Mix Up Look Sharp: The Best Mixes Of The Week

Here at Complex, we understand the grind of listening to the best music each week. There's so much new music uploaded to every single platform, every single day, that following just one of your streams can become a dizzying, life-consuming task. To help you out on at least one front, each and every Friday, our music team will trawl the depths of the internet to bring you the best mixes from the past week. House, hip-hop and bass, grime, trap and techno—it'll all be represented in our picks to get you warmed up for the weekend. So let us do all the hard work; click through below and enjoy.

Representing Nottingham this week is seasoned DJ and producer Lone with a rich, textured blend of leftfield house and techno. A well-balanced mix, Lone brings in some unreleased cuts, a few bits from Super Rhythm Trax, a couple from the Magicwire label and a couple of classics from Model 500 and Paul Woolford ("I Wanna Be There" and the Special Request remix of "No Requests" respectively). If you like your dance music hard but with plenty of melody and nuance, then fire this one up for your pre-party jams.

This week, Rinse co-founder Slimzee uploaded a very special set from the station's other co-founder, Geeneus. Recorded way back in 1996, it's a harder-than-hard jungle affair with a young Geeneus and a slew of rising MCs from the time. Though it's labelled as a B2B set with Slimzee, and credits Wiley as an MC, neither actually appear on the mix—though both get shoutouts. Still, this is one hell of a jungle mix and a fascinating look at London's sonic landscape at the time.

Last night, Kareful, Plastician and the rest of the Terrorhythm family took over Room 2 of Fabric to bring their weird and wonderful beat productions to the revered east London club. If you missed it, delve into this mix of intergalactic, grime and trap-influenced badness from Kareful. Glacci, Silk Road Assassins, Noah B and quite a few more all compete for your ears in this mercurial, slippery mix.

Bringing together natural bedfellows grime and UKG, instrumental dons TC4 come with some inspired selections—no real surprise given they're the masterminds behind the "Baker Street Riddim". Listen to this mix and try tell us they're not going to take over the world.

Outlook Festival uploaded a series of mixes this week from Silkie, Flowdan, DJ Randall, Riz La Teef, Shy One and more in the build up to this year's event. So it wasn't easy to pick our favourite, but Jampak just won out with the kind of thoroughbred, white-hot grime bangers that have made his show on Mode FM such a must-listen.

All we can say is, if you haven't caught Melé live yet, then we feel sorry for you. Recorded live at Lost & Found Festival in Malta, Mele took to the main stage on the final night and brought something truly special, not least because of the slightly adjusted version of "Groovejet" around the three-quarter mark.

Ben "Breach" Westbeech is always a pretty solid bet, but here he excels with an interstellar mix of bouncy, funk-filled techno and driving, robotic house music. Another live mix, this one was recorded at Prince Charles in Berlin, and had it not been for the occasional distant cry in the crowd, you would assume this flawless blends and expert progressions could only have been put together in a studio. 

It's true that a great mix should take you on a journey. Not to diminish the skills of most DJs but that journey typically takes you on a series of ups and downs; minimalist breakdowns and euphoric highs. Etch, however, has taken that concept to the next logical step with a mix that almost tells a story. He'll throw in a spoken word number or a cacophonous, chopped up beat before following it with something gentler, more comforting. It's also dramatically varied, from post punk and spoken word to trap and jungle, with a few of his own productions peppered in too. Keep an eye on this one.