American Kareem Ali (@kmx19) came to dance music late but has very quickly made a big impression. The formally trained trumpeter has a fascination with the cosmos that colours all his music. Over nearly 50 releases he has proven himself adept at making everything from sleek electro to deep house, driving techno to cinematic ambient. The breakout producer also runs his own CosmoFlux label which he hopes will one day become a non-profit that hosts day parties aimed towards young people of colour.

In the mix for us this week, he laces together a smooth and seductive set of richly musical house grooves. It is songs that he is playing mostly, with proper chords and gorgeous vocals that always enrich the soul. Ali is a devout man who is averse to dance music's tendency towards hedonism, but his selections here truly uplift. There is a spiritual aspect to what he does that warms the heart and brings joy in a different sort of way.

@cinema-royale is a DJ who plays flawlessly, no matter the setting or style of music he reaches for. As a lifelong lover and collector of film soundtracks, he likes to take the weird and make it wonderful; to make out-of-context moments into transcendental delights. As one of Amsterdam's deepest diggers, he can put records together that no one else can and is part of the core Dekmantel family. In February, he put together his Profondo Nero compilation for the label and made connections between soulful disco, breaks, electro-rap, Balearic, boogie and much more in ways that only he could.

This week he takes us deep across a superb two-hour mix. Rather than following the traditional arc of a DJ set, Cinema Royale is happy to pump the party with a glossy retro-boogie gem then pull back to dubby disco vibe. His sounds are always bright and big-hearted, the grooves uplifting and feel good. Like any decent movie, this is a fluid but unpredictable mix that will have you coming back for more time and time again.

This instalment of our annual Selectors Podcasts series comes from Mika Oki, who is probably best described as a sensory artist. Heavily influenced by a background in sculpture and electro-acoustic music, her work frequently revolves around weaving together sound and vision – simultaneously creating and exploring intangible spaces, be it in installations, performance pieces, music, or mixes. And when it comes to the latter, Mika Oki has proven, time and time again, that an amalgamation of grime, reggaeton and dancehall might just be an essential component of a well-crafted, esoteric soundscape.

What you’ll hear in this industrial and organic mix partly derives from Mika Oki’s friends, producers and residents at LYL radio, as it happens that she recently opened the third, Brussels-based branch of the Belgian webradio together with a collection of dedicated musicians. Combined with sounds reminiscent of “broken machinery” and a “glitched, collapsing world”, we are left with a celestial selection that converges across the realm of sonic experimentation and - somewhat otherworldly - club rhythms. One thing is for certain: this mix will leave you wondering what you were doing before you started tuning in, once it’s over.

@anastasiakristensen has been offering a new definition of techno for the last five years. When she plays, she plays from the heart, with unbridled energy and a rare sense of colour. She can bang out brutal beats then pivot in an instant to hi-NRG synth riffs. She'll mash up old school breaks and bleeps then rave to the future on a wave of electro. Her productions are just as impactful on labels like Houndstooth and Arcola. Yet despite the seriousness of her skills and the intensity of her sounds, she always plays with a smile.

The Danish DJ pulls no punches on this week's mix. It seems to encapsulate her every side - peak time festival rave as well as more nuanced back room selections. What unites it all are the drums, which can always be felt as much as they can be heard. Sometimes they bounce under a sparse synth line. Midway through they are raw, flat-footed, unrelenting. Towards the end, they unravel into a flurry of jungle breakbeats. It's not easy to play such high-energy music but keep things dynamic, yet Anastasia does it with style.

Karen "KG" Nyame (@karennyamekg) has been dubbed the “Goddess of Rhythm,” and for good reason. Her body-popping sounds draw from restless African polyrhythms, the high-energy drum patterns of diasporic club music and the boom of UK bass. KG herself is as restless as her music - she works as a presenter on Capital Radio, produces for labels like Black Acre and Future Bounce, and teaches at her own music workshops in collaboration with Red Bull Music.

KG continues to twist up the world's many musical cultures with this week's podcast. Although she can at times go dark and heavy, here she tends to draw for deeper moments. There are passages of super silky and vocal deep house, elastic drum tracks and infectious UK funky tunes that are all seamlessly fused together into something with a seductive sense of flow.

Each year, we ask a few artists from the Dekmantel Selectors line-up to deliver a mix in anticipation of the new edition. Who could be a better fit than DJ Python to re-initiate this tradition?

Even before Dulce Compañia, which introduced the Python alias to the world, Brian Piñeyro has been providing a wide array of unique sounds to those who care to listen. To be fair, he makes it hard not to care, and also to describe his ambling, dembow-inspired rhythms as something other than ‘deep reggaeton’. But if Piñeyro has taught us one thing, it is that music is just moods flowing into one another. Sometimes, the mood is a percussive therapy session, and sometimes it warps drone-driven electronica, tingly synths, and steely dancehall.

It is unsurprising that this mix is all about the mood too. A 60-minute journey across genuinely emotive songs and honeyed hymns. In his words, it’s just about “enjoying the time with people around you, whatever shape the people or the time may take”. When listening to this mix, keep in mind DJ Python’s approach to making soup: you can only really do it well if you allow yourself to move beyond the recipe. The only thing left to do is let go and get locked in.

There is no way to neatly sum up what @kush_jones does. Part of that is because the Bronx native is so relentless. Part of it is because he makes music purely for himself, self-releases most of it and therefore depends on no one. This year alone he's put out at least five releases. There have been footwork singles, house and breaks EPs, electro tunes and the 13th installment in his tool-y compilation series, Strictly 4 My CDJZ. He is just as flexible as a DJ, threading together Black music from across a global spectrum that can take in the sounds of Baltimore, Detroit and Jersey in the same set.

This is exactly what happens in this week's mix. The tempo is high throughout, but that never restricts what Jones can do. He is still able to explore plenty of nuances and shift the mood and groove while racing along at speed. Super sweet and soulful juke melts away into a flurry of jungle drums. Blistering warehouse techno builds to breaking point then club music takes over. It makes for a breathless but beautiful 65 minutes.

"Since I was a little kid I have found a safe space in music," said ISAbella (@bellasalmonella) on her Instagram recently. Nowadays, the Colombian DJ uses music to create those same safe spaces for other people. She is a resident at Barcelona's influential Macarena club, where she runs the Mistress night which aims to empower women and give visibility to the underground. She is also co-founder of MARICAS, a queer night that has hosted parties in Barcelona, Paris and Amsterdam and spawned a vinyl-only label that launched in 2020 with a thrilling EP of house, breaks and electro from ISAbella herself.

All that features in this week's podcast, which is a smooth and serene trip to the deepest recesses of the dance floor. It finds ISAbella laying down bumping drums and punchy rhythms throughout, but always with a sense of warmth and positivity. There are heady cosmic melodies, nostalgic chords and sci-fi motifs among the way. At times things feel futuristic, at others, there is a sense of retro familiarity, but it adds up to a mix as stylish as it is effortless.

London's @lorainejames is as experimental as electronic artists get. She doesn't just make hard to categorise music, she makes music for which there are often no words. Depending on your mood, her sounds can suit either full-on dance floor workouts or reflective home listens. That has been the case across two standout albums on Hyperdub, both of which explore vulnerability and identity across tracks that fizz with ideas and energy. The most recent, Reflection back in June, came with snippets of interior monologue. They lay bare James's most intimate feelings while the beats around her continue to act as something of a safety blanket.

This week's rule-breaking mix features a number of Loraine's tunes including the unnamed and exclusive opener, plus a flurry of beats from peers like FaltyDL, object blue, Squarepusher and Djrum. They make for a full body workout that twitches your every synapse one minute then sink you into a deeply seductive club sound the next. The transitions from hyper-polished and futuristic rhythms to live jazz drums, or icy dub to glitchy IDM, would seem impossible on paper, but in practice, they are executed perfectly.

@moma_ready arrived on a wave of acclaim that hasn't at all subsided in the four or so years since his debut. The NYC-based skateboarder and musician runs the Haus of Altr label and also makes ambient, as well as films. He has had particular success producing with AceMo as AceMoMA, such as on April's standout album, A Future. As the title suggests, it took in the dustier end of 90s jungle, rough-edged house and Detroit techno, but turned out something forward-looking. Whatever MoMA Ready does, it comes through a proudly Afrofuturist lens, always with unbridled energy and the ability to make you question everything you thought you knew.

This week's mix packs an awful lot in. It - of course - eschews the traditional model of a slow build towards a peak-time workout. Instead, the music just goes where MoMA wants, whenever he wants. Even the transitions play second fiddle to the selections, which is fine when the tunes are this good. Some are deep, some are smooth, there are lo-fi bangers and seductive rollers. It's the sound of a DJ going all in without a care in the world.