Laurel Halo

This is great! Some of her stuff can be a bit too esoteric for me but I think this is very approachable. "Temptation" bangs.

Great mix, although it left me feeling a bit woozy.

right? it's genuinely a mood-alterer.

It doesn't exactly have a lot of moments of firm ground to cling to.

i actually just went through and pulled the unmixed versions of my fave tracks for closer inspection; that would be the Parris, Ikonika, Red Axes/CAR, Nick León, Dario Zenker, Kiki Kudo, Via Maris and Halo originals... most of which hail from the mini-EP I suppose.

I like it a lot and it feels very much like a whole -- there really aren't so much "stand out tracks" for me although there are moments. Especially good toward the end.

TBH though listening to it emphasized to me how much better and more interesting Halo's music is than a lot of her selections.

xp agree

ikonika one is a slapper

whole mix sounds v smudged and dirty

This is pretty much everything I want from a mix. Who else is doing smooth, trippy techno these days?

call super comes to mind

finally listening to this. it's awesome.

it seems like rough machine beats with an electro slap / crack and a lot of texture is very much the techno flavor of the moment doesn't it

She definitely does something to process the tracks in order to make them sound more uniform I think and give them all that “smudged” quality as flopson says. It’s striking how seamless it all is — sometimes I can’t tell what elements are from which track during a transition.

it's just good mixing homes

yea this is really good

she hosted a really awesome nts session recently

i listened to this really stoned last night and it was p wonderful. delighted by "just made some jazz music" every single time

this seems like an ideal thing to listen to really stoned

it's just good mixing homes

Also I'm sure there was some mixing & mastering done on the mix as a whole

this seems like an ideal thing to listen to really stoned

lol yep

I really want to see her live, why do DJs/electronic artists have to do such late shows

um

alexa what is a nightclub

yeah I know dude, I'm just near 40 and would really like for there to be maybe an evening club or something like that

there are upscale events for that kinda stuff of the RBMA variety; i will certainly post here if she's in town, MA

Next best thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yTIeANebtw

London has an afternoon/evening club that ends at 11pm now, I'm going to see Ben Klock there on Saturday and tbh I'm approaching even that with some trepidation at my age.

she's so good live

Really loving the DJ Kicks mix... It's worth noting that if you buy it from Bandcamp, besides the actual mixtape you'll get the original unmixed versions of all the tracks as a bonus! This is something they should with all mixtapes, IMO.

that's a really nice bonus

This thing is unreal

It's worth noting that if you buy it from Bandcamp, besides the actual mixtape you'll get the original unmixed versions of all the tracks as a bonus!

damn was hoping the K&D DJ-Kicks got the same treatment but no. although now I want to buy it on vinyl which ... why. why would I want a mixed album over four sides. but i do.

full sub to the DJ Kicks Bandcamp is £85 for the year which gets you vinyl copies of each release as they come out, as well as streaming and d/ls and access to the archive of the last couple of years of releases. I signed up about a month ago.

how many releases per year at that price?

last year five, the year before that six, so I think you get pretty good value for money

yeah, sounds it.

its the continuous mix on vinyl?

seems weird

not sure what lukas is referring to

both the k&d and laurel halo vinyl are unmixed tracks

https://www.discogs.com/Kruder-Dorfmeister-DJ-Kicks/release/110174

https://www.discogs.com/Laurel-Halo-DJ-Kicks/release/13390242

O!

I'm not trying to dampen anyone's enjoyment or taking anything away from LH, but while I enjoyed the mix, it didn't hit me as anything more special than a good mix? Idk, I hear really good mixes all the time these days (thanks to an overflow of sources like NTS, mix series from media outlets, other internet radio stations, etc).

it's a good mix

Yeah it feels like a good, slightly off-kilter mix but not radically better or worse than a lot of mixes you hear, including in the DJ Kicks series. I guess some of the comments on this thread are coming from people who don't listen to a lot of mixes but really engage with Laurel Halo as an artist? Which is fine, it's a very enjoyable and well put-together mix but I'm not quite feeling the rush.

i listen to most of the dj kicks series; this felt like a standout.

i would say on a technical mixing level good but not particularly special. on the other hand i think her selections are very very good. she has an ear for picking out weird tracks that sound good together. and a lot of the tracks on this were new to me, as were several of the artists, so there's that.

I definitely don't listen to tons of mixes these days, and I was quite surprised how much this one hits a sweet spot for me. I don't at all think she owns this sound and would love more recommendations of similar off-kilter techno mixes.

i listen to a lot of mixes and i think her selections for this have a wild and trippy energy with tons of enigmatic texture and the contrast between tracks is almost always unexpected and frankly bizarre in an electrifying way. i don't hear a lot of mixes that do that. also i don't even know what off-the-charts amazing technically great mixing would even sound like and don't much care to hear it if the selection isn't on par.

a few of the tracks have like an art-punk punch that feels legitimately destabilizing to me in a dance mix. i mean maybe what i don't listen to 'enough' of or whatever is like cutting edge nihilistic bizarre exploratory dance music in which case i'm very grateful for this mix.