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.

Co-host of the Circadian Rhythms show on NTS and purveyor of grime's bleeding edge, Last Japan is a name you should be more than familiar with. As well as the more experimental side, which he's long championed, Last Japan mixes in Maxsta, Kahn, Joker, Lurka and more.

On Jan. 30, Safer At Night boss Curses (formerly Drop The Lime) will be overseeing the label's takeover party at Le Bain in New York. To build up the hype, he's put together this mix of some of the label's releases, including cuts from Total Fitness and the man himself, as well as some weapons from his DJ arsenal. All '80s electro- and synth pop-inspired, this mix is the perfect balance of nostalgia and progression, and therefore utterly timeless.

Plastician's DJ sets are as eclectic now as they've ever been. The best thing about hitting up one of his shows is you have no clue what he's going to play that night. It could be disco, funk, grime, footwork, house and techno or even something more experimental. Take this latest mix, for example. The Croydon DJ/producer gives a very well-informed explanation to go with the mix, but the upshot is this mix was put together to highlight a movement of producers creating atmospheric electronica with its roots in hip-hop but no real desire to be played in a club. Chances are you won't have heard of any of these producers, but that's kind of the point. 

Next up, we've got ULTRAMAJIC boss Jimmy Edgar with a collection of tracks he recorded with a group of friends in Detroit over a seven-year period from 1999-2006. Here's what Jimmy had to say about the mix: "This mix is all music that me and my friends made in Detroit during 1999-2006. It's a rainy day when I made this so I wanted to envelope the mix with the warmth of rain. We challenged ourselves to make 100% analog music at that time. It was uninhibited creation as we didn't think one second about release, we were just making music together. That magic is infused in the mix as that is the vibe that glues it together."

With his Complete EP fresh out the gates and a show at The Ace Hotel tonight, London's Danglo is having quite a time with the Kitsune crew. This isn't the first Danglo mix that's caught our eye, and we know it won't be the last. Look out for heaters from Bicep, Percussions (Four Tet), Tensnake and a couple of his own productions. In short, this is one of the most perfect blends of warm, velvety house music with gloriously high production values.

Does this really need an explanation?

One third of t q d (along with DJ Q and Royal-T) and a powerhouse in her own right, Flava D's knowledge of, and passion for, garage, grime and bassline is virtually unparalleled. Not only does she have an encyclopedic knowledge of where UK music is right now, she's also lent her production skills to some of the UK's biggest artists like Wiley, Fekky and more. Her sets often blend stone-cold classics with the very latest in bass music and this new mix might be the finest example with Novelist, Craig David & Big Narstie, Section Boyz and others mixed in with remixes of "RIP Groove" and Cause & Effect's "Stampede". Oh, and she was responsible for the latest (and arguably greatest) incarnation of "Rhythm & Gash". If you've never seen Flava D live, just listen to this mix and ask yourself why.

FACT mix 531 - Flava D (Jan '16) by Fact on Mixcloud

We've got a lot of love for Low Steppa here at Complex. His work-rate is absurd, pumping out super high quality mixes at such a rate we can't help but marvel at how massive his record collection must be. On top of that, he also found time to run his Simma Black Records and release his debut album, Troubles, last year​. Like a lot of his mixes, there's no tracklist so jump in the comments section on SoundCloud to join the track ID debate.

Fans of Branko's Atlas project last year, an excursion that saw the former Buraka Som Sistema producer travel the world to link up with new and exciting artists, should get a real kick out of this one. Though the focus is on Portugal, specifically Lisbon, it's still a rich and eclectic mix of the various strains of club music popping off over there. Naturally, there's a reminder of the golden days of Buraka but things have moved on since then, leaving Lisbon, and indeed Portugal, with a healthier and more robust club scene than ever.

Few do techno quite like Happa. Often incredibly dark and sinister, both his productions and his mixes have become famed for their crushing industrial power. What's endeared him to so many however is just how different his sets and productions sound with their uncompromisingly rough and caustic edges. There's also a palpable air of wild experimentation with Happa, as though he were out to please no one but himself. "I wanted to showcase a few of my current favourites in the stranger corners of the dance music world, like M.E.S.H and Prostitutes," he explained. "Then to round it off, I included a few bangers here and there." And boy, did he.