Mixes Digest #12: Easing Into 2025

Six stellar sets of immersive ambient, heady techno, and sidewinding club music

The insect house at the Barcelona zoo

Before getting back to a regular schedule of reviews—coming later this week—I figured I’d soft-launch the newsletter’s new year with a quick roundup of the sets that have been keeping me company over the holidays. I didn’t listen to a ton of albums during the break, but I did listen to a lot of mixes; I also spent a lot of time going through my digital library, both deleting things I’ll never listen to again (even with 8TB of storage on my NAS, I was getting distressingly close to maxing that out) and sorting tracks into playlists, with an eye to having them handy for gigs and at-home mixing sessions. I have a real hankering to put together a dub-techno mix soon, and I’ve been gradually amassing a pool of old faves and recent discoveries.

I also treated myself to a new DJ mixer, since my 20-year-old Allen & Heath Xone 32 has gotten crackly as hell (I realize I could probably just clean it, but I really wanted something with four channels—and effects, so that I don’t feel completely at a loss, like I usually do, when faced with the standard-issue Pioneers in nightclubs). Since Pioneer’s pricing has gotten out of hand, I went with a Reloop RMX-60, a four-channel mixer with onboard effects that seems to be intended as a DJM-750 clone of sorts; so far, I’m impressed with its build quality and overall feel, and the sound is certainly sufficient for my purposes of mixing at home. We’ll see how it holds up, but for around 500€, I’m more than satisfied.

I also got to play out on New Year’s Eve, at a friend’s farmhouse for a couple dozen people, from 9 p.m. until 2 a.m. or so; I don’t DJ much in public these days, but I love how the practice of DJing, even in a relatively informal context, affects how I approach music. Dance music is, after all, meant to be danced to; it’s meant to be mixed, and I’m often surprised at the ways a given track opens up, or changes, when blended with another. (That’s hardly a revelatory discovery, but given how seldom I do play out these days, it felt good to remember.)

A straggler, the morning after our friends’ farmhouse NYE party

I didn’t have a ton of time to prep for the night, so I loaded up a USB with a handful of playlists I had already made: the dub techno playlist I’ve been working on; an ongoing list of house-party-friendly tracks; some sets I’d prepped for various Unsounds going back to 2014. I loved getting to play things like Basic Channel, Rhythm & Sound, and STL for a group of people that had almost certainly never heard any of them (the electronic-music people in that crowd would be more into psytrance, I’m guessing).

A few highlights: Rhythm & Sound’s “Smile”; Radio Slave’s ageless “My Bleep (Roman Flügel Remix)”; Galcher Lustwerk’s moody “No Trip”; Soylent Green’s delicious “After All,” from one of my favorite Flügel side projects. Ricardo Villalobos’ “808 the Bassqueen” led up to midnight; Justus Köhncke’s “2 After 909” rang in the new year. As you can tell, I was feeling nostalgic. The absolute standouts: Andre Bratten’s bleepy, bittersweet “Libra,” a song I’d all but forgotten about; Rebolledo’s unhinged “Windsurf, Sunburn and Dollar” (always something of a risk, but when it works, it feels like tearing a hole through space-time), which I apparently listed as one of my top 10 songs of 2014; and, best of all, Roman Flügel’s “Brian Le Bon,” which flips a “Save a Prayer” reference into eight minutes of deep-house bliss. In any case, this year’s NYE clearly belonged to Flügel.

Read on for this issue’s six featured DJ sets, including:

• a three-hour immersion that might serve as the sonic equivalent of a cleansing polar bear swim on New Year’s Day

• a sidewinding back-to-back that soundtracked one of the best runs I’ve had in recent months

• a masterclass in deep, heady techno

…and more.

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This issue is exclusive to paying subscribers, as a thank you for your continued support! Stay tuned for another newsletter later this week. While I’ve got your attention, I’d love to know: What would you like to see more of from Futurism Restated this year? Leave a comment or drop me a line.