After The Smoke Is Clear 709
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Below this write-up, you’ll find the track list, complete with artists, albums, and the city they represent. You can listen here and follow along, or if you’re using the Mixcloud app, hit the “…” to check out the track list while you listen. There’s also a video below from the Twitch stream where I slapped this mix together. I’m having fun week to week, come through and say hi, hang out and listen to music. I’m streaming often on weekday afternoons, either working on ATSIC, listening to the new releases on the radar each Friday or Saturday to make picks, doing Fly In Formation interviews on Tuesdays, or working on my own music when I can find time.
DJ Dice had a couple weeks off so he made his triumphant return this week with a new hour of new release boom bap. We never play anything twice - except Best Of episodes at the end of the year or accidents where I forget to delete something from my “unplayed” playlists that we pull from to put mixes together. It’s not the most ideal for artists who are trying to top the college charts, but personally, I’m not listening to shows like ATSIC so I can hear my favourite singles from the same album every week. I do my best to keep the music brand new, fresh out - or exclusive to ATSIC early drops.
Speaking of exclusives - this one has a remix for my song Coulees, which was on my 2024 EP with Josh the Butcher called Circles. Jimmy Burnett sent me a verse for it a long time ago and I dragged my feet until now. Big ups to JB for repeatedly reminding me that I should drop the song. It’s almost spring time, so I thought it was go time. I’m trying to make a point of dropping some more of my own music this year, since 2025 was pretty quiet. This is the start of that - and it’ll be ATSIC and Bandcamp exclusive until we send it to streaming in a few weeks for the proper spring time. I still haven’t decided if that will be the first time I send the whole Circles EP to the streaming platforms.. I’m still on the “fuck Spotify” bandwagon, and I’ve been preaching that artists should start to just send our singles to streaming, or maybe send the whole album but pull it down after some set time - make people go to Bandcamp and open their wallets to buy mp3s. Anyways, it’s out now - and there’s another track Jimmy and I did a couple years ago coming soon too!
There’s a bunch of good shit on this mix, I hope you enjoy it and I’ll type more about it if I find some time!
Fly in Formation is back to weekly episodes every Tuesday for 2026 until July, with the interview with Maky Lavender online now! Next up is return guest and most played artist of ATSIC Season 6, Sayzee! That’s Tuesday March 17. You can watch every interview I’ve done up until this point on Youtube - Leave a comment, hit like over, or show some love and run up the playlist on a muted tab - it’ll help the algorithm show this content to more people, which will get more Canadian music in more ears.
Tune in every Tuesday for interviews with artists across the country as I continue to learn more about local scenes and artist’s creative processes, talking to artists we play regularly on ATSIC. Come through, hit subscribe on Twitch to skip the ads, and hang out and listen to Hip Hop.
I buy every track I play on ATSIC (unless it’s sent to me directly). Streaming barely pays, so it’s essential to support indie artists by buying their music, tickets, or merch to keep them creating. Listening to #ATSIC on Mixcloud is free for you, and makes sure that each song you hear pays the artist at least SOMETHING. Spotify pays 0.006 CAD per stream, and that’s only if the song hits 1000 plays in 3 months. Assuming a song gets 1000 spins, that means it takes around 125 Spotify plays to earn an artist the same .76 cents they earn from my 1.29 purchase on iTunes. Spotify is also now investing the billions they earn into weaponized AI drones, which is just awful, frankly. Fuck those guys - I use it because it’s the only realistic way to keep up with all these drops from all these artists, but I never listen to anything more than twice on there - because I go buy a digital single of anything I like that much. You could to, and the music industry would thank you.
Shows like After the Smoke is Clear also need support. If you appreciate discovering new music without the algorithm, or if you appreciate my efforts to get indie artists music in more ears, consider donating via PayPal to help me buy the tracks and keep the show going. Every dollar helps indie artists and ATSIC alike.
If you can’t donate, that’s all good — people who can afford it are paying, and you get to enjoy a free show while I earn a living. Do me a favour though, and help spread the word to other people who love Hip Hop! Shoutout to everyone who is already supporting financially, by sharing the show, or by coming through in comments and chat to help build community.
Stay up.
