An hour with Bradley Zero

Lis­ten to the mix here.

“When­ev­er I get asked to do a mix I ini­tial­ly pan­ic,” London’s Bradley Zero tells Boil­er Room Radio. ​“Not that I don’t know how to put it togeth­er, but I have so many dif­fer­ent sounds and angles that I explore through radio and the label that some­times it’s quite hard to choose a direc­tion and stick to it for one hour.” It’s true that as founder of the Rhythm Sec­tion INTL label, a host on NTS Radio, and a res­i­dent DJ at London’s Jazz Café, Zero’s inter­ests go in numer­ous direc­tions; hav­ing grown from a radio show into a reg­u­lar par­ty and record label, Rhythm Sec­tion encom­pass­es house, bro­ken beat, jazz, tech­no, R&B, Caribbean, and Latin music, and more — all unit­ed by its unshak­able soul­ful­ness. But when it came to select­ing music for Boil­er Room, Zero had one advan­tage: He came on board as a pro­gram­mer and host back in Boil­er Room’s very ear­li­est years, so if any­one knows how to cre­ate a vibe that’s right for the plat­form, he does. And his set for Boil­er Room and Apple Music’s ​“an hour with…” series is all about vibe, too. Drawn from new and forth­com­ing Rhythm Sec­tion releas­es along with a few choice bits from Zero’s friends and peers, the mix doesn’t scrimp on rhythm: From start to fin­ish, it’s thread­ed with sharp, step­ping drum pro­gram­ming that takes in house, funk, garage, and lean, wiry tech­no. But those drums come sweet­ened with the tex­tures and tone col­ors that are Rhythm Section’s sig­na­ture. 30/70’s ​“Tastes Like Free­dom (Chaos in the CBD Remix)” swims in easy­go­ing sax­o­phone; Nico­la Cruz’s ​“Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty Rid­dim” bris­tles with warm per­cus­sion sam­ples; the elec­tric keys and flute synths of Hid­den Spheres’ ​“Impro­vise” are prac­ti­cal­ly New Age. Accel­er­at­ing across its final 15 min­utes to end in a pulse-quick­en­ing cli­max with Has­san Abou Alam’s ​“Hel­la Mega Dri­ve,” it all makes for eyes-closed, body-mov­ing bliss — nev­er mind the fact that Zero record­ed the set right around the time that most of the world was mark­ing the first anniver­sary of social dis­tanc­ing. ​“I want­ed to make it for the dance floor,” he stress­es. ​“Which maybe isn’t the most rad­i­cal deci­sion, but I real­ly miss hav­ing an excuse to put togeth­er some­thing to make peo­ple dance.”