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.

We don't often feature radio sets in this column, simply because there are so many. However, we had to make an exception with this one. 10 years (and a couple of days) ago, Plastician released his now-legendary collaboration with Skepta, "Intensive Snare", from the Croydon producer's debut album Beg To Differ. Around the same time, the two also recorded a live set together on Rinse and it has, quite rightly, gone down as a key moment in grime lore. Both "Intensive Snare" and the radio set were truly incredible and, if you were there, you'll know precisely why. We could talk endlessly about the track, the album that bore it and the radio set—and why they're so incredible—but the proof is really all in the pudding. 

The early-mid '00s were a glorious time for dubstep. It was new, exciting, and really bloody weird. In this mix, Cosmic Bridge boss Om Unit shares some classics from the genre's formative years, all slowed down to 33rpm. As you can hear below, the finished product is an eerie, cavernous marathon of chest-rattling low-end and sparse melodies. After many of us became disenchanted with what dubstep became in its later years, this is a worthwhile reminder of just how incredible it used to be.

Here's a bargain for you: two mixes for the price of one. Two of electronica's maddest scientists, Slugabed and Ryury, recently took it in turns to hop on deck for just over an hour of the weirdest, most out-there, but still utterly danceable beats around. House, grime, UKG, jazz and more all get a look-in for a truly eclectic and party-starting mix, but with no tracklist to speak of, you're just going to have to work it out for yourselves.

We're all pretty familiar with TDE's output by now. Kendrick, Schoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, Jay Rock and countless others have contributed to the label's output over the years, more often than not with some of the best hip-hop going. Still, that hasn't stopped TDE's Mixed By Ali from collecting together a mix of the biggest hits and forgotten classics. And if you don't know who Ali is, he's the TDE engineer, the man responsible for that trademark TDE sound on pretty much every TDE release ever.

New York-based DJ Olive T's output spans a lot of genres; from house to footwork to hip-hop and even a bit of post-punk. A true selector, Olive T thinks little of flitting between seemingly disparate sounds. Here, she sticks mainly to house and techno, though there are notes of hip-hop, R&B and some more leftfield tones throne in for good measure. Let's just hope she makes it across to the UK soon.

Taking a brief break from t q d activities, bassline boss DJ Q turned out this massive mix of UKG and bassline classics. Catch Q when he hits Fabric's Room 2 tonight (it's the BDL take over with Big Narstie, Mike Skinner, Logan Sama, P Money, Splurgeboys Royal-T and more), but get down early because advance tickets have sold out.

Waze & Odyssey, still celebrated for their R Kelly reflip among many, many other things, recently opened for Francois K at his Deep Space club night in New York. Since it's a warm-up set, it's a pretty chill affair but we're gonna go out on a limb and say this could well be the most beautiful house music ever made. Here's what the duo had to say about it: 

"[Francois K's] Monday night 'Deep Space' has been going for over a decade, and is a true NYC institution, and we were honoured to play. We got to do a two-and-a-half-hour warm-up set for Francois, setting the scene and mood and getting to play some of our favourite records that we listen to at home for the first 50 minutes before dropping into a slow 4x4 beat later on. So here we have it, the opening sequence. We hope you enjoy it."

Cosmix 10 - Waze & Odyssey by Cosmicpineapple on Mixcloud

To round off the last 12 months, Beats In Space boss Tim Sweeney took to the buttons to take a look back at some of the year's highlights. Usually, the Beats In Space podcast features two DJs, each mixing for an hour or so. However, this time round the boss occupies both slots, clocking in at nearly two and a half hours, blending electro, house, new wave, techno and disco. The weekly podcast has had some pretty massive names step in over the years—we've featured more than a few of them in this column—so to match that can't have been easy. To be honest, we can hardly fault the outcome.