Categories
Features

Mix concepts for 2013

Help me decide which mixes to do in the rest of 2013!

carousel

About one year ago, in my Morally Diminished 3 post, I said:

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 … 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.

Nothing has changed …

I still have lots of ideas for mixes! So, I thought it would be fun to share some of the concepts with you and get your feedback, as it would be really good to hear what people want to hear. Having borrowed some CDJ’s from my good buddy Jamie, I can also do some different mixes than before, it being a lot cheaper to pick up 15-20 tracks digitally than on vinyl!

At this point I should point out that I already have two fresh mixes in the bag and ready to be posted to Sonicrampage. Rampage Turbo 15 is already available to stream, but I’ve not had a chance to split it into separate tracks yet, due to my desktop pc being on its deathbed; I’ve got a new one on the way, so that mix should be available to grab sometime next week. Also coming later this month is Slaves to the Silver Box, an old skool acid mix that I have done for DI.fm’s Old School Mix Marathon V (check out the mixes from volume four) – I’m quite excited for that project, because besides the mix being another 303 journey along the lines of The Waveform Cult and Beyond The Valley Of The Acid Vixens, featuring tracks from the likes of Hardfloor, DJ Misjah, Nostrum, Josh Wink, and more, but it’s also having a cover made up by an old high school friend who has very handily turned into an awesome artist, plus I have a pretty cool idea for the accompanying essay – I just need to make that a reality!

So, without further ado, genre by genre, here are some of the mix ideas I had in mind for 2013:

Acid

Well, as I just mentioned, I already have an acid mix in the can, so to the extent that I will do another acid mix in 2013, it would probably be another London acid techno mix, in a similar vein to last year’s epic 90 minutes of steadily rising 303 frenzy for 7D The Seven Dimensions of Euphoria. Realistically, though, I probably will only do one acid mix this year, unless I have a sudden bolt of inspiration.

Bass Music

OK, I know that Drop The Hammer 9 has only been up for a few weeks, but I’ve really been loving this Bass Muscic sound over the last few years, especially where it has intersected with house/techno music, so I would really like to put together a mix of all of my favorite tunes in this style that I picked up in 2012. In fact I could easily do two or three mixes in this style without compromising on quality.

Tunes like Ellipsis by Joy Orbison, or Acid Jackson by Boddika, or Rave by Head High, or Lolita by Special Request, or Fade by Jon Convex, or … oh God, I have to stop!

You see what I mean, though, there are just so so so many good tunes coming out of that scene, that it would be criminal not to smoosh them together in a mix or two or three.

Drum n’ Bass

Where to start? I have so many ideas for drum n’ bass mixes! First up will probably be a new jump-up mix, a la Urban Takedown; last year I bought a bunch of jump-up tunes off of Discogs and I would love to put them together in a mix. Secondly, I would love to do another deep mix along the lines of That Dream Is Over.

Those are the first two ideas that spring to mind, but honestly I have lots more. I’ve always wanted to redo Silver Dawn, because I’ve never been happy with the standard of the mixing on that one (killer tunes, though). I’ve always wanted to do a tribute mix to the one and only Dom & Roland, too, and I’ve thought for a while that mixing together Goldie’s Timeless album would be pretty cool. Plus I still have plenty of 94/95 jungle tunes that didn’t feature on either Street Dreams or Dark Side of the Nuum.

Dubstep

I’m definitely going to do one, if not two, dubstep mixes this year, and I already have the concepts. Hurrah!

Since I’m not a guy to turn down good ideas, I thought I would go with a few mix contest ideas that the /r/realdubstep subreddit ran a few months back, namely, a mix of dubstep remixes and a mix of dubstep white labels. Both ideas are really good, and I think the end product could be quite enjoyable. I actually did have a go at doing the white label one, but it didn’t quite work, because most of the white labels I have are vocal bootlegs, and with vocal tracks you really need to know the tunes inside out, because you don’t want the vocals to clash. Needless to say, doing it off the cuff totally did not work! So, when I do get around to doing that mix, all of the mixes will need to be carefully planned in advance so it doesn’t end up sounding like shit. The remixes mix would be another fun one to do, as it could cover a lot of cool stuff, from deeper stuff to face-shrinking wobblers.

Another dubstep mix I had in mind was mixing up Mala’s simply awesome Mala in Cuba album, but since that is a pretty fresh release, I’m not really sure about the ethics of that one; it might be better to keep that for myself. Since I have the cdj’s at the moment, I’ve also been thinking about doing something with some digital tunes, perhaps a sequel to my Skream tribute, Inside The Crate, using only tunes from Skream’s extremely extensive archive of digital giveaways? Or maybe a mix of dungeon deep freebies from the awesome Hedmuk blog?

Freeform

Obviously, I am managing the Freeformaniacs show at the moment, so that means that I have to do a freeform mix every two to three months this year. The first one has already aired, but here are some ideas for subsequent shows.

Vinyl:
* Electronica Exposed tribute mix: Mixing up some of my favorite tunes from Electronic and Digital Beatz
* Bonkerz tribute mix: All of my fave moments from the awesome Bonkerz label
* General old skool mix: I still have a bunch of tunes that I’ve not used, plus freeform vinyl is very cheap second-hand, so I am planning on filling a few of the holes in my collection

Digital:
* Lab 4 fast mix: Lab 4 are my favorite ever hard dance producers, so a mix of all of Lab 4’s faster bits (i.e. ‘Dreamland’, ‘Candyman’, ‘Soul Fire’, ‘Pure Kaos’, ‘Stungun’, the Reformations, ‘Psychoactivated’, etc), would pretty much awesomeness cubed
* Moar Finrg: I’ve always wanted to do a mix that features some of the awesome early-mid 00’s tunes from the Finrg crew that only came out on cd or digitally, like Anthem, Iron Works, Fairy Play, Ngarnuuk, and Illuminate 2004
* Moar new freeform: I just got Freeformania in the post, the second Electrode comp is on the way, as is the second Smiling Corpse, plus the Epyx & Cyrez album … lots of exciting new freeform out there!
* Digital round-up of the last few years: This would just feature some of my favorite tunes from the last couple years, and would include people like Nightforce, Twisted Freq, Betwixt & Between, Substanced, DJ Rx, Kevin Energy, Lost Soul, Penguin Conspiracy, and more

Hard Trance

My number one hard trance priority this year is to do a proper UK acid trance tribute – a mix featuring all of the amazing hard, uplifting music that I used to rave to at parties like Techtonic, Undertow, Trancentral, Pendragon, and more. It wouldn’t be too different from Flip’s excellent Aqua Dementia, nor to my There Must Be A Future, but it would feature some tracks that definitely need an airing.

Another edition of the Eurotrash series would be fun to do, too – it could either be normal speed, or it could be fast, like Heartcore.

House/Techno

On the more traditional 4/4 side of things, I have always wanted to do a tribute to my favorite techno producers, bar none, Technasia – I love how their productions run the gamut from funky to deep to hard to melodic, covering techno, house, electro, and ambient. I’m a huge fan, and I would love to do an all Technasia mix.

Secondly, when I was pulling together Morally Diminished 3 I found that I own a fair amount of electro/techno stuff from artists like Vitalic, Miss Kittin & The Hacker, Oxia, Anthony Rother and others, which combined together would make a pretty tasty mix.

One mix that I would really really love to do would be a proper mid-90’s New York house mix. I’m a native New Yorker, and I love New York (in fact, I was back for Thanksgiving, which just rammed home to me how much I love it and miss it), so it would be a really nice thing to do on a personal level It wouldn’t be only tracks from New York artists, but ideally it would all have that New York vibe (or at least my idea of that New York vibe!) … so I was thinking tracks like All Night Long by Mood II Swing, Leave Me by Shazz, and Witch Doktor by Armand van Helden. This would be a bit of a labor of love, and would probably involve a lot of research in terms of finding tracks, but I think the payoff would be an amazing mix. Unfortunately, I don’t have that much of this stuff on vinyl, so I would probably need to either buy all of the tunes via Discogs (expensive) or do it digitally (a lot less fun). Maybe I could run a Kickstarter campaign?

On the digital side, I have a load of house and techno cd’s from the 90’s, both artist albums and compilations, that I could definitely sift through to come up with some cool tracks worth using on a mix. On the house side that would mean early Basement Jaxx/Atlantic Jaxx, Paperclip People, Super Discount, Daft Punk, etc, while on the techno side we’re talking Jeff Mills, Octave One, Josh Wink, and Plastikman, amongst others.

Misc

Beyond my usual genres, there are a few other mixes that I would love to do, given the opportunity.

A Chemical Brothers tribute mix would be awesome – I would love to take some of the Chems most dancefloor friendly tracks, from say 125 to 135 bpm and put them together in a nice bumping mix. That would be so so good.

A UK Garage special might be an interesting project, too – I generally never really liked garridge, but the odd tune was good, so doing a mix of the odd tunes that I liked would be a fun exercise, although it would be a lot of work to actually find those tunes that I liked, and then pick them up digitally (since there’s no fucking way I’m going to spend a bunch of money buying garage records just for one mix). What kind of stuff did I have in mind? Basically, the rougher, bassier stuff, like the instrumental to So Solid Crew’s Haters, Dreams by DJ Narrows, or KMA’s Cape Fear.

So there are some of my ideas for new mixes … please let me know in the comments which ones you like the sound of!