DJ Kicks

"For anyone who's ever wondered how Forest Swords makes his music, this mix is essential listening as an insight into Barnes' mind. But for any listener who is open-minded, DJ-Kicks still has a lot to offer. Its variety may be a little disorientating at first, but it gives this album an unusual quality. It's one of those rare mix albums that is actually worth returning to".

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"Like several other editions of !K7's long-running DJ-Kicks series, Forest Swords' installment is far from being a traditional, flawlessly beatmatched DJ mix. Instead, it's an eclectic selection that picks apart the producer's influences, presented in the style of someone like John Peel rather than a typical club DJ ... as a whole, Forest Swords' DJ-Kicks is a worthwhile excursion in the genre-agnostic spirit of great free-form radio".

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"Laurel Halo's DJ Kicks is a perfectly controlled and sequenced set, looking occasionally backward but mostly forward, and always very much in the present moment".

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"DJ-Kicks is Laurel Halo's first commercially available mix, but it follows a decade's worth of podcast mixes for various music websites, as well as a background in college radio. Like her music, Halo's mixes incorporate styles from throughout the history of dance music, often leaning toward Detroit techno/electro and U.K. bass culture, but she's also likely to venture into musique concrete and contemporary composition. Halo's DJ-Kicks has a few abstract moments, but it's mainly a steady, headstrong mix, running through nearly 30 tracks in an hour".

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"On her first commercial mix album, the producer crafts an unbroken stretch of shapeshifting grooves and psychedelic fireworks ... These samples are pure Halo, wryly sardonic but also slyly effective, and they encapsulate what's so great about the mix. Body music for heady dancers, this is a triumph of dance music at its trippiest, and in its controlled weirdness lies real liberation".

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