Considering the diversity of his work life, Andrew "Lovefingers" Hogge's genre-hopping approach to DJing is no surprise. Songs make surprising connections with ease, and his sets are infused with the same warmth and enthusiasm that is readily apparent in conversation with him. For our 11th release, Andrew presents a mix that feels like we’re listening to records with him in his backyard in LA. We stare at the clouds together and find figures in the shapes. The music is cinematic, intimate, and easy to love.

“These are some of my all time favorite oddballs," Andrew says. "Not too much mixing, an ideal mix for just hanging out. Summertime vibes.”

To complement the day-dreamy feel, a playful assortment of figuratively-shaped clouds fill the sky of the mixtape cover. "Lovefingers" looks perfectly wild set in Marc Rouault's Acid, one of a few display-oriented typefaces under his Doss family umbrella. Balancing out the typography is Josh Finklea's latest sans serif, Octave, a class act in supportive restraint and construction that lets the clouds and Acid take center stage.

It wasn’t that long ago, but before digital algorithms and online radio gave us unending streams of music for any and all lifestyles, blogs mapped out a constellation of digital touchstones for those obsessed with music. Through the mid 2000s, Andrew obsessively posted a song a day from his site, also called Lovefingers. Over time, this coalesced into a years-long playlist that became an archive in its own right and a precursor for his expansive approach to DJing. Andrew has since developed the sort of multi-hyphenate career that touches pretty much every facet of music and design culture. He wears the hats of DJ, producer, label honcho, A&R manager, designer, and creative director, and his career presents the argument that doing so much doesn’t spread one’s creativity too thin; rather, each facet of his work intuitively informs the others, and over time, they’ve become more than the sum of their parts.

Last October, we published our first mix for Sharp FM to celebrate the publication of Josh Finklea's Octave, a sensibly modern sans serif that continues his iterative approach to type design. Taken as a whole, Josh's releases are erudite, yet irreverent, refinements of type classics for contemporary designers that advance legibility for virtually any context. Like its predecessors Centra and Post Grotesk, Octave foregrounds restraint, pragmatism, and utility. Fonts like these are easily overlooked in favor of showier display typefaces, but the iconic album artwork of ECM offers a convincing minimalist dialectic; Manfred Eicher's singular use of Univers—a forebear of Octave—defined an aesthetic that remains influential to this day. Here, the typography feels transparent, not invisible.

That being said, Octave's adaptive qualities quietly shine when paired with something loud. Acid, from Marc Rouault's forthcoming Doss family, takes cues from logos found in a book of Japanese hi-fi and electronic brands. Marc's fascination with the vernacular typography of musical subcultures—hi-fi audio, rave flyers, electronic music hardware—takes literal shape here. Acid enlivens the layout with its echoes of Memphis-era vibrancy, but its application here makes even more sense given its provenance.

TRACKLIST

Hiroshi Sato - High Times
Nuño Canavarro & Carlos Maria Trindade - Blu Terra
Dennis Wilson - Lady
Moscos & Stone - Caught In A Heatwave
James Asher - Umbrellas
The Chequers - Theme I
C. Cordio & F. Vinciguerra - Quips and Cranks
Jean-Luc Ponty - Plastic Idols
Bella Vista - Mr Wong (Instrumental)
Batteaux - High Tide
Kassav' - Soleil
Loukas Thanos - Jazzburger
France Gall - Musique
Ennio Morricone - Come Maddalena (Disco Version)