Float in magma

2025 Mix 32: Juking the regional stats with a glut of South African tracks, plus Ukrainian Eurovisioncore, gentle horsewave, a Caribbean block, and lots of cosmo-pop

Christmas in July, Eurovision in August

This the first of two scheduled vacation posts so once again there will be no timely response to discourse or world events. Will there be fresh horrors to leave unaddressed directly? (Almost certainly.)¹ Will we still be working out a tongue-in-cheek flowchart of stomp-clap-hey? (Almost certainly not.) But I will say we are not putting nearly enough hacky sack into the formula. (People in colleges listened to plenty of stuff that was not “college rock.”)

This first post contains what I believe is the longest mix to date with the fewest songs (20, my minimum for a mix), maxing out at 1 hour and 18 minutes—2 minutes below the cutoff at a CDR-busting 80 minutes. The other post has the most songs in the least amount of time—26 songs in 1 hour and 12 minutes.

I will also do some midyear(ish) accounting for the two things I track in my year-end posts: words I’ve written and stats I’ve kept. Stats this week, words next week. Here we go!

Stats I’ve Kept

I crunched some numbers last week to see what my regional stats looked like so far this year—where in the world all of the music I put on these mixes was coming from. So far the breakdown looks fairly similar to last year in most regions, with a few exceptions: a notable drop in US tracks (down 5 points), somewhat balanced out by the broader Anglosphere doing better (up 4 points) keeping the combined US/Anglosphere total around 27%, same as last year.

Cosmopolitan pop—international collaborations or nationally ambiguous songs—is up 3 points, while music from Africa (excluding North Africa, which I count with Middle East and Turkey) is down 3 points. This has made me eager to get some things off of my South African holdover list, where lots of good (but often very long) amapiano and Afrohouse go to languish when I can’t fit them on mixes, which happens a lot. I’m also curious if this shift to “international”/cosmo-pop reflects more international collaborations between African artists and other artists capitalizing on these sounds. But I don’t keep stats that detailed—what am I, some sorta weirdo??

The biggest increase is (western) Europe, which is currently at 17% of the total, up from 11% last year. Some of this might be my more thorough Eurovision scan this year, but I think a lot comes from more inclusions from Italy, Greece, and Spain than in previous years. (It would be very me of me to have accidentally predicted European ferment in the weird A-pop installment that very few people read.) And I do wonder how much of this increase is just from having so many Marina Satti songs in my mixes.

I usually don’t do these stats until the end of the year, because I wouldn’t want to, oh, say, start stacking my mixes with tracks from one region on purpose because I want the percentage to be higher. Should let the chips fall where they may and just own it. Yep. Anyway, here’s Atmos Blaq.

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Previous 2025 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. Atmos Blaq: Shimova
South Africa

What’s a guy gotta do to get a three-step masterpiece around these parts? Just wait for the new Atmos Blaq solo single to drop. My kid enjoyed finding the three-step beat (“3, 4, 1…3, 4, 1”) and liked it but thought it “kind of stays the same the whole time,” so we had a conversation about the difference between a drop and a slow build.

“You don’t wait for the beat to tell you dance, you just keep dancing and dancing.”

“Then how does everyone know when to stop?”

Exactly.

2. JayJayy, 031CHOPPA, ShakaMan YKTV f. Shakes & Les, Jussgigi, Rishbeats, Male mon: Samba 8
South Africa

Shakes & Les were my South African artists of the year last year (along with Djy Biza and 031CHOPPA by mix volume), so it’s nice to hear their spirit alive and well on a patented [genre] [number] song that features them.

3. Kokoroko f. Demae: Time and Time
UK

Kokoroko are a longstanding utility player in mix-making, very easy to sub in when necessary. I think I’ve featured something by them every year I’ve been doing this. Here’s another one.

4. Tyaraju & Dutra: Pé De Foguete [1982]
Brazil

A wonderful rarity from a new Mr. Bongo comp—release date is sketchy on Discogs, which I’d narrowed to c. 1981-1984 before I saw that Bandcamp listed it as 1982. Brazilian dueling guitars suggest the Allman Brothers Band with a better rhythm section.

5. Bianca Costa: Lokita
France

Brazil-born, France-based blithely disaffected reggaeton-pop. Light ‘n’ delightful.

6. Krys, Kny Factory: Brigitte
Guadeloupe/France

7. Natoxie f. Chatix, Yozo: Tout Accroupi
Martinique

8. Asa Bantan: Fuck Everybody
Dominica

Three Caribbean picks from Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Dominica, respectively. All were finds from a light genre dive (bouyon tags, mostly). I particularly like how Asa Bantan makes his various fuck-you’s float like a butterfly without feeling obligated to sting like a bee.

9. Artem Pivovarov, The Byca, Iryna Bilyk: Yabadabadu
Ukraine

Good lord, is it Eurovision time already? No—but this is the sort of song that might do well in the competition, but maybe wouldn’t make it through the Ukrainian qualifiers. If any country is not going to go for regional visionaries bringing underground ferment to the masses, though, they might as well go with an extremely stupid Flintstones hook that is interrupted abruptly in the middle by a ringing phone sound that you should not listen to while driving (it happened to me).

10. La Charo: Canto Tehuelche
Argentina

One half of the Argentine folk (folclore) duo Tonolec, here putting her arty-farty bonafides toward something a bit more muscular, tromps through a crooked time signature mostly in six while a rockabilly guitar figure scrabbles around for the rhythm underneath.

11. Billie du Page: Et si
Canada

As best as I can tell, a two roads diverged number: she chose the right path…but what if she’d picked left? ‘Course in the Frost poem, it doesn’t actually make a difference, so she might as well tell the story as though she chose correctly. Sounds light enough to fool me into thinking it was from Paris rather than Montreal.

12. Kawtar: Wst Lmraya
Morocco

More lightness from Morocco — next week is an overstuffed short-form smorgasbord and overall is much, let’s say, spikier. I like the part in the video where the two ex-lovers are represented in a Mortal Kombat style game that the presumed jiltee is playing, seemingly not very well.

13. Titi f. Salam Diallo: Bèlli
Senegal

A Lokpo find from the Senegalese YouTube charts. Polyrhythms I have trouble following up close but groove to just fine from a distance. A typical Tuesday night in Senegal.

14. Nadeem Din-Gabisi f. DIVINEANGEL: Enter Claim
UK

British artist of Sierre Leone descent along with UK-based Afrobeats and South African house artists Angel Seka and Divine Earth (formerly muva of earth), who bill themselves together as DIVINEANGEL. Upbeat and a lot of fun, with gospel touches that inspire, but not overbearingly so.

15. KMAT, Shaunmusiq, Khalil Harrison f. Moonchild Sanelly: Piki Piki
South Africa

16. Nandipha808 f. King Tone SA, S Kay Da Deejay, Benzo, DT.MO: Move to the Right
South Africa

17. Vesta SA f. Ntando Yamahlubi, Mphoet, Blaq Note: Inhlonipho
South Africa

I couldn’t very well have the longest mix with the fewest tracks on it without leaving room for a three-song amapiano block. The first is leaning a bit toward ama-pop, including its Moonchild Sannelly feature, but the other two are down the line and dare I say classic—a cheesy saxophone line transmogrified into something genuinely hip in the Nandipha808 track, while Vesta SA gives the song over to Mphoet’s vocal. (As a reminder, there are 350 and counting other South African house songs that are only slightly less good than these that I didn’t include on mixes this year so far.)

18. Yden: Ngalan Mo
Philippines

A sweet pop-rock number from the Philippines, lulling you into a sense of complacency before I bring out the big guns next week with my Philippines song of the year, which is not sweet, pop, or rock. In fact it might not be anything that has ever been or ever will be.

18. Ralphie Choo: D’amor traficante
Spain

Never really know what to expect with Ralphie Choo, who first came to my attention doing an eclectic and somehow simultaneously jagged/smooth electro that I always imagined (but never wrote about), based on its blurry horse cover, as horsewave. (I think there are many better candidates for that particular genre name, though.) But if you’d given me ten guesses I would not have landed on an earnest take on The Faces with just the slightest hint of oh let’s just call it horsewave.

19. Nina Nicolaiewsky, Sucinta Orquestra: Cafuné
Brazil

And we’ll end things with smoky Brazilian chanteuse pop draped in strings, the orchestra swooning around Nina Nicolaiewsky, who remains upright.

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That’s it! Until next time, try to get those stats up, especially if you need more African representation.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from Artem Pivovarov, The Byca, Iryna Bilyk: Yabadabadu (“Магмою плавай”/Magmoyu plavai)

1. A last-minute footnote to add that I am currently aware of the details around the new Taylor Swift album, but this was not written as a reference to any of them.