Manchester DJ and label owner Madam X does not subscribe to the commercialised appropriation of an old religious festival that purports to condense a year’s worth of romance into one 24-hour period. That said, she kindly put her personal feelings about Valentine’s Day aside to make i-D a super sexy mix for the occasion.
Scrapping the dark, bass-heavy club music associated with both her label Kaizen (“essentially my baby… we sort of exist in between the techno and left-field bass music world”,) and her own sets, Madam X has fully embraced February 14 in this mix. “It’s full of slow-jams and mushy love songs,” she says. “I really enjoyed putting it together. A lot of the tunes I’ve just let play out and speak for themselves. It’s a bit of an unconventional approach from me but I really liked rediscovering all the old timeless ballads.”
Featuring everyone from Usher to Teddy Pendergrass, Nicole Wray x Missy Elliott to Jean Jacques Smoothie’s 2 People, there’s something for everyone packed into an hour and nine minutes of Valentine’s Day magic. An hour and nine minutes that would probably do a great job of soundtracking what Madam X believes to be the best kind of love story: “basically any film where two attractive people overcome their socioeconomic disparities through dance, like Step Up, Save the Last Dance, Dirty Dancing.” She’s not wrong.
So stick this on, keep an eye out for future Kaizen releases and maybe even catch Madam X when she plays Annie Mac’s AMP Lost & Found Festival this May, if you fancy it.