Secret Thirteen / Open discoveries

New Blood

A place for unheard perspectives. The Guide, later New Blood, opened the journal to record collectors, sound artists and selectors with a story of their own.

Explore the competition archive
5Completed editions
24Released mixes
2013—2019The Guide → New Blood

Discovery, not a formula.

The series began with a call in October 2012. The first winners appeared in March 2013 under The Guide, with their own numbering and space to explain the ideas behind each mix. The second edition asked participants to listen to the city: its underground, cultural collisions, ghosts and possible futures.

From the 2015 invitation onward, the winning mixes joined the regular STM series. New Blood developed from an open search for unusual collections into themed musical research — the 1990s in 2017, then altered states in the edition announced in 2018 and released in 2019.

Five editions, twenty-four winning mixes: this archive brings the original invitations, selections and the ideas behind them together. Explore each edition to meet its selectors and hear their mixes. Registration is currently closed.

The editions

20135 winning mixes

The Guide

An open musical philosophy

Announced in October 2012, the first competition invited collectors to present their musical philosophy without stylistic limits. Five winning mixes were released in March 2013 as Guide 001–005, each with an interview. The invitation initially mentioned four places; the final series contains five.

Invitation and winners
Archival photograph of Alan Dunn, by Leila Romaya.
Guide 001

Alan Dunn

Alan Dunn layers 55 works around silence, water, revolution, grey, catastrophe, background and numbers: a one-hour soundtrack intended for listening in motion.

20145 winning mixes

The Guide 2

Metropolitan cities

The second call opened in October 2013 around four views of the metropolis: underground spaces, cultural collisions, urban ghosts and utopia or dystopia. Guide 006–009 appeared in March 2014. Polyester’s Guide 010, included in the official 2014 winner playlist, followed in December 2015.

Invitation and winners
Andrei Tanasescu — photograph
Guide 007

Andrei Tanasescu

Andrei Tanasescu traces a journey between Bucharest and Toronto through Romanian experimental music, binaural field recordings and the fragile recollections of The Caretaker.

20164 winning mixes

New Blood

Kaleidoscopic discoveries

The November 2015 call carried the series into the regular Secret Thirteen Mix roster. Rather than setting a genre, it asked for obscure, rare and inspiring discoveries. Four winning mixes appeared in March 2016 as STM 176–179, one more than the three places announced in the invitation.

Invitation and winners
MusicforEggplant and friends in the original 2016 artwork.
STM 176

MusicforEggplant

MusicforEggplant condense a year of research into Dante’s Inferno into HELLGGPLAN, a dense hour of cut-ups, samples and their own recordings.

20174 winning mixes

New Blood / The 1990s

Rediscovering the 1990s

The fourth edition turned the competition into musical research. Participants chose one of four directions and built a tracklist with at least 70% music from the 1990s. Four mixes — STM 229–232 — were published between September and October 2017, against the invitation’s initial plan for six to eight.

Invitation and winners
Erin Arthur — archival artist photograph.
STM 229

Erin Arthur

Erin Arthur connects the strange textures and rhythmic possibilities of 1990s electronics, moving through IDM, dub, noise and intimate melodic discoveries with an expansive personal selection.

20196 winning mixes

New Blood / Altered states

Drugs as a sonic mood

Announced in November 2018, the fifth competition asked selectors to choose a drug as a mood and build a musical journey around it. Six winning mixes were released in March and April 2019 as STM 283–288. The original call proposed five places and an earlier February–March release window. This is the last completed edition.

Invitation and winners
Shattered Knives — archival photograph with AI-assisted cleanup of the left-edge graphic.
STM 283

Shattered Knives

Shattered Knives translate the dissociative mood of ketamine into 48 tracks of warped electronics, industrial rhythms and unsettling sound experiments.

The next chapter

Keep a place for the unexpected.

There is no open call at the moment. Future announcements will appear here, separately from the historical invitations.

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