The Best New Mixes Streaming Right Now

The world seems at least 23% cheerier when you're listening to bossa nova and other Brazilian batimentos, and it certainly makes a change to have this playing around the tree instead of Michael Buble's Christmas CD. Both known for their insatiable appetite when it comes to sourcing musical obscurities, Four Tet and Floating Points joined forces for a NTS Radio broadcast and banged together a brilliant two-hour mix spanning the best of Brazil. Obrigado pessoal!

Floating Points & Four Tet - 8th December 2014 by Nts Radio on Mixcloud

Numbers founder Spencer recounts his favourites from the past year and there's a few in here we're sure you'll like too. The massive mix features musical contributions from LFO, Bobby Womack, Roy Ayers, Talking Heads, Moodymann, Aphex Twin, DJ Sprinkles, Motor City Drum Ensemble, Dark0 and a taxi driver called Gunter. A journey of exciting electronica with stops off in Detroit, Berlin, and Funky Town. Take it away, Gunter.

With the best intro to a mixtape from recent memory, Spooky Black, Allan Kingdom, Bobby Raps and Psymun—collectively known as TheStand4rd—dropped dynamite in a mix for The Fader.

Featuring "exclusive remixes and unreleased material," this four-way foray is madness as much as it is a moving collection of songs drenched in malaise and awkwardness, punctuted by some hilarious narrations. If you're planning on taking a self-depricating walk in the snow, this is probably your best bet.

Boom bap enthusiast and all-round hip hop head Phoniks put together a blend of reworked classics for Dealer de Musique's mix series and the result is a must for all hip-hop heads. Have a listen to some excellent edits of Nas, Biggie, Method Man, Big L and more, as well as some productions from Phoniks himself.

Coinciding with the release of his new EP Universal Serial Blood, French producer Douster had this to say about his hour-long session for Ninja Tune's Solid Steel Radio Show:

"The mix has an overall good vibe with lots of different styles of music from Europe, Chile, South Africa... It starts with what I like to call "tiny" computer funk, a mix of field recordings, simple synths and old drum machines rhythms. It then goes into sharper territory with harder drum tracks, afro drums and melancholic grime melodies. It's not necessarily what I would play in clubs but it shows the kind of music i'm making / listening to at the moment."

To celebrate Chester Watson's debut performance in Minneapolis, founder of Hot Record Societe Art Vandelay put together a short-but-sweet sample of what to expect from the show.

"Think blunted, jazzy loop equal parts MF Doom and Madlib and verses that combine Earl Sweatshirt’s verbal gymnastics to underground calm, and most of all – vibes for days. There’s an intangible quality to his music — a hazy calm unique to that moment in life where you’re discovering yourself but no one else knows yet, when you’re just another kid going to school on the outside but a rhyming superhero waiting to happen on the inside."

Recorded at the Red Bull Studios in New York, this mix from Trouble&Bass rookie Tony Quattro demonstrates his affinity for four-to-the-floor tracks designed for the dancefloor. Clocking in at two hours, it's an unrelenting stream of breaks, bashment vocals, and a lot of bass—spanning grime, garage and some outright rude tunes—with Tony's years spent in London showing a clear influence on his sound.

"For a while now, I’ve wanted to make a mix consisting entirely of 'Bonus Beats’ tracks", said Brighton-based producer Lockah in introducing his latest mix for oki-ni. "Each track has to have ‘Bonus Beat’ or ‘Bonus Beats’ in its title to qualify."

He adds, "working with this theme is really interesting because despite the overall feel being quite uniformly dry, percussive and danceable, I managed to work in music from acts whose names probably don’t often sit side by side in your average DJ mix track list. From cut & paste hip hop tracks, an obscure live band Cybotron cover to 90s Detroit techno and head scratchers like Serge Gainsbourg, Devo and Redinho. Plus some unreleased Bonus Beats of my own that have until now been hidden in my DJ crates."

Bonus: Free download

RBMA alumnus Ekali recently shared a few words with our homies over at Do Androids Dance, and whilst the full interview is definitely worth checking out, we're focussing on its audio accompaniment.

The mix as he describes it is "a compilation of everything I’ve been playing and tunes by artists that I’m personally excited about. Feel free to dance around." And with no further prompt necessary, we encourage you to listen to this young man and do as he says.