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.

Rinse FM's Josey Rebelle already has the respect of most of the DJing world, but even so, it feels as though she's grossly under-appreciated. Take this FACT mix, for example; the way Rebelle builds the tracks is truly something special. It's a small touch and one that is easily overlooked, but this is what makes her great: the details. Not only that, but it's a rare thing these days to hear a mix that makes you want to restart your record collection... 

The old guard of ravers will probably be going pretty nuts right now as Coldcut deliver their long-awaited two-hour mix for Solid Steel. Much like their legendary Journeys mixtape from way back when, this mix for Solid Steel is as much an autobiographical exercise as it is a mixtape. As you might expect, this is more or less an update on their established combination of house, hip hop, jazz and soul, though with some more up-to-date reference points like The Bug, L-Vis 1990 and Thundercat.

It's been said before that house music is basically the more "organic" cousin to techno. Well, if that's the case then Bulgarian duo 1000names have created something entirely new; an even more organic version of house. With releases on Black Acre and Project Mooncircle, the duo are clearly best left to their own creative devices. These are all songs and sounds that exist beyond the minds of the duo, yet somehow it sounds as if we're listening to something entirely new, something that is its own thing, despite being the work of a number of different artists. Mind-boggling.

Hotflush affiliate, Locked Groove, took to the decks this week for Mixmag's In Session series. It's a straight-up techno marathon that builds and builds at a painstakingly gradual pace; equal parts throbbing, hypnotic and subtly beautiful. Don't come in expecting anything euphoric, however, as an undercurrent of icy gloom ties this mix together with plenty of nods to techno pioneers like Kerri Chandler along the way.

HxdB (pronounced "hexadecibel") is a reliable DJ. His star may not shine the brightest, but you best believe it won't be going out any time soon. This mix for QOFwear is a great example of HxdB's love of the low end, taking crushing bass, hip-hop snippets and a house sensibility and blending them into something all his own. There's also a certain amount of humour, or at least playfulness, in the way he creates an expectation in the listener only to pull the rug out for them and take them somewhere entirely different.

Steve Marto's highly danceable brand of dark, dark house has made him a force to be reckoned with in the Toronto underground scene, which seems to be getting more and more attention by the minute. In such a rapidly growing scene, Marto's individuality and insistence on blending the bouncier side of tech-house with dark minimalist cuts are what put him at the forefront, and this mix shows this blend off like no other.

Los Ghosts are a bit mysterious, purporting only to be a faceless duo called Viceroy and BONES. Still, any DJs that drop Marshall Jefferson's "Move Your Body" are winners. There's plenty of club favourites here besides that, like a remix of Tiga's "Bugatti", a Prince remix and a Shift K3y remix of Jessie Ware. In between that are a few overlooked gems, and a couple of the duo's own originals.

E.A.S.Y. are DJ Shiftee and Enferno, two DJs who have been honing the technical aspect of their craft for years, as much at home cutting and scratching at breakneck speed as they are making more subtle, gradual house blends. This recent mix for Мишка Bloglin shows the duo at their absolute best. For most people, this is kind of an introduction to the duo so, as we all know, first impressions count.

Keen to impress, Shiftee and Enferno have gone all out, balancing their knack for turntablism and picking just the right record for the moment. The list of highlights is a long one but look out for cuts from artists as wide-ranging as Drake, Lucid, Childish Gambino, Little Dragon and literally dozens more.

Bleep Bloop's bass-fuelled mix for Ear Milk is 30 minutes of dubstep, and it's surprisingly good. There are smatterings of vocal and instrumental grime and a sizable amount of the kind of dubstep that sat right on the cusp of techno, and even trap. But this isn't fast, braindead, "EDM" dubstep. Sure, there are some bangers thrown in but it's best looked at as a throwback to those days right before it got awful.