Mix of the Week 21/11: DVS NME Post Punk Affiliated - Volume 62
DVS NME is a techno DJ living in Colorado, but has an overwhelming passion for post punk rock music. Combining his love and his occupation, he runs the Post Punk Affiliated show, perfectly blending rock tracks together through techno mixing. The 62nd Volume is not only one of his best, but also contains one of the freshest line-ups of modern post punk artists. The result is an hour-long mix for the often disregarded rock audience.
From the opening guitar riff it is clear that this isn’t a standard, and overdone, deep house/bass mix. Opening with Part Time’s ‘So Far Away’, the light ethereal synths and dreary vocals introduce the softer ambience that takes post punk away from the heavier punk rock. These features are key to allowing the mix to flow, as the seamless transition to Chromatic’s ‘Dark Day’ exemplifies. Those ethereal synths are slowly morphed into bright, reverb heavy guitar strums that boom out, widening the soundscape. The drum machines in the background help chug the tracks along, giving a much-needed sense of pace and rhythm. While his song selection is notable for how well each song fits into this music format, compared with an album or playlist, the real standout is his mixing of individual songs. An example of this is the effects DVS NME puts over the top of Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips’ ‘Mistress America’, which creates a soft distance that ties to the ambience of the previous tracks. He is also able to bounce between softer and harder post punk tracks. An example of this is the mix of Nadine Shah’s dark and grungy ‘Fool’ with Some Ember’s dreamy ‘Wave of Fear, Wave of Joy’, tied together by the iconic drum line from New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’.
This volume of Post Punk Affiliated provides enough variety to lure in fans of soft, ambient mixes while uniquely grounding itself in the post punk genre, giving rock listeners a gateway into the world of mixes and proving that the skills of a DJ are not only limited to electronic music.
