.

Pitchfork 77

On her first commercial mix album, the producer crafts a unbroken stretch of shapeshifting grooves and psychedelic fireworks.