Pitchfork

As more blogs flux pop and more asshole promoters threaten station kids into samey CMJ playlists, college radio continues to lose what little tastemaking power it had in the first place. At this point the scene's an academic discipline, excitement hardly ever reaching outside the station's DJ community. Which is a shame, because I bet there are tons of shows around as fun as Tim Sweeney's "Beats In Space" on WNYU 89.1.

Almost every Thursday for the past three years, the NYU student-turned-grad has run down the city's most consistently exciting mixed radio sets. Sweeney breaks lots of new wax, but he's insanely generous too, sneaking in the hits when they fit. While a dancekid at heart, Sweeney plays an expert dilettante, reaching deep into the bowels of hip-hop and stalwart indie alike, then ripping a sparse Playhouse twelve on his way out. After an internship at the DFA, Sweeney's reputation has grown substantially. He has mixing credits on that killer third disc of DFA Compilation #2, co-spins with Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy around New York, and works regularly at APT, arguably the city's last great venue for dance music.

Sweeney's shows are archived and downloadable as MP3, but Rvng Prsnts Mx3 is his first official CD release. The mix doesn't pack the surprises of Sweeney's radio sets, and the tracklisting's not nearly as risky, but Sweeney compromises with more delicate beat- and mood-matching. While other dilettante acts like 2 Many DJs and Optimo sell themselves with abrupt genre jumps and cheeky mash-ups, Sweeney is far more selfless, keeping the tracks in the limelight with thoughtful sequences. Manuel Göttsching's E2-E4 begins the first half of Mx3, then is put under the scalpel. Dropping Aphex Twin ("bbydhyonchord"), UNKLE (a remix of Can's "Vitamin C"), and Radiohead ("Kid A") after it, Sweeney examines the monumental 1984 recording's influences, nodding at the same time to some of E2-E4's own touchstones: Kraftwerk ("Numbers") and synth-pop (Tones On Tail's "Performance").

By now Sweeney's impressed us; midway through, he just wants us to dance-- though not without a brilliant conceit. Mutant disco (Was Not Was' "Wheel Me Out", Yoko Ono's "Walking On Thin Ice") butts heads with techno legend Carl Craig ("Climax"), whose rubberfunk is chaser for Mu's sewer slime ("Let's Get Sick"), but in the end they're all servile to Sweeney's elaborate song title wordplay: "Kick in the eye. Wheel me out. Walking in the rain. Walking on thin ice. Let's get sick. Painless. Climax. Free." The joke nails Sweeney better than I can.

"