Pearsall presents Hang Ten

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Mixed in Edinburgh, August 2010
(24:46, 45.5 MB, V0 VBR MP3)

Zip pack (cut into individual tracks)
Big cover
Cue file

Style: Dubstep (a tribute to California’s own Matty G)

Direct link to the mix:
http://sonicrampage.org/mixes/h10/Pearsall-HangTen.mp3

Tracklisting:

01. Matty G – Rockers Remix (War)
02. Matty G – Layin’ In Bed (War)
03. J:Kenzo – Tekno Bass (Matty G Remix) (Soul Shakerz)
04. Matty G – Cold Break Ill (Argon)
05. Matty G – Street Knowledge (Dub Police)
06. Matty G – For The Smokers (Argon)
07. Matty G – Rock Like This (Argon)
08. Matty G – My 808′s (Dub Police)
09. Matty G – Summer Solstice (Argon)
10. Matty G – 50,000 Watts (VIP Mix) (Argon)

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Since my wife and I are off to California this week for a vacation, I thought it would be a nice idea to put together a quick mix to take with me … and of course to share with you!

I’ve not been to California since I was 11, so I’m quite excited about this trip. Since I generally use my own photographs for cover images, you will therefore be unsurprised to find out that the cover picture was not taken in Cali. No, that beach is in … Delaware. Well, you work with what you have, right? And, yeah, puny waves, too, so not really Hang Ten material, either! Oh well, that’s only a minor point, because what’s really important is the music …

Anyways, this mix is my little tribute to my favorite Californian dubstep producer, Santa Cruz’s Matty G. I’ve been a big fan of his for a while now, so I thought it would be a neat idea to pull together a little mix of some of my favourite tracks of his to take with me on our trip. I particularly admire his skill at mixing up dubstep with old skool hip-hop, electro, and reggae flavours, a variety that I’ve tried to showcase here.

I wanted this mix to be short and to the point, so there’s only ten tracks (hence, ‘Hang Ten’, geddit? It’s ok, you can groan now). Having so few tracks means there are some obvious omissions, with the main ones for me being ‘One Step’, which I don’t have, since it’s crazily expensive second-hand, and ‘West Coast Rocks’, which I thought I had, but couldn’t find in my crates. I also left out his tracks that I’ve used on other mixes, so no place for ‘Bitter Love’ and ‘Dominator (Remix)’ (which were on Drop The Hammer 7), or ‘Turf Warz’ (which was on Summer Snapshot). Still, though, these are 10 tracks of concentrated bass bumping goodness.

I don’t know too much about him, beyond what I read on his Twitter feed, so I thought I might excerpt a little bit from an interview he did back in 2008 when he was getting ready to release his (very good) album ‘Take You Back’:

You wear your hip hop influences firmly on your sleeve, and your album, Take You Back, is perhaps the first dubstep album to overtly push this element. What sort feedback have you been getting on the album?

The people who have heard it have been positive about it. I know it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but they respect what I’m doing. I feel that the dubstep community is very open to new ideas, and respects individual’s perspectives on the music. Without this sense of openness, I wouldn’t be here. The album especially would not exist, because as I’ve gained moderate recognition, I have felt that I can do more of my own thing.

The hip hop, funk and the Roland 808 drum machine really slaps you in the face on your album, were you trying to make hip hop with shit loads of bass or was this the kinda thing that came out when you thought about making dubstep?

It’s just the music I make. Before dubstep, I was making bass heavy beats at a variety of tempos. They had a hip-hopish beat, some used breaks, and some had reggae elements to them. Dubstep was the closest thing at the time to what I was making, so I made my tempo consistent, but utilized a lot of the same elements. I’ve always tried to stay true to myself and not make “dubstep” if that makes sense. As the genre is becoming more definable, there is a “dubstep” sound out there. But if people will continue to allow me to be part of the scene, I’d like to help expand the boundaries by creating the unknown, instead of trying to make something that has already been done.

More recently, he did an interview for Scion A/V on YouTube:

It’s definitely worth a look, since it’s an interesting overview of his background, the evolution of his music, and how he got into dubstep. Check it out!

Anyways, I hope you enjoy the mix, I’ve got to go start packing, or my wife will kill me …

A few days ago I mentioned that I will be hosting a number of guest mixes in the coming months. One of them will be by Brisbane’s Tyssen, an old mate, who will be contributing a tribute to Pendragon, one of London’s most legendary hard trance parties. Until then, however, be sure to check out the great tribute to Dynamic Intervention that he posted to Bangingtunes over the weekend. If you were a fan of my hard house tribute mixes, this should be right up your street!

Just a quick note, but I’d like you to know that I’ve got a bunch of very exciting guest mixes planned for the next few months. Watch this space …

Pearsall presents Heartcore

right-click on the title and save as to download

Mixed in Edinburgh, August 2010
(57:20, 104 MB, V0 VBR MP3)

Zip pack (cut into individual tracks)
Big cover
Cue file

Style: Classic, fast European hardtrance from the mid-90′s

Direct link to the mix:
http://sonicrampage.org/mixes/heart/Pearsall-Heartcore.mp3

Tracklisting:

01. Phrenetic System – Wayfarer (Mayday Mix) (Bonzai)
02. DJ Jamo & Jack Knives – Seastar II (Remix) (Dance Ecstasy 2001)
03. Gary D. – Kinetic Pressure (Bonzai)
04. Code 28 – Feel My Desire (Cocooma Remix) (United Ravers)
05. Nexus 6 – Tres Chic (Noom)
06. Slashing Funkids – Imagination (EDM)
07. Code 19 – Es Geht Los (Hard Trance Mix) (United Ravers)
08. Paranoia X – Party Programm (ZYX)
09. Xavi Escolano – D.A.F.Y.K. (DJ’s At Work)
10. Nostrum – Dating Rob (Time Unlimited)
11. Lunatic Asylum – People Want Paradise (Dance Ecstasy 2001)
12. Cortex Thrill – Innerspace (Bonzai)
13. Nitre – Crowd Control (Cenobite)
14. DJ Gollum – The Energy (Trance Mix) (UK44)
15. Mega ‘Lo Mania – Time (No Respect)
16. Fanatic Cracks – I Try To Believe (Fire)
17. DJ Jo – Space Harmony (Gary D. Remix) (No Respect)
18. DJ Tibby – Energy (Cocooma Remix) (Fog Area)
19. Meteor Seven – Circular Riot (Fire)
20. Apple Juice – Raving Together (Signal)
21. Abet – The Sweetest Song (Remix) (Tunnel)
22. Ultimate – Hypnotic Feeling (Spaceflower)

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Do you know that feeling, where you love something so intensely that you are not sure that you can do it justice?

This has been my situation with the music on this mix.

It is hard to put into words what this music means to me, how important these greatest tunes from the golden era of mid-90′s European hardtrance actually are. This strength of feeling is probably why I have ummed and ahhed over doing this mix for such a long time now – I have always wanted to do it right, and I wasn’t sure quite how to do this music justice.

This isn’t to say that these tunes are what I listen to the most – not at all (in case you are wondering, I listen to dubstep more than any other type of music). In fact, I don’t listen to this kind of music that often these days, really.

So what do I mean when I say that it is so precious to me?

How important can it really be if I don’t listen to it that often?

Well, it clearly has a pretty special place in my heart, because every time I get drunk I end up staggering to the decks, putting the headphones on, and pulling these tunes out for a good bounce around the spare room!

More seriously, I guess a lot of this passion comes from nostalgia. It’s hard for me to separate this music from my memories, since I first got into this music back in the mid-90′s, when I was only a teenager.

At the time, I was really into drum n’ bass (and I’ve written elsewhere about my teenage love for that music), but my friends were really into psy-trance (or Goa trance as it was then known), so trance was a big part of my weekend soundtrack. Anyways, I used to buy dnb mixtapes from a guy who had a little stall on Camden High Street, but one day, on a whim, I picked up an M-Zone tape from him. I’ve got a good memory, but even so, this was a long time ago, so I don’t really remember why – maybe it came from reading a review of an M-Zone set or something, maybe I was curious, or maybe it was even something prosaic like getting it as part of a three tapes for a tenner deal. In any case, despite not being that into trance, I decided to get this tape.

What. A. Revelation.

I had never heard trance like it.

It was faster and bouncier than the Goa trance my friends listened to, and it had better melodies. It sounded like it had been beamed straight from the future.

I hammered that tape to the point where it sounded like it had been recorded underwater, and I did the same with all of the subsequent M-Zone tapes that I picked up from tapepacks put out by the likes of Dreamscape, Helter Skelter, and Slammin Vinyl.

Looking back, sometimes the mixing could leave a little (or even occasionally a lot) to be desired, but my God THE TUNES HE PLAYED. Words don’t even begin to describe them. Monster, then monster, then monster, relentlessly. Above all, what set M-Zone apart from other dj’s was his genius for programming his mixes. He had an uncanny ability to only play the best bits of tunes and skip the junk.

For example, take this tune, ‘Airwalk’ by Genlog. Until I bought this tune for myself, I had no idea that the tune changed so radically for the worse after the first two minutes, since that was the only section that M-Zone ever played (or at least that I ever heard him play). A bouncing bassline, flying melodies, and twinkling pianos – the first two minutes are truly beautiful stuff. And then, frankly, it goes a bit shabby, so kudos to M-Zone for always getting out of the tune before it went pear-shaped.

If there are any teens reading this page, you will probably be baffled to find that not much more than ten years ago it was difficult to find out much about music through the web, especially an underground scene like this kind of hardtrance was in the UK. Times were different! I had no idea what these tunes were called, who made them, what labels they came out on, or where I could pick them up (and I really wish I had known at the time, given the incredible prices some of these tunes now fetch second-hand!). Even worse, I had no real idea in those dark, pre-Google days where I could go to actually find that information.

And it wasn’t as if I had the chance to dance to M-Zone either. The trance nights I went to in London with my friends (Escape From Samsara, Pendragon, Techtonic, Trancentral, etc) never played this stuff, or at least not much, and so my only link to it was through tapes from big hardcore raves. It was tough enough going out to clubs back then – we had one friend with a mother who was tolerant enough to cover for us going out raving, but even she would have balked at sanctioning us to travel half-way across England to hit a big rave at somewhere like Shepton Mallet or the Sanctuary in Milton Keynes!

So my nostalgia for this music is more private than my nostalgia for some other forms of 90′s dance music – it’s not linked to nostalgia for the scrum over new white labels in the basement of Blackmarket Records, or wild-eyed stomping to pounding acid in East London warehouses, but to walking to and from school, Walkman on, cigarette at my lips, pulsating melodies filling my ears.

In the years since then I have come to learn the names of all those thrilling tunes, as well as who made them, and what labels they appeared on. It’s been a painstaking process, and I am still discovering exciting tunes from that era, but by know I think that I have a pretty good sense of mid-90′s European hardtrance, at least musically. What I still don’t know, however, is much of anything about the scene that birthed it – I know vaguely that a lot of these tunes were popular at northern English raves like Distruxshon and North, but for the most part this music exists in a void for me. I can put, say, acid techno or jungle or grime or a bunch of other electronic music sub-genres into a cultural context, but with this stuff, I have absolutely no idea about what the hardtrance scene in Europe was like in the mid-90′s when all of these amazing tunes were being made.

I mean, I know next to nothing about the key clubs and raves (beyond Mayday, the Tunnel in Hamburg, and, of course the original Love Parade in Berlin), I don’t know anything about what clothes people wore, what magazines or radio shows supported the scene, who the main dj’s were, what kind of people listened to the music, how the scene developed, or why the music slowed down so radically in the late 90′s. Basically, I have no knowledge about the context of hardtrance in that era in Germany, Holland, and Belgium, and I’ve never found any reliable information about it.

In fact, as a scene it seems to have slipped through the cracks of social history, because despite being clearly massive at one point, there seems to be hardly any information available on it in English. As an example, if you google, say, “germany hardtrance rave scene 90′s”, the information you get back is worthless; nothing to help fill in the blanks. I’m not sure why this is – maybe because it’s not considered a ‘cool’ music, and therefore worthy of subcultural scrutiny? Maybe it’s just that it was so minor in the UK that no one has ever paid much attention to it, and there could be a lot of information available in German about this scene that’s never been translated into English. I just don’t know! In any case, if you know of anywhere I could find out more, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave some info in the comments.

As I said in the beginning of this post, I’ve put off doing this mix for years because I wanted to make sure I would get it right, that I could do this music justice. A big part of that process has been building the collection until I felt the moment was right to plunge and get it done … of course, that moment would probably have been put off indefinitely if Heartcore hadn’t won the the poll I conducted recently to decide my new mix. Sometimes it’s good for other people to give you the push you need to actually get up and do something!

So, once it was clear that this would be the next mix to do, I started to think about what would go on it, and how I would construct it. Clearly, there was no need to mess around – a mix like this would have to get straight to the point, so I decided to start with the Mayday mix of ‘Wayfarer’, with its thundering kickdrum and firing synths. At the other end, I wanted to finish with the hyperspeed euphoria of ‘Hypnotic Feeling’ by Ultimate, so all that remained to do was plot a course between these two tracks that would maintain energy and excitement over the whole mix whilst still varying the vibe over the course of the mix.

Easier said than done!

I’ve written at length elsewhere about how I program mixes, but, when it came to doing this mix I decided that I wouldn’t mess with the basic formula of working from slower to faster (in this case from about 165 bpm to just shy of 180 bpm), whilst still trying to take in several different feelings along the way, from fluffy melodies to dark twisted acid to bouncing rave mayhem to full-power euphoric madness. To get the mix of tunes right, I began by pulling out a stack of about 60 tunes, which I then slowly whittled down until I had a selection of tunes that I felt would create the right sonic narrative between ‘Wayfare’ and ‘Hypnotic Feeling’.

The next step was to figure out how to actually mix them together. This music can be quite tricky to mix sometimes, due to the strange ways that the producers would structure some of these tracks (in this sense, it’s much easier to mix dubstep, where the tracks are structured in very similar ways). Anyways, this tendency to add in weird little fills has the annoying effect of throwing off the sequencing of the mix, so I spent a fair amount of time experimenting with different tracks, seeing which ones worked well together, as well as working out the optimal way to mix between them – where to release the record, where to start bringing it in, where to switch the basslines, and then where to take the old record out of the mix. This process helps to reveal which tunes don’t work together (or even can’t really be mixed very easily at all), as well as which mixes require special care.

To take an example, let’s look at the mix I did from ‘Imagination’ to ‘Es Geht Los’. This is a very good example, because I had to practice this mix a number of times in order to get it right. The first difficulty I had with this particular mix is that ‘Es Geht Los’ has a long beatless intro. This is tricky for me because my particular style of mixing makes it difficult to mix long beatless sections accurately.

One of the things that I have taught myself to do when I am mixing is ‘ghosting’ the pitch control, i.e. adjusting the speed of the record after I drop it into the mix. Most dj’s do their fine-tuning of the pitch before they actually drop it in, but at that stage I am usually more focused on making sure the levels of the new record match the old one and getting the placement of the mix right than I am on making sure that the pitch control is in the absolutely correct place. I have a good memory so I can always remember roughly how fast a record needs to be playing, but once I drop it I then tend to make all of the necessary adjustments as I bring it in. Mixing this way allows me to get new tracks quickly into the mix, but the downside is that it requires a lot of supervision to make sure the tracks don’t drift out of time.

The issue with using this method of mixing to mix long beatless intros is that it is much harder for me to gauge the extent to which the mix is drifting out of time than when I am mixing actual beats (where it’s quite easy to tell that the tracks are slipping out of sync), so I tend to do fewer micro-adjustments to the pitch control. Sometimes this doesn’t matter, but in some cases this lack of fine-tuning can lead to a horrible mess when the beat finally kicks in. So, to avoid this risk, I usually skip a beatless intro and go straight to where the beat kicks in, which was my approach to mixing into ‘Es Geht Los’. I initially tried dropping the first beat right at the point where ‘Imagination’ kicked back in after the snare roll, yet for some reason it always sounded weird and out of sync – the beats were in time, yet as new elements of each track appeared they weren’t dropping in time with each other.

So, scratching my head, I tried dropping ‘Es Geht Los’ on the first new beat of ‘Imagination’ and then speeding it up with my finger to re-sync it.

That still didn’t work.

Eventually I realized that the first beat of ‘Es Geht Los’ was a false start, and that actually I had to mix it from the second beat … as I said, these old German producers had a habit of structuring their tracks in weird ways! Having figured that one out, the mix still didn’t quite work like I wanted, since the main melody of ‘Es Geht Los’ was coming in too soon for my taste, so I decided that the best way to mix into it would be to drop it a bit later (on the second beat, of course), right where the hi-hat on ‘Imagination’ comes back in. As you can hear from the actual mix itself, this works nicely because the new elements of each track are introduced in harmony, and the new melody from ‘Es Geht Los’ drops into the mix at the right moment for me to switch the basslines over.

As you can see, sometimes these things require a lot of thought!

To finish off this long (and somewhat rambling) essay, I’d just like to thank everyone who voted for this mix, since it’s been great fun making it, and I’ve loved listening back to the end result. Without being too gushy, what’s been particularly good about this project has been the fact that going through the tracks, and then writing this essay, has allowed me a chance to really look back at my teenage years. This has been a very timely project, since I was just down in London this weekend clearing out my old bedroom as, after 17 years there, my parents have sold the family home. Combined with the fact that I am turning 30 soon, it’s clearly the end of one era in my life, so it’s been good to have the opportunity to go back to a much earlier part of my life.

Of course, the fact that this music totally fucking rocks helps too!

I love acid trance.

It’s great.

Really, I love it. A lot. And since I love it, I want you to love it.

Yes, you! You must learn to love acid trance! Or, well, your life won’t be complete (I promise).

But if you don’t know it, how can you love it?

Well, firstly, you can check out some of my own fine mixes:

Called To Valhalla
Eurotrash 3
Rampage Archives 1
Squat Rocking 1

They’re great! Honest …

Still not convinced?

Not to worry, I have a solution!

I’ll just give you some of my favourite acid trance mixes by other people, because, well, I live to give.

All of these mixes were available commercially a loooong time ago, and are no longer in print, so I don’t think there should be any problem putting them up; however, if you are the copyright holder and/or the artist and would like them removed, just drop an email to pearsall@gmail.com and I will take them off. No need to sue!

For your enjoyment, I’ve put each of these up as zip files.

First up, I’ve got an awesome back-to-back mix from Billy ‘Daniel’ Bunter and Ramos. This mix was the second cd on Helter Skelter’s 1997 compilation Masters @ Work, and it features some of the choicest acid-infused trancecore ever made. Hard-hitting but undeniably great stuff.

Download link:
http://sonicrampage.org/random/HSM@W-Bunter&Ramos.zip

Tracklisting:

01 Miss Nic & DJ Swoon – Desert Storm
02 Tripswitch – Tic Tac
03 Trance Masters – Acid Sunshine (Exclusive Mix)
04 Miss Nic & DJ Swoon – Voices
05 Mr. Hyde & UFO – Organ Power
06 Ramos, Supreme & Sunset Regime – Harmonizer (Bang The Future Remix)
07 DJ Fury – Desensitize
08 Bang The Future – Body Slam (Bang The Future Exclusive Mix)
09 Citadel Of Kaos – Aux 5
10 Billy Bunter, Rob Vanden & D Zyne – Better Day (Trance Mix)
11 Ramos, UFO & Bunter – The Theme
12 Eruption – Let The Music (Bang The Future Remix)
13 DJ Slam – The Future
14 Teknodred & Dave Jay – More Understanding
15 Stu J. & UFO – Resin 8 (Exclusive Mix)
16 Teknodred Alliance – Zonked
17 Helix – Fresh Air Of Liberty & Union
18 Ramos, Supreme & UFO – Terminator (Exclusive Mix)

Next up is a solo mix by Ramos, originally released in 1998 as part of the Off Yer Nut compilation. The other two cd’s were pathologically cheesy happy hardcore, but Ramos’ mix was the real deal. Threading the line beautifully between acid trance and acid techno, it’s a magical ride. One of my favourite acid mixes over the years … and I hope it will be one of yours, too!

Download link:
http://sonicrampage.org/random/DJRamos-OffYerNutVol1.zip

Tracklisting:

3.01 Interphaze – Velocity Control
3.02 Jack Shit – Ice K
3.03 Smoke System – Smog
3.04 Rozzer’s Dog – Rozzer’s Dog
3.05 Punk Floyd – Top Banana
3.06 2 Waveform – White Dwarfs
3.07 Dave The Drummer – Freedom Fighter
3.08 Ramos & UFO – Dreamesque (Special Tekno Mix)
3.09 Colone – Overview
3.10 Molecular – Slaker
3.11 DDR & The Geezer – Mad Cows On Acid (Rozzer’s Dog Rmx)
3.12 Ramos , Supreme & UFO – Judgement Day
3.13 DJ Reche – KWM (Don’t Work)
3.14 DJ Fury – Comin Up For Air
3.15 Helix & Fury – Sanctus Dominus
3.16 Ramos & UFO – 1 2 1
3.17 DJ Ostro & DJ Radray – Download
3.18 Seducer – Emotions

Finally, here’s Frankie Bones’ awesome 1996 mix for United DJ’s of America. Brooklyn’s own Frankie Bones is one of the original American rave heroes, and, although he is usually better known as a house/techno dj, with this mix he showed he could hang with the hardest out there. It takes a little while to get going compared to the other two, but by the end it is full-power filthy acid.

Hard … dark … beautiful.

Download link:
http://sonicrampage.org/random/FrankieBones-UnitedDJsofAmericaVol6.zip

Tracklisting:

01 Toja – Put Your House In Order
02 Woodpeckers – Dark Clouds
03 Skool Phunk – Deep Line
04 MikeroBenics – Replika
05 Mandala – Evolution Theme (Commander Tom Club Dub)
06 Microwave Prince – Solar Eclipse
07 S & H – Salva Mea
08 Albion – This Is For
09 Commander Tom – Energy
10 Lectric Cargo – Active Sensing
11 Tesox – Braindead II (DJ Skull Remix)
12 Kores – Oxbow
13 Overcharge feat. G-Meter – Minds Are Changin’
14 DJ Push To Flush – Then You’ll Be It
15 Caterpillar – Give Me Your Hand

Enjoy!

There are loads of ways to connect with me across the net, so I thought it might be useful to round them up into one post.

First up, I should mention my other blog, which is called Randall Helms DOT com and is about social media marketing. At the moment, I am finishing up an MBA at the University of Edinburgh Business School, and the last stage of this process is writing a dissertation. I am looking at how consumer goods (or FMCG) brands can best use social media to engage with customers (particularly their core customers). As part of this process I have been doing a blog (somewhat intermittently) for the last couple of months where I have been discussing the issues raised in my research. If you are at all interested in the subject, it’s worth having a look.

Secondly, for the last few months I have been on Twitter using the alias @sonicrampage. Mostly I use it to post links to music-related stuff, whether mixes, tracks, or interviews, but I also talk a bit about other stuff. If you are interested, please follow me!

On Facebook there are two ways to connect, firstly through my group Pearsall’s Mixes, which now has more than 140 members. More recently I’ve added a second option, which is to become my fan. I use Facebook mainly for sending out updates about new mixes; occasionally I might use it for other purposes, but don’t worry, if you sign up to either, I won’t bombard you with spam!

Finally, in the last two weeks I have set up an account at Mixcloud, which is an online streaming music service. I’ve only uploaded a couple of mixes so far, but as you can see from the number of plays I’ve gotten, it’s not exactly been a success so far! Anyways, it’s always worth trying these things, and if I want to make it work I’ll need to rethink my strategy.

I guess a better avenue of self-promotion would probably be YouTube, but since I know nothing about making video, that’s not a path that I’ve actively pursued. Having said that, if you are experienced with making video and want to collaborate on a project for YouTube, drop a comment below and I’ll be in touch, since I’m curious to see what impact (if any) it would have on the site.

So there you go, lots of ways to connect with me across the web!

So, finally, voting for my next mix has finished, and the 81 votes break down as follows:

01. Heartcore (Old Skool Hardtrance) – 19 votes, 23% my next mix
02. Cold World (Techstep Drum n’ Bass) – 14 votes, 17%
03. Squat Rocking 5 (Acid Techno) – 11 votes, 14%
04. Beyond the Valley of the Acid Vixens (Acid) – 10 votes, 12%
05. There Must be a Future (UK Acid Trance) – 10 votes, 12%
06. Urban Takedown (Jump-Up Jungle) – 10 votes, 12%
07. Drop the Hammer 8 (Grime) – 6 votes, 7%
08. Now You’re Cool (House & UK Funky) – 1 vote, 1% which came from me, lol

These are very interesting results, actually, which have a lot to say about who actually comes to this site and downloads my mixes. I’m going to chew over these for a few days and then post some longer reflections on this little experiment, but for the moment, I have to say that this has been quite eye-opening in terms of illustrating what people actually want from me (which is not necessarily what I feel like providing!)

Below the jump, check out the widget from Sodahead (the site I used to run the poll):

Pearsall presents Summer Snapshot

right-click on the title and save as to download

Mixed in Edinburgh, July 2010
(51:06, 88.98 MB, V0 VBR MP3)

Zip pack (cut into individual tracks)
Big cover
Cue file

Style: Dubstep

Direct link to the mix:
http://sonicrampage.org/mixes/ss/Pearsall-SummerSnapshot.mp3

Tracklisting:

01. Portishead – Strangers (Vaccine Remix) (White)
02. Breakage – Rain (Digital Soundboy)
03. Kromestar – Late (Southside Recordings)
04. Babylon System – Everyday Hustle (10 Bag)
05. Matty G – Turf Warz (Dup Police)
06. Cotti – Run Tings (Soul Jazz)
07. Skream – Rimz (Tempa)
08. Emalkay – A.G.S. (Dub Police)
09. Silkie – Sky’s The Limit (Deep Medi Musik)
10. RSD – Green Hill (Punch Drunk)
11. Goldie – Inner City Life (SBTRKT Remix) (White)
12. DJ Hatcha – Dark Claps (Special Branch)
13. Skream – Minimalistix (NonPlus)
14. Martyn – All I Have Is Memories (Apple Pips)
15. TRG – Surreal (5AM) (Tempa)
16. Synkro – Inhale (Smokin Sessions)
17. Cosmin TRG – Strobe Lick (Tempa)
18. Zomby – Digital Flauna (Brainmath)
19. Digital Mystikz – Eyez (DMZ)
20. Silkie – Cat’s Eyes (Deep Medi Musik)
21. Von D – Berlin Call (Argon)
22. Sully – Bless (Urban Grafitti)

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Cover: Me in the gardens of the Villa Gamberaia, Settignano, Italy, April 2010

Ever since my set at last August’s Hackney Wick fleamarket I’ve been thinking of doing a mix of some of my favourite tunes from the deeper end of dubstep, yet the moment has never seemed quite right until now, as I wait for voting on my next mix to finish. Over time, the concept of this mix has evolved, from an upfront selection of deeper tunes to a crate-digging exercise (like Drop The Hammer 7), to the version you see before you, which is a mix of old and new that takes in flavours from hip-hop, reggae, house, techno, jungle, and 2-step garage along the way. It’s not really a pure ‘deep’ mix like, say, Appleblim’s Dubstep Allstars 6, but more an exploration of the points where dubstep meets up with other forms of dance music.

Unlike some of my other mixes, I don’t really have that much to say about this one; it kind of speaks for itself. Conceptually, it’s designed to be a summer mix, so a bit lighter and less aggressive than Wobble City 2 and less gloomy than Drop The Hammer 7; but since I live in Scotland, to be true to the Scottish summer experience means making sure that it’s not pure sunshine tunes all the way through.

Since I don’t actually have that much to say about this mix, allow me to indulge myself in one of my other hobbies, which is photography. I’ve been interested in photography since High School, and, although I’m certainly no more than an enthusiastic amateur, it is something that I have always enjoyed doing. I use a little small Canon SD870, which works well enough for my purposes, since it offers good colours, a nice picture quality, and it fits easily into a pocket. Sure, it doesn’t have the same kind of focus that you get with a massive Nikon SLR, but I’ve always been a firm believer that how you frame an image is more important to the aesthetic quality of a photograph image than having a camera with the highest technical specifications.

Having now figured out how to put a gallery in a post (see Rampage Audio 2 for the first example), I thought that it might be fitting to go back through my last several years’ worth of photos to find some of my favourite sunshine shots (well, and one shot from dusk). Most of these were taken on my travels, but there are a few from London and Edinburgh, as well. I hope you enjoy them!

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Pearsall presents Rampage Audio 2

right-click on the title and save as to download

Mixed in Edinburgh, February 2002
(73:46, 117.22 MB, V0 VBR MP3)

Zip pack (cut into individual tracks)
Big cover
Cue file

Style: techno, hard house, and hard trance

Direct link to the mix:
http://www.sonicrampage.org/mixes/Audio/Pearsall-RampageAudio2.mp3

Tracklisting:

01. Incestuous Brothers – Rave On (Omnicartel)
02. Immersion – Nose Tikkla (Routemaster)
03. Slut Peddlers – The Gimp (Punish)
04. D.A.V.E. The Drummer & Syber Simon – Hydraulix 4 (Side B) (Hydraulix)
05. Legend B – Journey (Jay Frog Dub) (3 Lanka)
06. Synaps – What Have I Seen (Heavyweight Recordings)
07. Kay D. Smith – Tongeflüster (Construct Rhythm)
08. Umek – Taxil (Consumer Recreation)
09. Artefact – Are You Jackin? (Artefact)
10. Choci & Geezer – It’s Beyond Control (Hennes & Cold Remix) (Sectioned)
11. Jon Doe – Warehouse (Honey Pot Hard)
12. Steve Blake – Venom (Fevah Trance)
13. Safe n’ Sound – Lost Souls (Toast)
14. Daniel Ro & Pepi – Remedy (Peroxide)
15. Paul Clarke & M. Ramone – Get In Funky (Frantic)
16. Jon Doe & Flatfoot Sam – Cadmium (One Off)
17. Commander Tom – Are Am Eye (Noom)

Cover: Self-portrait, Italy, April 2010

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Anyone who has been following my mixes for a while will know that many of my older mix series have Rampage in the title … Rampage Audio, Rampage Turbo, Rampage Archives, and Rampage Teknikal.

What’s so significant about the word Rampage that I have used it over and over again, even through to today and the name of this website?

Well, Rampage was the name of the club promotion that I ran with two guys, my flatmate Rob and dj Phil Zero, from February 2001 to February 2002 at two Edinburgh clubs, the Wee Red Bar and The Venue. The idea came to us when Apex finished back in 2000 and it seemed clear that the Edinburgh underground dance scene was headed firmly in the direction of straightforward hard techno. For Rob and I, it seemed obvious that there needed to be at least something to cater for people who were into acid techno, nu-nrg, and fiery hard trance, and if no one else was going to do it, it had to be us!

Having made our decision, we reached out to Phil Zero, since we were friends with him and had always been big fans of his hard and euphoric Apex sets. Phil was game, and, with the help of our friends Gareth (on web design) and Ross aka Eyejack (on flyer/poster design), we started the process of getting Rampage off the ground. Within a few months we had secured a monthly Friday night slot starting February 2001 at the Edinburgh College of Art’s Wee Red Bar, and we were ready to go …

It’s funny looking back, because we were so young and so wildly ignorant about running a business. After all, Rob and I were only 20, and Phil was only a couple years older than us! We knew nothing about marketing, nothing about finance, nothing about negotiating, and had to learn it all as we went along. And we certainly learned some painful lessons along the way, because some of the nights were total, absolute disasters. There’s nothing worse than getting to 1 am and realizing that the sparsely populated dancefloor is as good as the night is going to get … what a nightmare it is when no one shows up!

Sometimes the fault was elsewhere, such as having parties right in the middle of exam season, but on other occasions the problem, to be frank, was with us. We hadn’t really bothered to ask whether there was enough of a core audience for our night, or where we could find them … we just wanted to put on the kind of party that we would be into going to. Our other problem was that none of us had that larger-than-life magnetic personality that successful club promoters so often have. We were all pretty reticent, quiet guys, and so were not really suited to the heavy selling necessary to get people through the door.

I shouldn’t over-emphasize the bad, though, because only about one third of the parties were failures, with the other two-thirds ranging from pretty good to absolutely fantastic. The best nights were just awesome, with the whole club smiling and bouncing away to pounding high-energy beats.

Despite (or maybe because of) the fact that we had no idea what we were doing, I do look back on that time with a lot of fondness. Some of it was horrible, like standing around in the freezing cold handing flyers to utterly disinterested munters or that skin-crawling feeling when no one showed up, but for the most part it was a hell of a lot of fun. We made a lot of friends along the way, including some life-long ones, such as DJ Skelp from Aberdeen, who we got along so well with that we made him resident. We had many brilliant parties, with some great guests (such as K90, Medicine Man, Orange Peel, DJ Kultcha, and Mark Tyler, amongst others), which was a lot of fun. On a personal level, K90 was probably the best of the bunch, since he and his mate showed up a day early and we ended up taking them out on the town for a truly memorable piss-up! The best nights of the club were just epic; there’s nothing like seeing a full room of people bouncing and smiling and knowing that you’re the one responsible for the party. We also had some fantastic afterparties, that I remember fondly (if hazily).

Sadly, we were given the boot at The Venue when new management came in and got rid of all of the hard dance nights due to the fact that, for reasons I couldn’t possibly speculate on, our punters didn’t seem to buy much booze. Who could imagine why that was? Putting on a club promotion is hard work, so we decided to go out with a bang and finish it after our first birthday. Fortunately for us, the first birthday party was a real high note, packed and absolutely crazy … we even made a big profit on it! Everyone played absolutely firing sets, and Phil and I finished off with a madly pounding back-to-back set, full-power high BPM acid carnage before the lights came on and we got a round of “Happy Birthday” from the punters. Phew!

As part of the celebrations for the night I did this mix to hand out to the first 50 people through the door. Even now I consider it to be pretty much the perfect encapsulation of the Rampage ethos, running from techno through European hard trance to acid to UK hard trance before finishing with pure, unadulterated nu-nrg mayhem. Pure magic.

Update: Here’s a nice quote from Facebook (Cheers Malcolm!)

Quality! I have some fond memories of Rampage. Some excellent old photos in there: Ally, Carol, DD and a skinny short haired Tim! Nice to read the full history, you don’t get nights like that anymore. Its all bassline dubstep fidget grumble grumble, these kids wouldn’t recognise euphoria if it came up and smacked them on the head.

Our flyers:

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Some pics from the party:

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I’ve now added zip packs for each edition of my Rampage Teknikal series of techno mixes. Enjoy!

Rampage Teknikal 1
Rampage Teknikal 2
Rampage Teknikal 3
Rampage Teknikal 4
Rampage Teknikal 5
Rampage Teknikal 6

I’m slowly adding zip packs for all of the mixes, but if there are any mixes in particular that you would like to see me add, please let me know in the comments and I will get it online.