

In 2018, one mix entered hearts and minds more than any other: CCL's Ode To The Queer Steppas. Taking dubstep, a genre largely resigned to the history books, and revisiting it with vivid musical inspiration and a powerful personal message, the mix resonated with tens of thousands of listeners. When released, it cascaded across social media channels and best mixes lists, as everyone who heard it was compelled to pass it on. It swiftly became a mix you knew blend-for-blend, putting it on again and again in the car, at work, hanging out with friends, everywhere.



On HNYPOT 291, CCL tessellates '90s techno and mid '00s dubstep with novel tracks from contemporary artists. Within the first ten minutes they slip from object blue, Laurel Halo and SUED into an eerie 1998 Urban Tribe record. In the next section the mood shifts: we're taken into the shadowy hush of two Shackleton tracks, then swept away in a warm rush by Robert Fleck's dubwise "Echo Chamber." It's around at this point we realise something quite special has been crafted here. In CCL's hands, bass-heavy beats become elastic rhythms, at once intriguing and joyous. In another definitive moment the unmistakable vocal of Marie Davidson's "Work It" is sliced in and out of a '90s Bandulu record, before both dissolve into a broken 2016 cut on Version. It's this kind of sonic collaging, joining up dots no one had thought to connect before, that marked CCL out as a distinctive selector.



The enduring magic of this mix goes beyond the music. Over the course of one hour and six minutes, CCL presented an alternate history for dubstep. A window into a parallel reality in which this freaky bass-weight music had always soundtracked the raucous queer parties they imagined while making the mix. By grounding the mix in a recontextualisation of their own experiences of this straight and male-dominated genre, CCL showed us the power that lies in spinning new stories out of the artefacts of our past. It's fitting that it came out on Honey Soundsystem's weekly mix series, which has become a vital platform for local underground queer DJs around the world. As an event organiser with Seattle's TUF collective and Vancouver's New Forms Festival, CCL had been a core member of the Pacific Northwest community for years. This mix for Honey was the moment the international scene recognised their unique voice and vision as a DJ.



- Sybil Gillespie

















