Category: Mixes

Old School Mix Marathon IV

Six mixes of old skool goodness from DI.fm’s Old School Electronica Channel

Update, February 1, 2012: I’m very proud to announce that I have now uploaded Proteus’ mix as well as DJ Meke’s Happy New Yearave gabba mix. Scroll down to the bottom of the page or click here to see them. I’m hoping to get the M-Zone mix as well, but can’t confirm yet as to whether that will be available. Enjoy!

Update 2, February 5, 2012: Even more good news! I now have M-Zone’s mix to download, click here to jump down the page and grab it. If you can help us build a tracklisting for M-Zone’s mix, please leave a comment. 🙂 Also, I’ve now got a full tracklisting for the mix by Proteus, so I’ve stuck it up as a split track zip file as well.

A few months ago DJ Meke (whose Nostrumo appeared as a guest mix a few years back on Sonicrampage) got in touch with me and asked if I would be up for contributing a mix to an end of the year special that he was organizing for Digitally Imported’s Old School Electronica channel. The idea behind the Old School Mix Marathon IV (as it came to be known) was to create a series of old skool mixes from across a range of harder dance music styles, mixed by dj’s from across Europe, that would showcase the amazing music made in the 90’s to nostalgiacs and newcomers alike.

Having been asked to represent the UK, my answer can be summed up in two words: fuck and yes. Since most of the other dj’s were providing more European music, Meke asked me for a UK trancecore mix in a similar vein to Rampage Turbo 8. Since doing that mix, I’ve been on a real freeform kick anyways, so I happily said yes and went back to the lab and came up with … Rampage Turbo 9. Which turned out really nicely!

This post, however, isn’t about my mix (that’s a topic for a separate post), but instead about the other mixes from the series, which I am very proud to be giving a permanent home to here at Sonicrampage (with the exception of Mario Tekno’s mix, which I felt was not mixed to an acceptable standard). These six mixes cover a massive range of electronic music vibes, from ’91 piano screamers from Deck Jagger to twirling acid trance from Individual to Ciriliox’s bouncy makina and massive hardtrance from Ally Asylum and the German/Finnish showdown of Yoko and Mele to DJ Mindflash’s straight up, unfiltered gabba. Taken together, they offer an excellent primer to 90’s rave music.

Those who know me will not be surprised to find out that I love the Yoko/Meke and Ally Asylum mixes, both of which cover the kind of glorious old fast hardtrance that I featured on Heartcore, but what surprised me was how much I enjoyed Ciriliox’s makina mix. I’ve always been of the opinion that makina (the indigenous hardcore sound of Spain) is a big pile of stinky cheese, but I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this mix, and even recognised some of the tunes from back in the day. Needless to say, this opens up a new avenue for vinyl acquisition (not that my wife will like to hear that!). Overall, hearing all of the different mixes has been both fun and educational, turning me on to lots of tunes that I didn’t know before, as well as reminding me of some stone classics that I had forgotten over the years.

For easier navigation, click these links to take you straight to your mix of choice:

Yoko vs Meke – Hard Trance
Ally Asylum – Hard Trance
Ciriliox – Makina
DJ Mindflash – Gabba
Deck Jagger – Breakbeat Hardcore
Individual – Acid Trance
Proteus – Hard Trance
DJ Meke – Gabba
M-Zone – Hard Trance

Enjoy the mixes!