Tokyo's @sapphire-slows has her own distinctive aesthetic. The music she makes is ghostly and delicate, eerie yet beautiful. The multi-talented artist plays her own synths and keys and layers her own beautiful vocal drones into her tracks to lend them extra intimacy. This of course means she has toured extensively and released on labels such as Japan's Big Love, Greece's Nous and LA's Not Not Fun/100% Silk. Despite often making and playing music with the brain cleansing purity demonstrated on 2017 album Time, Sapphire Slows can also do more caustic and mechanical sounds, as on 2014's Allegoria LP.

This week's mix explores a melancholic and introspective mood, but it is never dark. A range of mid-tempo rhythms set the tempo. Sometimes they're dubby and linear, at others more bubbling and off-grid, while the synths above glow like fireflies or glisten like knives in the sun. Organic bird calls float above hyper-real synthetic textures and the overall effect is to cocoon you in suspensory and meditative sound that feels out of this world.

Gavilán Rayna Russom (@gavilanraynarussom) is an accomplished and multi-disciplinary artist who works in the fields of performance, visual art, film, and writing. Musically, the New York composer necessarily works under a wide array of alias in order to capture the broad range of sounds she makes. From experimental drone techno as Hail of Arrows to acid and EBM under her own name via new wave as Black Meteoric Star, to touring extensively with LCD Soundsystem: she is impossible to pin down. In 2020, she founded the Voluminous Arts label as a home for boundary-pushing artists. She also released Secret Passage, an album of ambient created around her memories of growing up in the East Side Rail Tunnel which runs for one mile under the streets of Providence, Rhode Island. Later this year, another full length is due under her Black Meteoric Star alias.

As a DJ of 30 year's experience, Rayna is just as free-range, and she demonstrates that is this week's mix. At over three hours long, it is an epic oeuvre with many different chapters. There are passages of fuzzy, distorted ambient with a muted industrial clatter that take you to those underground train tracks, pieces of sound art that pair spoken word with icy wave minimalism, plus thrilling club, rock, and noise selections that are all coated in layers of grit and grime. Keeping the intensity so high, for so long, is no mean feat. But in Gavilán Rayna Russom's hands, it seems effortless.

Wonja (@wonj) is an elite level record collector. The Oakland-based DJ and producer has been putting together mixes for many years that are filled with music that is hard to describe, let alone to find. From teary-eyed Italo disco to her series of Wood Glass Metal mixes via world music and more club ready sounds, she is a Jedi-level digger who also occasionally produces solo, or with partner Dan as Motoko & Myers. Her main priority, though, is to devour and share as much music as possible.

This week's podcast is a two hour trip to the outer edges of Wonja's collection that her partner describes as "hard sci-fi party tracks." It is a wide open and spacious selection where alien details, solar pulses and cosmic motifs all drift by as scattered percussion only hints at the most skeletal rhythms. Nothing about the tracks is at all familiar, and all genre terms are redundant. Even when more propulsive grooves do arrive, the sound sources are wonderfully weird and abstract, yet the desire to dance is as primal and compelling as ever. Few mixes are as full of WTF?! moments as this one.

Jordana (@jordanaofficial) is one of America’s most widely respected drum & bass artists. In that field alone, she has already achieved a lifetime’s success and secured her legacy with albums and EPs. These impressive achievements haven’t stopped her also fronting a goth metal band in her Seattle hometown, holding DJ residencies in London, working in radio, performing and recording with Lady Sovereign, remixing Blondie and scoring the ‘Free Cece’ documentary. Just as important to Jordana as her musical achievements is her on going dedication to speaking publicly about trans rights and Black Lives. As a hate crime survivor herself, her activism is close to home and as personal as the music she makes.

Whether producing under her own name or aliases such as Lady J, she has an expressionistic, sci-fi influenced sound that is as likely to sample Malcom X as it is Al Pacino, but is always laden with a raw emotional power. That’s laid bare on this week’s two hour mix, which is packed with drum & bass gold, including some exclusives from Jordana herself. It is an exquisite heart-on-sleeve selection that isn’t afraid of a big vocal or a euphoric synth line, but is just as open to a flurry of hardcore breaks and gritty bass. Because there are so many absorbing highs and lows along the way, this is two hours of music that leaves you feeling utterly exhilarated.

We're all familiar with the healing power of music, but the Motor City's Whodat has made it her life's mission to spread that through her DJing and productions. Always coming at music with a sense of sincerity that carries over into her infectious sounds, she has released on the likes of Uzuri, Meakusma, and Queen Mum's Mail. Always uplifting and filled with life-affirming melodies, her take on house is all about feeling good and sharing love.

On this week's podcast, Whodat's smooth mixing style allows the glory of her selections to shine though. Despite dealing with difficult personal circumstances of her own, on top of the pandemic we've all endured, her music never fails to bring joy. There is warm and diffusive soul from start to finish, with scuffed up beatdown, off-grid Detroit grooves and seductive deep house all adding up to the sort of heartfelt and authentic grooves that the MidWest, and Whodat herself, are so well loved for.

@lukid is about as low key as they come. Somehow, he's managed to remain in the shadows despite making music - either solo or as half of Rezzett - for cult labels like Actress' Werkdiscs and The Trilogy Tapes, as well as his own Glum. His style is hard to define and can take in anything from caustic sonic collages to experimental and abstract sound design via lo-fi house and blistering beats. Since 2018 he has also made old school jungle as Refreshers, but whatever he does, it always explores the outermost fringes. The same is always true of his never less than adventurous transmissions on NTS each month.

In just 55 minutes for us this week, he serves up a breathless trip through hugely kinetic sounds that could be 30 years old or not out till next month. Amongst the colliding energies of hardcore, jungle and rave he will often drop a pitched up vocal so soulful and emotive it hurts, before racing onto the next flurry of drums. Frankly, it's a high speed mix of hyper real sounds that acts like a double shot of adrenaline straight into your bloodstream. You have been warned.

Techno has always been about futurism, but in Russell E.L. Butler's (@russellelbutler) hands it becomes a vehicle for a more inclusive, communal and positive now. The Oakland based producer pairs their stripped back and powerful rhythms with uplifting sound design to make for music that is both defiant yet welcoming to all. They have done so on Left Hand Path, Mister Saturday Night Records and Spectral Sound since 2015, with 2018's 'The Home I'd Build For Me And All My Friends' album being a particularly standout work that showcased Butler's mastery of their machines.

In the studio, Butler is most at home manipulating modular machines and making propulsive techno, but as a DJ they expire wider sonic terrain. That's demonstrated on this week's mix, which begins with dystopian atmospheres and heavy rhythms that eventually break out into jerking EBM, bleak cold wave and mechanical house sounds. It's a brilliantly taught and tense selection with a careful smattering of human vocals that keeps it rooted in an approachable realism.

London duo @sicariasound has reinvigorated dubstep by pulling from every side of the 140bpm spectrum. The pair of Ndeko and Imbratura are longtime friends who have an unspoken understanding when it comes to DJing together, as was frequently demonstrated at their residency for Mala's Deep Medi. They also run their own Cutcross label which can serve up sounds that reference anything from breakbeat to grime, rave to bass. Despite this success - and the news this week that they are to put out Binate, their first official EP - they have also announced that they will disband the project at the end of 2021.

Thankfully, we will always have the mix to come back to, because it is a perfect embodiment of their sound. Well informed but never too serious, it takes in ice-cold wobblers as well as industrial strength steppers and skeletal, minimal dubstep sounds that hark back to the golden era. The whole thing is stitched together in a way that shows up the contrasts of light and dark, spaciousness and intensity and ensures you remain fully locked in.

It is no stretch to say that Sao Paulo's Trepanado is at the heart of the Brazilian music scene. His Selvagem party is one of the most influential in terms of the sounds it pushes, and his label Selva Discos is also hugely respited for the sounds it curates. Trepanado himself has also put out a vital compilation for Hello Sailor Recordings that spotlighted Brazil's Street Soul sound of the late eighties and early nineties. As a DJ he joins the dots between those classic niches and the contemporary electronic landscape thanks to his tireless devotion to digging for wax.

This multi-genre maestro distills also his considerable know how into a lively carnival mix that oozes Brazilian charm in the bird calls, whistles and Spanish vocals, but also seems to reference UK rave culture, traditional Latin rhythms and throwback house music. It's a full flavour, fully bumping mix that makes that feeling of being in the middle of an outdoor dance floor on a hot summer's day feel tantalisingly close.

Bristol's @giantswan came to dance music after formative years as guitarists in the band The Naturals. This lends them a genuinely outsider perspective which means their music breaks rules the pair of Robin Stewart and Harry Wright didn't even know existed. Coming on labels like Keck, Timedance and Whities, it is caustic and twisted, textured and dense with layers of abrasive sonic fuzz. Add in harsh vocals and unrelenting beats and you have a duo that sits in their own unique world somewhere between noise, techno, experimental and rock.

There is no concession to your lockdown life in the mix they serve up for us this week. It is a banging and thrilling collision of hi NRG techno, juke, hardcore and bass that bristles with confrontational energy and raw texture while making improbable leaps from Dizzee Rascal to DJ EARL, Kangding Ray to SOPHIE, SOPHIE to Theo Parrish.