During the 2010s, Peggy Gou quickly became one of underground dance music's brightest stars due to her driving, energetic DJ sets as well as sublimely crafted tracks like "It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)" which felt like instant classics. In 2019, she achieved a career goal when she mixed a volume of !K7's lauded DJ-Kicks series. As with many of the releases in the series, Gou's is more of an eclectic blend of major personal influences, deep-crate rarities, and uncategorizable curiosities than an attempt to replicate the DJ's typical club set. There's no set tempo or genre restrictions, just a willingness to explore and uncover some overlooked gems. Perhaps most revealing is the inclusion of the first track Gou ever wrote, a low-slung house number called "Hungboo," which is filled with birdsong, plucked koto, and her own hushed vocals as well as the sampled shouts of what one assumes is a martial artist. From there, the mix spins off in all sorts of directions. There's proggy electro-jazz from the early 1980s, then it moves into a lesser-known Andrew Weatherall remix from 1990 that's filled with unabashed positivity. This kicks off the most danceable portion of the mix, which glides through thumpy minimal house, leftfield electro, and vintage breakbeat house from Shades of Rhythm. Then it suddenly switches to an early dubstep gem from Kode9, followed by a bubbly, wave-crashing electro oddity from obscure early-'80s act the System. The mix's final selections include a blinding Aphex Twin cut from the still under-acknowledged Drukqs, a pair of Detroit techno goodies from Derrick May and Carl Craig, and a pulsating live jam by I:Cube that was recorded to cassette in 1993 and begins with a strange sci-fi snippet about sending fertilized human eggs to another planet for the purpose of colonization. Gou's DJ-Kicks set, as with some of the series' most interesting volumes, feels like a music-obsessed friend enthusiastically sharing all of her favorite tracks with you, and the results are always charming and exciting. ~ Paul Simpson, Rovi

1		Fluresence
2		Hungboo (DJ-Kicks)
3		Earwig
4		Perseguido Por el Rayo
5		The World According to Sly and Lovechild [Andrew Weatherall Soul of Europe
6		Rytm804
7		Pert
8		Flemmenup
9		EPR Phenomena
10		3
11		Exorcist
12		Magnetic City
13		Vampirella
14		Kundu
15		Vordhosbn
16		Illusion [Mayday Remix]
17		Crackdown
18		Epirus
19		Cassette Jam 1993