Pearsall presents Behind The Mask

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Mixed on two Technics 1210′s and a Pioneer DJM-600 in London, April 2012
(51:05, 120 MB, 320 KBPS MP3)

Zip pack (cut into individual tracks)
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Cue file

Style: Dubstep

Direct link to the mix:
http://sonicrampage.org/mixes/btm/Pearsall-BehindTheMask.mp3

Tracklisting:

01. Digital Mystikz – Pop Pop Epic (DMZ)
02. L-Wiz – Centurion (Dub Police)
03. J:Kenzo – Mortal Kombat (Argon)
04. Sizzla – I Got Too (Virus Syndicate Mix) (Contagious)
05. Fused Forces – Calm Chaos (Substance Abuse)
06. Matty G – The 808 Bass (Argon)
07. DJ Kudos – Bring The Lights Down (Caspa Remix) (Sound Proof)
08. Mr E – Human (Dancing Demons)
09. Headhunter – 3 Mad P’s (Tempa)
10. Distance – Skeleton Grip (Planet Mu)
11. Kryptic Minds – Code 46 (Disfigured Dubz)
12. Omen – Rebellion (Tectonic)
13. MRK1 – Daywalker (Planet Mu)
14. Sarantis – Meditate (Black Acre Special Branch)
15. Skream – Merky (Southside Dubstars)
16. Silkie – Hooby (Deep Medi Musik)
17. Skream – Rollin’ Kicks (Tempa)
18. Martyn – Hear Me (3024)
19. Von D – Echolow (Black Acre)
20. Cyrus – Gutter (Tectonic)
21. Synkro – Wasting Time (Synkro)
22. Goth-Trad – S.A.T.U.R.N. (Deep Medi Musik)
23. Zomby – Test Me For A Reason (Hyperdub)

Enjoy this mix? Leave a comment!

Stream or download from Soundcloud …

Cover: Neues Museum, Berlin, January 2012

(L) Looking east to The Shard from the 243 bus as it crosses Waterloo Bridge (R) Parsons Green as viewed from the District Line on a rainy day

Sometimes you need a change of pace, and after banging together four freeform hardcore mixes in just over six months, I really felt like doing something different. So, what better way to switch things up from jaw-clenching fist-pumping hardcore mayhem than some deep, moody dubstep?

(That’s a rhetorical question … obviously there is no better way to switch things up. Duh.)

Hence this mix: a bold journey into the depths of my record shelves for some of the choicest dubstep sounds, both anthemic and obscure. Before I go on, I might as well admit that these tunes are by no means up-to-date; the most recent tracks featured were released in 2010 (fatherhood has meant massive cutbacks in terms of me buying new vinyl)! Therefore, as an unashamed crate-digging selection, I suppose this mix fits in with my Drop The Hammer series of mixes, but I’m a bit bored of that title, so I went for Behind The Mask, which, in all honesty, doesn’t have any real significance beyond me liking the cover picture (which I took at the Neues Museum in Berlin when I was there in January), and the fact that it has a certain mysterious vibe, which I like.

Conceptually, well, there is no concept – I wanted to do a dungeon-style mix of my own, in the same vein as most of the dubstep mixes I’ve been listening to for the last year (like Widowmaker’s Winter Mix, which was featured here a few months back), so, per the process described in my diary of a mix I took out a big stack of records and then whittled them down to a svelte 23 tracks, which I then hacked together in just over 50 minutes. Tunes wise, the mix is deep, dark brooding halfstep for roughly the first 15 tracks before switching up into some more propulsive beats, finishing on a melodic note with the sweet synths of Zomby’s Test Me For A Reason.

(L) Putney station at dawn (R) Guy protesting on Theobald’s Road, claiming that 25 Bedford Row betray their clients to the police

This isn’t the first deeper dubstep mix I’ve done; back in early 2010 I recorded Drop The Hammer 7, and since this mix is not too dissimilar in spirit, I’m going to be lazy and just copy and paste what I wrote about that mix (since it’s still true!):

I’ve tried to hit a happy medium on this mix, covering a range of moods, from deep and introspective stuff to more punchy dancefloor material without crossing the line into outright chainsaw wobble frenzy (not that I don’t like that stuff, I just didn’t think it was appropriate in the context). Peaks and troughs, mountains and valleys; this music allows you to program a varied set that can change feel and texture radically in a short time in a way that is not always so easy with more straightforward rave musics.

As per usual, this is a 100% vinyl effort, so there are one or two crunchy bits which came about as a result of me whacking the next tune in and adjusting the pitch on the fly, but overall it’s a solid effort, and I don’t have the time to be this precious any more:

I will junk a mix that has been entirely perfect if I am unhappy with a particular transition. Obviously, I could just re-record the relevant mix and stitch the whole thing digitally, but I feel like that would be cheating and so I don’t do it … All of this would be easier than the heartache and hassle of turning the recording off after forty minutes because the record has skipped as I was cueing it and I have missed my cuepoint!

It suppose it is an aesthetic issue for me. It’s a bit like cooking a complete meal from scratch – you take the raw ingredients and spend the time doing all of the different tasks involved to create a satisfying whole. It is easier, certainly, to eat a ready meal or a takeaway, but there is no real sense of accomplishment or satisfaction associated with it.

(L) Flats at the side of the train tracks (R) The Strand, one story up

It’s been quite some time now since I was a regular clubber, which is why my experience of dubstep is at somewhat of an angle to many peoples’ – for me it is listening music, headphone music, not necessarily club music. Obviously, the ideal environment to experience dubstep is in a club on a heavy system, where it takes on an entirely new physical dimension, but in all honesty I’ve not been to that many dubstep events (although I did go to the first Dub War parties in New York, as well as a few FWD events when I moved back to London in late 2005, and a few bits and bobs since then), so, weirdly enough, dubstep for me is something I experience 99% privately, not communally.

Above all, for me, dubstep is commuting music. It’s what keeps me sane as I make my way in and out of central London every day.

I listen to music all day at work (one earphone only, of course, I am a professional after all!), from across the dance music spectrum, but usually when I’m commuting I listen to dubstep.

Why is that?

I would say that dubstep, especially at the deeper end, is the perfect accompaniment to commuting in London, because, unlike some of the more manic forms of dance music (which, needless to say, I love!), it is, by nature, pretty meditative, which makes it an effective shield against the unpleasantness of commuting in London – the squashed bodies, the delays, the hanging around (it doesn’t help with the outrageous prices, though).

(L) Waterloo bus station in the sunlight (R) Cattle class on Southwest Trains

The crunching, stepping beats and the deep bass are perfect for zoning out, for letting your mind wander off somewhere else … somewhere where you aren’t squashed into another man’s armpit.

Looking out the window, seeing the city go by, this music helps me start the day right. Don’t get me wrong, commuting in London isn’t some kind of nightmarish, painful process; it’s just boring and uncomfortable.

So it’s therefore nice to have music perfectly suited to the journey, which is why I have structured this mix in a particular way:

- It’s 50 minutes long, so about as long as my commute
- It starts deep and doomy, because usually when I leave my front door I’m still a bit dazed
- It builds up the energy levels as it goes, a reflection of the fact that I am gradually waking up as I travel
- And it ends on a fluffy, optimistic note, right as I cover the last few steps to the office, perfect for arriving in a positive mood

(L) Just outside Clapham Junction (R) Somewhere in South London

Wherever you listen to this mix, I hope it improves your mood, just like it improves mine. Enjoy.

A few bits of freeform news for you …

First up, those of you who enjoyed Beezee’s recent guest mix, The Canticle of the Monomyth, as reviewed so well on Thank You For The Horse, will be very pleased to know that he has recently posted a new mix, Kali, his contribution to the Freeformaniacs show. Go check it out!

Secondly, the line-up for the second I Love Hard Beats event has been announced. Sadly, I’m not playing, like I had tentatively announced before – in any case, it looks pretty immense – go here to see the line up.

Finally, the man like Shanty has unveiled his newest freeform project – Electrode, which has debuted with a free album called Freeform Exposed. Freeform Exposed is a downloadable three cd set, including two unmixed discs of new and exclusive tracks, as well as a dj mix by Shanty. Each disc will be available in both wav and 320 kbs mp3, and you can head over to the Electronica Exposed site right now to get the dj mix (the unmixed sets are forthcoming). Although free, Shanty has asked for donations to cover the cost of professionally mastering the tunes, so it’s worth sending him some money as a thank you for the album (as well as, more broadly, all the work he has done for the freeform scene over the years). I did!

Pearsall presents Rampage Turbo 11

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Mixed on two Technics 1210′s and a Pioneer DJM-600 in London, March 2012
(60:36, 139 MB, 320 KBPS MP3)

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

Style: Freeform Hardcore

Direct link to the mix:
http://sonicrampage.org/mixes/rt10/Pearsall-RampageTurbo10.mp3

Tracklisting:

01. Etienne Picard – Get Up (CLSM Remix) (G-Core)
02. Kevin Energy & Chris C – Forward To The Past (Kevin Energy Freeform Edit) (Nu Energy)
03. DJ Rx – Hellfire (Proteus Remix) (Finrg Hard)
04. Kevin Energy & K Complex – Nominal Thrust (Nu Energy)
05. Tazz & Concept – Planet Of Dreamz (Digital Beatz)
06. Lost Soul – Dark Side Of The Moon (Nu Energy)
07. Eryk Orpheus – PVC (Nu Energy)
08. Safe n’ Sound – Synergize (Bonkerz)
09. Scott Majestik – Acid Dreams (Uprising)
10. Ruffage & Mannik – They’re Coming (Elation)
11. Eryk Orpheus – 35 Cycles (Nu Energy)
12. Lost Soul – Zombie With A Chainsaw (Nu Energy)
13. Level 13 – Holocaust Of Death (Electroplates)
14. Riddler – Impossible Dream (Bedlam)
15. AMS – I Feel Hardcore (Uprising)
16. Shanty, Tazz & Concept – Beast Of Hardcore (Digital Beatz)

Enjoy this mix? Leave a comment!

Stream or download from Soundcloud …

Cover: Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia, August 2011

A few months ago, Stray from the Freeform Forum reached out to me and asked if I wanted to occasionally contribute a mix to the weekly Freeformaniacs show on the online hardcore radio station Krafty Radio. I said sure and, lo and behold, here is my very first contribution to the show! Having premiered yesterday morning and gotten some great feedback in the chat room, I am now very pleased to present it to you. Unlike Rampage Turbo 10, my tribute to the majesty of Finnish freeform, this mix doesn’t have any particular theme beyond ‘a bunch of tracks I want on a mix (plus a few I’ve already used that I want to use again)’. This was a one-take job, banged together last Saturday morning while my wife took my daughter out for a walk. So, not much to say this time, beyond the fact that it’s a solid mix. Enjoy!

For your reading pleasure, I also fired off a few questions to Stray, the man behind Freeformaniacs, so that you can learn a bit more about the project and what’s coming up in the future:

Pearsall: First up, introduce yourself: who what where when why (and how!) is Stray?

Stray: Who – Well, my mum calls me Simon, but pretty much everyone else calls me Stray.

What – I’m 29 years old, have 3 kids and no sleep and work in car sales, but I’m not dodgy I swear .

Where – I live in Canberra, the political (READ Boredom) capital of Australia.

When – Right now!

Why – Why not?

How – when a man loves a woman very much … Do I really need to elaborate on where babies come from?

What’s Freeformaniacs all about, for those who are unfamiliar with it?

Freeformaniacs is a weekly radio show on www.kraftyradio.com. The show plays every Thursday from 9AM UK time, 8PM Australian Eastern Daylight savings time and runs for 2 hours, with 2 DJs playing a 1 hour show each week. The idea for the show is to have as much diversity as possible, that’s why we have the selection of resident DJs we do now, representing quite a few countries.

Freeform has so many different influences, from Trance to Psy to Hardcore, so there are quite a few different styles and we try to represent them all with both the regulars and the guests we have on the show.

The other idea with the show is to give some lesser known DJs the chance to be a part of a show alongside bigger names in Freeform. We recently had a competition to find our next resident, and some of the mixes we heard from guys whose names many haven’t heard of was amazing. We are also planning to mix up bigger names with up & comers for our guest spots.

When did it start?

It started in September last year. We were basically throwing the idea around on the original Freeform forum, so I got in touch with Cubeforce from Krafty and the next thing you know we had a show.

How did you get into freeform?

I was really into Trance growing up, and went with some mates to a rave in Sydney. Near the smoking area you could hear the noise from the hardcore room, and see people bouncing off the walls. I went in to investigate, and they were playing happy hardcore, but I didn’t get that into it. A few hours later I heard a different style of music coming from there, and the people were still bouncing off the walls. What the hell, I’ll have another look. I fell in love with this new sound almost instantly, and even missed the Trance artist I went to the rave to see. After the set I was chatting with someone there about the music, and he said it was Trancecore and suggested a few artists I should check out. The rest is history …

What’s the idea behind the Freeform Forum?

I was actually thinking of the forum quite a while before I made it. There were forums for people to talk about Freeform already, but they were either under the Hardcore umbrella or a forum for a specific label. Then, when the Finrg forum registration stopped, then when NEC announced it was closing I knew the forum would not be long behind it, and as a regular poster on the NEC board it gave me the push I needed to start a forum. So I made a dodgy forum on one of those free forum hosting sites. While spamming the forum on sites, I hooked up with Dave (TTE) who offered to host a new forum and do the design stuff, and the current forum was born.

The idea behind it is pretty simple really, a place for people who love Freeform to get together and talk about music, as well as just talk general nonsense. I noticed on the hardcore forums whenever anyone posted up a Freeform track looking for feedback, they usually wouldn’t get any replies, at least not serious ones. Hopefully the Freeform Forum gives producers and DJs real feedback, and gives fans a way to keep up to date on what’s happening in the scene.

What’s the Freeformaniacs album project all about?

I was talking to Triex from Ruffbeatz (who’s also one of the regulars on Freeformaniacs) on Facebook telling him he needs to do an all Freeform album. He suggested a collaboration between his label Ruffbeatz & Freeformaniacs, and after all of about 30 seconds thinking we decided to do it. For those that don’t know about Ruffbeatz, it’s a label that offers free, full length track albums of various styles of EDM (with a preference for the harder styles).

The aim of the album is very similar to what we do with the Freeformaniacs show – variety & giving up & comers a shot. Any style of Freeform goes for the album, so there will be a good mix of Trancey, Acidy and dark Freeform, and even a Freeform/Speedcore crossover track. We’ve got tracks from DAT (from Endemic), Custom Built DJs, Pulse Vs Firefly, H-Blast & Meke Vs SamHard, but we also have some great tracks from guys most people have never heard of. All the artists have donated the tracks to the album, and it’s awesome that the bigger names are happy to give some tracks to an album that may help build the careers of the new guys.

All going well, the album should be released next month, and will be available as a free download. Links will be up at the forum and the Ruffbeatz website.

What’s the future for freeform as you see it?

Some really exciting stuff happening. Seeing all these new labels pop up is awesome, each with their own angle. Watchtower & Smiling corpse are both doing some awesome stuff with physical CD releases. Uprising digital is giving people a chance to get some absolute Freeform classics that most of us never thought would come out. Stamina has a steady stream of releases, and I am still hanging for the next A-Tech release. Finrg keeps coming up with the underground stuff, and the Substanced release was one wicked album. One thing I’m really looking forward to is the launch of the new Electronica Exposed free label.

But as brilliant as all the labels are, Freeform is greater than the sum of those parts. Munted! Seem to be doing some awesome stuff with the UK parties and their monthly radio show on Krafty, and I know the Kaos Theory guys have started putting on some dedicated Freeform events in Adelaide (here in Australia). There are some wicked online radio shows playing Freeform. And apart from all that, the fans of the music are the most dedicated (and probably most insane) people I’ve ever spoken to.

Anything else you want to add?

I’d like to add 357623 and 2872523, but my calculator is broken and I’m no good at maths. Oh, I suppose I should also use this space to spam, I mean promote some links:

The Freeform Forum – www.freeformforum.net

Freeformaniacs on FaceBook – www.facebook.com/freeformaniacs

Album clips – www.soundcloud.com/freeformaniacs

My Mixes:

SoundCloud – www.soundcloud.com/stray2615 – Not much up there because space is a limit unless you pay & I’m a cheap bastard.
MixCloud – www.mixcloud.com/stray2615 – I’ll be putting up all my mixes I’ve ever recorded up there in the next week or so, so keep checking it out.

And that’s about it from me, cheers Pearsall

For those of you who like really really hard stuff in the mornings, check out my Rampage Turbo 11 mix, which is premiering on the Freeformaniacs show on Krafty Radio at 10am tomorrow morning UK time. It will be up here on Friday/Saturday.

Enjoy!

Beezee presents The Canticle Of The Monomyth

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Mixed in Cardiff, March 2012
(99:44, 230 MB, 320 KBPS MP3)

Large cover
Cue file

Style: Freeform Hardcore

Tracklisting:

01. Pain On Creation – Pain Control
02. Grimsoul – I’ll Bring The Storm
03. DJ RX – Frozen Flame
04. Epilim – Plasma
05. Alek Szahala – Pink Magic
06. Substanced – Geneva Part II
07. Furyan – Galaxias Glaciere
08. Grimsoul – Moment Of Wonder
09. Ephexis, DJ Rx & Carbon Based – Decimator
10. Ephexis – Elements
11. Endemic – Hurricane
12. Substanced – Shadows Of Tomorrow
13. Aryx – Nephila
14. Grimsoul – Bad Boy
15. Lab 4 – The Uprising
16. Betwixt & Between – Phase 6
17. Epyx & Cyrez – Polar Energy
18. Substanced & Alchemiist – Skullcrush

Enjoy this mix? Leave a comment!

Stream and download from Soundcloud

A whole week of freeform here at Sonicrampage … and then a bit of a lie down, and something completely different (a very deep dubstep mix)! Later this week Rampage Turbo 11 will be premiering on the Freeformaniacs show on Krafty Radio, on Thursday morning at 9 am, and I’ll then have the download up here; first up, however is an ace guest mix from one of my favorite online freeform dj’s: Beezee. Enjoy!

Pearsall: Beezee – who, what, where, when, and why?

Beezee: My real name is Sam Heywood, I am from Manchester but I have been living near Swansea with my wife for the past 2 years. The name Beezee came from my dad ever since I can remember, he still calls me Sambeezee he says it was after the Zambezi river, it just kind of stuck really and I just changed the spelling so people could pronounce it. People still struggle to tell the difference between this and Breeze though which gets slightly annoying.

Tell me about the mix, starting with the title: what does it mean?

The title for this, and most of my previous mixes come from names and things from Greek mythology, I am a bit of a myths and legends geek and really like the names and meanings of the monsters and gods etc. This particular title means ‘journey’ which was always the way I wanted to go with this mix.

Continuing on about the mix, what was the thinking behind it, what made you choose the tracks you did in the order you did?

As above really I wanted to take the mix on a bit of a journey through different styles of freeform, with this one in particular going through tunes and djs that really got me into freeform in the first place, which is why you will notice a lot of FINRG selections as this is really where my 1st taste of freeform came from. My aim was to start off at one place and to end up at a completely different place at the end, I am not sure if I acomplished this fully but i’ll let the listenners make their own judgement I guess.

When I am putting a mix together I never really know exactly what I am going to play, I tend start off with a tune which I feel will kick start the mix and get people to want to carry on listening and I try to progress the mix from there while also changing the styles where I can. For example in this one when I switched between ‘Pink Magic’ and ‘Geneva Part II’, you have got 2 totally different tracks but the early breakdown in Geneva I think worked well after the melodies in Pink Magic and then you get the long build into the drop of geneva which I felt was a good way to step the mix up a gear.

About yourself, how long have you been mixing, and what got you into it?

I got my first set of decks when I was 18 so nearly 10 years ago, they were in a Numark DJ in a box. Not exactly state of the art but they served a purpose at the time. I was in to all sorts of music at the time, mainly underground hip hop and I tried to get to grips with mixing with old Ghostface Killah and Big Punisher vinyls to name a couple, I also had a scratch samples vinyl which was great,but then not so great as as soon as you tried to scratch on a crappy belt drive turntable it ended in disaster. So I saved up and got a pair of Stanton STR8-100 decks which were/are amazing. I still have them (although not the original ones as some twat robbed them from my flat). I was always into trance as well but purely from a raver’s point of view, I used to go to Tangled in Manchester quite a bit and I slowly got more and more in to it so started collecting trance vinyls. I got asked to play a trance set then at my mate’s 18th party which was held at the local night spot which went really well and this then gave me a real buzz for playing out. I didn’t get another set for a while after that but mainly because I had no real means of promoting myself further than the local club. I was mainly playing at parties and crap local nights for the next few sets that I did which was OK at the time but nothing spectacular.

It was only after I went to Gatecrasher v Tidy at the NEC in 2002 that I then discovered hard house, it was Lab 4 who were playing at the time and they blew me away, this gave me a new direction to head in as I went to buy a load of Tidy vinyls and kind of got hooked on hard house and hard trance after that. I didn’t play out for a couple of years after that though as I found myself up and down the country every weekend raving my arse off so didn’t find time to mix too much. Until a mate told me he was starting a new hard dance night in Manchester called Tuition, so I played there and this went down really well and I then got asked to play more and more hard dance nights around Manchester and occasionally further a field in Liverpool and once in London. All of my sets apart from 2 have been on vinyl, I had to buy some cdjs 3 years ago as there was no new tunes on vinyl coming out that I wanted. I haven’t played in a club for a while now though as moving down to Wales meant the opportunities weren’t there really, especially now as I have moved onto playing freeform all the time (after hard dance became a little predictable and slightly boring to me).

Why freeform?

It all started off after I saw Proteus for the first time at Goodgreef, I just loved the energy and thought every tune was insane, it just grabbed me as soon as I heard it and from there I used to try and get to see him whenever he was in the UK, it was he who basically made me aware that FINRG existed. It was only really when I first got my CDJs that I started to collect freeform tunes and FINRG was my main source, it gradually took over and now it is pretty much all I like to mix. It just gives me such a buzz when I play it and I love the endless energy, all the productions in freeform tend to be spot on as well. I also love the freeform ‘community’ as everyone involved are amazing people.

If people want to hear more of you, where should they go online and do you have any gigs coming up?

I have most of my mixes up on my Soundcloud page which can be found here.

Also I have added these mixes to my timeline on facebook which can be found here: facebook.com/DJBEEZEE

No club sets planned unfortunately but if any promoters out there fancy giving me a chance to play I would love to hear from you

You can however catch me playing on Freeformaniacs radio 12/04/2012 on www.kraftyradio.com at 9am

So I’ve just switched my Facebook page to the new Timeline format, featuring autobiographical snippets of my life as a dj, raver, and music fan going all the way back to 1995, featuring such memories as when I started mixing, my first squat party gig, the start of Rampage, the end of Rampage, and more …

Make sure to have a look!

For those of you who enjoyed Rampage Turbo 10, here are a few other Finrg tributes for you to check out; first up is this mix by Rebuild Music’s Thumpa:

Secondly, a mix by the Finnish scene’s boy wonder, Substanced:

Make sure to check out his new album When The World Collapses!

Pearsall presents Rampage Turbo 10 (Celebrating 10 Years of Finrg)

right-click on the title and save as to download

Mixed on two Technics 1210′s and a Pioneer DJM-600 in London, February 2012
(120:31, 275 MB, 320 KBPS MP3)

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

Style: Finnish Freeform – Celebrating 10 Years of Finrg

Direct link to the mix:
http://sonicrampage.org/mixes/rt10/Pearsall-RampageTurbo10.mp3

Tracklisting:

01. Carbon Based – Kraateri (Finrg)
02. The Mexican – The Land Of The Pharaohs (Carbon Based Remix) (Electrolysis)
03. Carbon Based – The Choice (Electrolysis)
04. Carbon Based & Nemes – Heaven N Hell (Electrolysis)
05. Proteus & Carbon Based – Heavy Fusion (Finrg)
06. DJ Proteus – Metal (Teflon Bullet)
07. Paocala – Starfall (Electronic)
08. Carbon Based & E-NRG – Illuminate (Electrolysis)
09. Carbon Based, E-NRG & Nemes – Prologue (Electrolysis)
10. DJ Rx – Hellfire (Finrg Hard)
11. Re-Form – Extremely Dangerous (RFU)
12. Nemes & Blender – Without Fear (Camel)
13. Alek Szahala – Dryad Machine (Finrg Hard)
14. Alek Szahala – Unicorn Grove (Electroplates)
15. DJ Rx – Killer Instinct (Finrg Hard)
16. Carbon Based – Underworld Species (Electroplates)
17. Carbon Based – Anger Ball (Nu Energy)
18. Pain On Creation – Mortality (Electronic)
19. Pain On Creation – Lush (Carbon Based Remix) (Finrg Hard)
20. DJ Proteus – Venla (Teflon Bullet)
21. Alek Szahala – Lumi (Nu Energy)
22. Re-Form – Schizophrenic (Electroplates)
23. Re-Form – Blackmailer (Hard NRG Mix) (Electronic)
24. Carbon Based – Fatal Flashback (Electronic)
25. Nomic & Pain On Creation – Make Me Real (Camel)
26. Alek Szahala – Invitation (Finrg Hard)
27. Nomic – You Have A Dream (Nu Energy)
28. Carbon Based – Ultimate Protection (Electronic)
29. DOK – Mental Ward (Carbon Based Remix) (Electroplates)
30. Carbon Based – Cyclone (Electronic)
31. Alek Szahala – Superstition (Electronic)
32. Alek Szahala – Man Eaten (Finrg Hard)

Enjoy this mix? Leave a comment!

Stream it if you like …

This weekend hundreds of people will descend on Lahti, a Finnish city 100 km north of Helsinki, to celebrate ten years of the Finrg label and, by extension, the Finnish freeform scene. It will no doubt be one of the parties of the year, with a line-up to die for.

Meanwhile, a thousand miles away in London, I’ll be doing … not much.

But that doesn’t mean that I can’t join in the celebrations, which is why I am extremely proud to present to you this very special tenth edition of Rampage Turbo, a two hour, all-vinyl, all-Finnish rave extravaganza, that starts with 155 bpm hardtrance and then builds and builds and builds to an absolutely mental 190 bpm freeform conclusion.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, Finrg is a label and music collective dedicated to creating and promoting Finnish hard dance music. For the last ten years Finnish artists like Carbon Based, Alek Szahala, DJ Rx, Proteus, Pain On Creation, Re-Form, Nomic, and, more recently, Substanced, Sam One, Horzi, Grimsoul, etc, have been responsible for some of the finest hard music ever made. As someone who has passionately supported the Finnish sound right from the beginning I’m really pleased to see them still going so strong after ten years, which is why it has been an absolute pleasure to do this tribute.

This is not, however, a comprehensive overview of their first ten years, simply because I only mix vinyl, and it’s been about five years since a Finnish tune hit vinyl! Vinyl is dead in the freeform scene, and has been so for a while, that’s the reality, so this mix is therefore a selection of some of the older Finnish tunes … which is no bad thing, because these tunes are absolutely mindblastingly awesome.

My own connection to the Finnish freeform scene is fairly small, but does go back right to the beginning, as I first encountered Ari Virtanen (DJ E-Nrg) more than ten years ago through the Banging Tunes forums. We ended up swapping tunes and chatting on MSN from time to time, and then I heard some of the first Carbon Based tracks to break through to the UK like Payback Time and Reactivated, which were posted on mp3.com (remember that?). By about 2003 Alek Szahala and Re-Form had also appeared on the radar and it was pretty clear that something exciting was going on in Finland, so when my good friend Eric (aka The Vinylpimp), who had also been chatting with Ari, suggested we head over to Finland to meet the guys in person and hang out for a bit, I was all for it.

Which is how I found myself in the summer of 2003 spending two weeks sleeping on Ari’s couch in Lahti. I have to say that it was one of the most entertaining trips I’ve ever been on, even if it was something of a weird vacation destination; ever since then, whenever I’ve met a Finn and I tell them that I spent two weeks in Lahti, they always look at me like I’m crazy and ask me what on earth I was doing there. The answer? Drinking, basically.

I certainly couldn’t get drunk for two weeks in a row any more, but age 22, just having graduated from university? Bring. It. On.

Honestly I had no idea what it was going to be like before I went, but I had a blast. Ari was a great host, and the rest of the guys that we met while we were out there (Toni, Teemu, and Petteri from Carbon Based, Ville aka DJ Rx, and Mykko aka Nemes, plus their friends) were all really friendly and took into their stride having the two of us randomly parachute into their lives for a few weeks. We hung out by the lake, listened to tunes, went to parties, sat in saunas (as a prudish Anglo-Saxon I didn’t go naked, refusing just like Rich and James from Electronica Exposed had a few weeks before me) and drank. And drank. And drank some more.

The Finns really don’t hold back on the drinking! While we were there Eric and I played the afterparty to a hardstyle night at a Tampere stripclub and when we arrived in the city early on Saturday evening there were already people out cold on the ground. Apparently there had been a city festival that day, but still. It was all downhill from there; when the club finished at 3 am and we went back to the car to get our records the streets were like an urban obstacle course … bodies everywhere. The afterparty was awesome, though – it was in the function room of a sauna (can you get more Finnish than that?), and Eric and I ended up playing for six hours, from 4 – 10 am, banging out all kinds of hard dance both back-to-back and individually. I have to say it was an interesting experience playing to people wandering in and out of a sauna; at one point I collapsed under a towel in the corner for a quick nap (I had, after all, been drinking pear cider for a number of hours at this point) before waking up, staggering back to the decks and booting Eric off. Good times!

The Finrg room at Koneisto

The other big highlight of the trip was going along to Helsinki’s Koneisto festival, where Finrg were hosting a small, incredibly sweaty room. DJ’s included Rx, Neon, and Mark Tyler from No Entry in the UK, but the highlight was unquestionably the Finrg Collective’s live set, which was Carbon Based plus Nemes. I’m not sure how ‘live’ it was per se, but the music was utterly banging, and that was enough.

And that, in the end, is what this is all about: the music. It’s taken me a while to get to the point (nothing strange there), but these guys make awesome music, and they have been making awesome music for the best part of ten years. And not only is it awesome, but it is also distinct, with a special flavor all its own. This was especially clear back when their tunes first started spreading in about 2003; they were producing hard trance and freeform hardcore that was obviously influenced by UK sounds but that then took it off in a new direction, a colder, cleaner, darker sound that represented to me the full flowering of what freeform hardcore could be conceptually. Obviously I love and do love the UK freeform sound, but I think that to a certain degree it was always held back a bit by the larger UK hardcore scene, i.e. by the need to produce tracks that the cheesy quavers in big rave main rooms wouldn’t hate. Without that limiting factor, the Finns seemed to confidently explore a new frontier.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s still rave music, of course, and rave music remains at core functional music for going mad to (or to listen to while staring at spreadsheets, as I do, but I digress). Even so, the Finnish sound – all thundering kicks, razor bass, and great twisting layers of synths like rampant digital kudzu – took rave music to an entirely new level of hypnotic, intense, beautiful brutality. Where did this come from? I’m not sure, although Teemu from Carbon Based gave a good insight to a crucial inspiring factor when I interviewed them for Harderfaster:

Pearsall:Do you think the high bpm’s of your tracks put you in touch spiritually with your Viking ancestors?

Teemu: (laughing) Ok, the speed of our tracks is just because there is a seven month winter here and it’s so freaking cold and dark. It’s really dark so when we have parties we have to dance really fast to get ourselves warm. Everyone is so fucking pissed off that they are so cold they have to dance fast to get warm. It’s kind of a formation of mind, you know, you get a clear mind when you are dancing so fast, so furious.

Truer words have rarely been spoken … which is why I’ll end the essay there. This music is hard, fast, dark, light, uplifting, terrifying, and more … there’s nothing like the Finrg sound. Enjoy the mix, and here’s to another ten years of Finrg!

The sauna boys are in the heat … (l-r) Teemu Lahtinen (Drumhead), Toni Eronen (Carbon Based), Ari Virtanen (DJ E-Nrg), Ville Sorsa (DJ Rx)

Bonus stuff:

Finrg collective track reviews from my old blog:

You can stop reading now
Future Forces
Raw Power
Last of the Finlandicans

Finally, a gallery of pics from our trip, all taken by Eric. Make sure to check out Vinylpimp!

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

12►

Pearsall presents Morally Diminished 3

right-click on the title and save as to download

Mixed on two Technics 1210′s and a Pioneer DJM-600 in London, January 2012
(58:03, 133 MB, 320 KBPS MP3)

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

Style: Techno

Direct link to the mix:
http://sonicrampage.org/mixes/md3/Pearsall-MorallyDiminished3.mp3

Tracklisting:

01. Armand van Helden – Necessary Evil (Armed)
02. Basement Jaxx – Raw Shit (Atlantic Jaxx)
03. Subspecies – From Da East (Strictly Rhythm)
04. Frankie Bones – Under The Influence (Co-Fusion Remix) (Pro-Jex)
05. John Thomas – Shock (Sino)
06. Boriqua Tribez – Passion (Primate)
07. Oxia – Go Back (Goodlife)
08. Mike Humphries – Hangover (Punish)
09. Jah Scoop & Daddy Spanners – Lick It (Highwire)
10. Trevor Rockcliffe – Like This (Primevil)
11. Evil C & The Hustler – Let The Bass Kick (Goodlife)
12. Co-Fusion – Break Beats (Wild World) (Pro-Jex)
13. Killa Productions – Feelin’ Acid II (Side B1) (K.B. Records Inc.)
14. Extek – Muvvafucker (Primate Endangered Species)
15. Wilko – Feel The Base (Pimp)
16. DJ Funk – Pump It (Cosmic)
17. Thomas Bangalter – What To Do (Roule)
18. Killa Productions – Good Life (Mr. B Special Edit) (K.B. Records Inc.)
19. Technasia – Sentient (Technasia)
20. Boriqua Tribez – Rumba (Adult)
21. Jeff Mills – Theme From ’2000′ (International Deejay Gigolos)
22. Laurent Garnier – The Force (F Communications)
23. Tomas Nordstrom – Jagermeister (Don’t)
24. DJ Mem – Old It (Nasty Colour)
25. DJ Deeon – What Ya Wanna Do? (Pro-Jex)

Enjoy this mix? Leave a comment!

Diary of a Mix

All images taken with Instagram for the iPhone

Step 1: Preparation

Every mix I do starts with an idea. Not a big idea, not a complicated idea, but a simple idea, one that can generally can be boiled down to a sentence or less. So, for instance, when I did That Dream Is Over, the idea was “atmospheric jungle from about ’94’95,” while the concept for There Must Be A Future was “UK acid trance of the type that I heard when I first started going to Pendragon/Escape From Samsara/Trancentral”.

At any given moment I have a whole bunch of these little mix ideas floating around my head – some of them are quite fleshed out in terms of what kind of tracks I want to feature, while others are much vaguer, just a basic concept and a fuzzy feeling that, hey, it would be nice to put that mix together at some point. Due to time constraints arising from my family and work responsibilites, I don’t have as much free time as I used to (a point I’ll return to later), so many of these ideas have been in my head for quite some time without actually getting done.

Which is the case with this mix, the third in my Morally Diminished series of house/techno mixes. I’ve been vaguely thinking about doing this mix for a while without ever quite getting around to it, but doing Taste The Rainbow back in December gave me the inspiration to finally bust out the tunes and throw it down, so a few days after Christmas I found myself pulling an entire shelf’s worth of techno and house out, ready to be picked through …

Step 2: Selection

At some point in the genesis of each mix I find myself hovering over a large stack of vinyl, contemplating the overall arc of the mix as well as pondering the question of which individual tracks will work together in what sequence to allow me to achieve the desired path from start to finish. The first part of this process involves quickly flicking through the tracks and deciding which tunes I definitely want to include – those tunes that I know will work without having to listen to them first. Then I start listening to the remaining tracks, working my way through them and filtering them into separate piles of Maybe and No, with the Maybes then filtered further to Yes and No.

It’s at this point that I sometimes find myself revising and sharpening up a hazy original concept.

Sometimes like, well, this time.

My original idea for Morally Diminished 3 had been to do another mix along the lines of Tessmix, going from housey stuff to funky techno to more electro flavors. What I found when I was working my way through the dozens of records in the Maybe pile was that (1) I don’t have that much house left that I’ve not sold off, and (2) I wasn’t really in the mood for Miss Kittin & The Hacker-style electro stuff, so I ended up putting all of those tunes into one pile to be turned into another mix, potentially the tenth Drop The Hammer (although thinking about it, it would probably make more sense to package them together as the fourth Morally Diminished). So by default this mix has ended up being a pretty straightforward techno mix, not that that’s a bad thing.

So, having decided to do a techno mix, the next thing to do was to pick the tracks to include. Picking tracks can be a bit of a chicken and egg situation – do you pick a bunch of tracks and find the flow, or do you decide on a sonic narrative and then choose the tracks to fit? There’s no right answer to this question for me, and I have taken both approaches when creating mixes, but on this particular mix I very much followed the first path. Having filtered the Maybe pile down to the point where I had about 30 tracks in the Yes pile, I didn’t really have a clear idea of what the shape of the mix would be, how it would start, how it would end, so I ended up playing around with the tracks, both literally (i.e. actually mixing them together when I had a bit of free time to see what worked and what didn’t) and figuratively (I like to think I have both a good memory and a good intuition for tunes, so part of the process is thinking through different mix combinations).

In this way, the structure of the mix slowly became clear to me, and I had it in my head to start and end with quite banging, abrasive beats, while covering a range of different stuff in between. Finally, with a halfway-decent tracklisting set up, the moment was right to record the mix …

Step 3: Combination

There are two things that I want every mix of mine to be:

1. I want it to be interesting
2. I want it to be exciting

Now, obviously there isn’t a dj alive who doesn’t want their mixes to do both of these things, so I should probably explain what exactly I mean by ‘interesting’ and ‘exciting’.

Essentially, I want my mixes to be ‘interesting’ in that they offer a clear and coherent progression over the course of the mix, yet they also have to be ‘exciting’ in terms of the raw mixing, to capture some of the mad energy of a live mix. As I explained in my essay to accompany Rampage Audio 6:

Often when you hear commercially-released mixes they sound so clinical, usually because they have been mixed on a computer, whereas mixes recorded live at clubs/raves have a certain raw energy to them. This is why I don’t mind about little mistakes with beat-matching, because as long as they are only brief and lasting a short time period they just add a certain quirk to the proceedings. It is also why I do little cuts, tricks, spinbacks, etc on the mixes, and why I chop and change between the tracks so quickly. So many commercially-released mixes are just compilations of segues from one track to the next right at the end of the tunes in question, and it’s boring. This is obviously a matter of taste, since I have had people complain that my mixes have too much chopping and changing and that I mix out of tracks too quickly, but I get a bit bored with mixes where every track sticks around for 6-7 minutes. You might as well just listen to the tracks on their own!

Techno lends itself to this kind of adventurous approach very well – because a lot of techno is so loop-oriented, if you don’t try to mix it up pretty well it tends to get dry fast. There are few things duller than a 75 minute techno mix with only 16 tracks. At the same time, you don’t want to go too overboard with the tricks and the quick mixing, which is why I try to reach a happy medium. Hopefully you will agree!

Structurally, I find that techno mixes sit somewhere in between how I structure bass mixes and hard dance mixes, a topic I explored in my Wobble City essay:

Since the focus of the (hard dance) track is the main riff, the aim of the mix is to get the listener from riff to riff, which has meant that I typically mix from breakdown to breakdown, usually switching the bass where the bassline comes in on the new track while keeping the old track playing underneath through to the breakdown on the new track, although it depends on the particular tracks in question as to what is the best way to accommodate the EQ work. Obviously there are different ways in which to approach this, and I sometimes mix in different ways, but as an overall structure for mixing hard house/hard trance/freeform hardcore/acid techno (the whole grouping of styles that is generally considered ‘hard dance’), this is the most common and, dare I say it, sensible way. One effect of this style of mixing is that necessarily you cannot feature that many tracks in a seventy minute mix – since each mix is long, lasting anywhere up to two or even three minutes, you can usually only accommodate 16 to 18 tracks over the course of an average-length mix.

This is not the case for other styles of music, though. For instance, with techno and electro, the focus is more on the groove than the riffage, which means that as a dj you have much more flexibility in terms of both where and how you mix between tracks. A good example of this can be seen on my Rampage Teknikal 5 mix, which features 29 tracks, far more than I have ever used on any of the mixes I have done under the hard dance styles! It is much easier to vary your mixing style with techno, to do long and short mixes, to flick another tune straight in, to cut and chop, than with the various trance-derived styles, where carving up tracks in such a radical manner usually ends up sounding pretty incoherent. The risk that is run, though, is that you can become so intoxicated with your technique that you forget that what you are trying to do is create a cohesive sonic whole, a kind of aural tapestry.

I’m sure everyone who is into techno has had the experience of hearing big name dj’s fire through tracks super-fast, so that just as you are getting into the groove of a record another one has arrived. As with so many other things in life, just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean that it is a good idea to do it.

It can be hard to strike the right balance between maintaining a flow and switching up the tracks to keep things interesting, though. Obviously, I am a big fan of quick mixing, and you can see this on some of my recent breaks and drum n’ bass mixes, and especially on this mix. I think the key difference is that the main energy element of these types of music is the bassline, and when the bassline doesn’t change, once it has dropped, why not mix quickly so you can get to the next one? With these types of music, quick mixing is exciting.

When I do a mix like this I am generally arriving at it only semi-prepared – I might have the tracklist worked out in advance, but I usually will have planned the actual mechanics of the mix for no more than a few tracks. With the rest, I’m essentially flying blind, figuring it out as I go along. Which is actually a lot of fun, if I’m being completely honest! I think sometimes these essays might give the impression that everything I do mix-wise is deeply thought through and mulled over, but in reality that’s only partially true, a lot of what I do is intuitive, i.e. I make decisions without actually thinking them through. As an example from this mix, when I originally started mixing Sentient into the Good Life remix my idea was that I would just play it a bit in the background and then do a spinback when it reached Good Life’s second breakdown, but when I actually got to that point reflex took over and I just flipped the bass to foreground Sentient. It actually works very well as a mix, and it was totally unplanned.

So, having recorded the mix, the next move is to listen back to it, and think it over …

Step 4: Contemplation

I’ll be honest here. This was a one take mix. What you are listening to here is the first and only time I have played these records through from start to finish. As such there are inevitably a few little bits in the mix that I wish I could change, and a few years ago I would have definitely junked this mix and started again, as I explained in my Wobble City post:

I will junk a mix that has been entirely perfect if I am unhappy with a particular transition. Obviously, I could just re-record the relevant mix and stitch the whole thing digitally, but I feel like that would be cheating and so I don’t do it. Or I could just throw it all into Ableton Live and get a computer to do the tedious work of beat-matching so that I could focus on micromanaging the programming and eq’ing of the mix. All of this would be easier than the heartache and hassle of turning the recording off after forty minutes because the record has skipped as I was cueing it and I have missed my cuepoint!

It suppose it is an aesthetic issue for me. It’s a bit like cooking a complete meal from scratch – you take the raw ingredients and spend the time doing all of the different tasks involved to create a satisfying whole. It is easier, certainly, to eat a ready meal or a takeaway, but there is no real sense of accomplishment or satisfaction associated with it.

Spoken very much like a 28 year-old guy in a not-particularly-taxing job with plenty of free time and no kids!

For better (mostly) and for worse (just a little bit), I just am not that guy any more, and I certainly no longer have the spare time to afford be so precious. For instance, when I mix from Like This into Let The Bass Kick there’s a little bit where the beats slide out of sync for a couple bars … no excuse, I just effed up the pitch adjustment, slowing down when I should have speeded up. Usually my mixing is quite tight (if I do say so myself), but I’m not a robot (or a computer ) so sometimes I screw up, and this was just such an occasion. A few years ago I would have junked the whole mix on the basis of that (frankly pretty small) error, but I just don’t have the time any more to do and redo mixes until I am 99% happy with them (since I will never be 100% happy with a mix).

Even so, old habits die hard, and I ummed and ahhed over posting this mix for about a month, listening to it over and over until I decided that I really liked it and , frankly, it would be pretty crazy to not post it over such a minor error.

And so here it is … enjoy!

Just chopping up Kevin Energy’s My Freeform Journey Part 2 mix at the moment, and have filled out the tracklist properly for the rest of the tracks, but am stumped on the first tune, so I’ve uploaded it to Soundcloud.

It’s a hard trance track, apparently on Chris C’s Mind Over Matter label, and although I recognize it I can’t quite place it. I used to have quite a few tracks on MOM, but I’ve sold them off over the years, so these days I only have The Final Hurrah, Plymouth, and Tell Me What’s Wrong. Unfortunately, it’s not any of those, and I can’t quite place it (and YouTube, my usual first port of call in such matters, isn’t much help either).

If you know what it is, either leave a comment here or on Soundcloud, and I will loff you forever!

Updated, February 18, 2011: Cheers to Alex in the comments for identifying the tune as Monsoon by Madam Zu & The Doktor. Thanks Alex! If you want to grab the completed cue, it’s here.