I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve now added even more mixes to the Old School Mix Marathon IV post: DJ Meke’s Happy New Yearave gabbafest and an awesome live old skool mix from the legendary Proteus. I’m still working on getting M-Zone’s mix. No tracklisting on the Proteus mix, so if you can help out, it would be greatly appreciated. Go get ’em!
T_! – “NOMINATED” – 4 decks by T_macabre
Happy Sunday!
Hope your weekend has been good – here’s a mix that was sent through to me yesterday that I’m very happy to post about. It’s called Nominated and it’s a massive 4-deck mix of all kinds of dubstep/grime goodies from T_! of Macabre Unit. I was a bit dubious when I first saw the tracklisting, as even though it has lots and lots and lots of good tunes, I thought that fitting that many tunes into 77 minutes would be overkill. I mean, sure I’m someone with a short attention span when it cames to mixing, but even I have my limits. Fortunately, I was wrong! He’s done an excellent job of weaving the massive number of tracks into the mix in a way that is subtle yet compelling, with the tracks floating in and out nicely.
It’s definitely not the OCD dropfest I halfway feared!
Another nice feature to the mix is that although it is mostly eyes down dubstep, he’s slipped in enough grime flourishes to freshen up the vibe periodically so it’s not all introspective gloom (although gloomy dungeon sound dubstep is of course something I love) – overall, the mix has a really good balance of vibes throughout. I also enjoyed the mixture of fresh dubs and venerable classics – too often with online mixes people just try to show off the fact that they have a lot of dubplates, which frankly I’ve never cared much about. After all, ‘new’ is not a synonym for ‘good’. I’d rather listen to old, good tunes intelligently put together than a bunch of new crap piled up thoughtlessly. As for the mixing, well, obviously it’s really fucking good – you have to have a lot of confidence in your mixing ability to try to pull off a four deck mix, and he’s definitely nailed it. I like it a lot. You will too. Promise.
Here’s something that’s pretty cool:
The entire archives of Muzik Magazine
For those of you who don’t know, Muzik Magazine was a British dance music magazine that ran for a number of years from the mid-90’s. It was a competitor to Mixmag, DJ, and Ministry, as well as all of the smaller, more underground dance mags that were also around back in the day (like Wax, Dream, M8, etc). I was a pretty religious reader for a while, and then it lost its way, and then it became pretty crap, and then I stopped reading at around issue 50. Still, though, it had a good run, and it’s pretty amazing that they’ve stuck the whole archive up in PDF form for people to download. Lots of dance music history to be uncovered.
Just think kids, the British club scene used to be able to sustain multiple monthly magazines with actual full time staff and everything. Crazy concept, huh?
I still have a bunch of records!
A few years back I decided I needed to trim down my record collection, for both space and money reasons, so I ended up selling a lot of the tunes I had, across all kinds of different genres (and my Death Sentence mix was even inspired by the selling process).
Since I got it in my head that I needed to be ruthless, part of this process involved getting rid of entire genres’ worth of stuff …
Meaning no more hard house …
No more hard techno …
No more tech-house …
No more electro …
No more breaks …
Some of these decisions I’ve never really regretted (for instance, I’m not particularly bothered about having liquidated my hard house collection), but over time I’ve really come to wish that I hadn’t gotten rid of so many electro, grime, and breaks tunes. Dumb decision!
This is especially so because over the last year or two I’ve gotten quite into the nascent UK Bass scene which has emerged from the confluence of dubstep, UK Funky, grime, and other styles of music. I’ve been dabbling in buying a bit of the stuff (funds allowing, I’m a dad now after all!), which has made the regrets stronger, and I even got to play a set of it at my friend Al’s birthday party last week (grab his great Machines Ate My Vinyl mix if you’ve not got it yet!), which just made the regret stronger.
Having been moodily contemplating this stuff over the last few days, I thought I would chuck up a post on five records that I used to own, sold (often for pretty shitty amounts!), and now wish I still owned. Pheh.
If you love jungle, old skool hardcore, and/or drum n’ bass (and if not, what’s wrong with you?!?!), you simply have to check out Hardscore, DJ Extreme’s site. I heard a few of his mixes via Drum Trip (a good site, too), but had never got around to checking out his own site.
Oh.
My.
God.
It’s the motherfucking mix motherlode. I’ll be grabbing stuff off there for ages to come.
Run, not walk.
(ok, that statement makes no sense on the internet, but you get my drift)
If you enjoyed last year’s Hang Ten, my tribute to Californian dubstep dj/producer and king of the bumping 808 bass, Matty G, well, then, you’ll love this excellent new guest mix that he’s just dropped for KMag. From the rough to the smooth, it’s really really tasty stuff, including loads of dubplates (some of which like ‘Jam Like A Tek’ and ‘Just Hit Me’ are amongst the best stuff he’s done, imo). Plus it includes an interview with the man himself. Bonus!
What more could you want?!?
Oh, yeah, a cue file.
Well, lucky for you, I’ve already done one for my own pleasure, and I’m more than happy to share it with you; if you want to get the cue file, I’ve stuck it up on my server here:
Tracklisting:
01. Matty G – R&B Style
02. Grand Puba – Get It (Caspa’s 80Eighties Remix)
03. Matty G – Ooohhh Baby
04. Matty G & Ugene – Baby Yeah
05. Matty G & Roommate – Caetano
06. The Others & Distinction – DISKO
07. Matty G – True Soul
08. Guido – Korg Back
09. Willie Hutch – I Choose You (Matty G Refix)
10. 12th Planet & Antiserum – Purple & Gold
11. Matty G – Funky Fresh
12. Caspa – Itchy & Scratchy
13. J:Kenzo – Ruffhouse
14. Tes La Rok – Ignition VIP
15. Matty G & Konfusion – Styles & Styles
16. Matty G – Just Hit Me
17. Matty G – Turf Warz
18. The Others & Trolley Snatcha – Break Your Neck feat. Dread MC
19. Matty G – My 808’s
20. Guido – Mad Sax
21. J:Kenzo – Stomp
22. Matty G – Keepin’ It Real
23. Matty G – Cold Break Ill
24. Matty G & Ugene – Back To The Bay
25. Matty G – Soundtrap
26. Sub Scape – Screw Up (Matty G Remix)
27. Matty G – Jam Like A Tek
28. Mavado – Gangsta 4 Life (Coki Remix)
29. Matty G – Madeira
I’ve finally got the decks set up again; between the baby, the new job, and the move back to London I’ve not had much opportunity for mixing recently. Fingers crossed that will be remedied soon!
In the meantime, I’ve got two very different but equally massive guest mixes coming up very soon. First up is another great hard house/hard trance tribute by Tyssen, and then I’ve got a proper head-nodding deep dubstep mix from Brummy dj Audio Addict. Keep your eyes peeled!
Firstly, big up the mighty M-Zone for posting this video. Wow! (That gun-finger guy probably felt super rough the next day!)
Anyways, I’m 30, right. Married, a father, good job. A proper grown-up (more or less).
You would think I would be pretty sensible by now, right? And generally I am. No more three day parties for me!
Even so, sometimes I do things that are just foolish, that betray a real lack of foresight.
Like reading YouTube comments.
I know what you’re thinking … why subject myself to that? Although it is a great service, and a world-changing site, for some reason, YouTube also seems to attract a huge number of sub-literate morons, so reading the comments below most videos is an exercise in masochism.
Anyways, I was reading the comments (because, as mentioned, I’m not always sensible), and I noticed several members of the younger generation complaining that the people in the video weren’t dressed up and weren’t doing cool dancing.
Seriously, kids. What. The. Fuck.
Talk about missing the point, about getting things hopelessly, hopelessly muddled.
Raving was never about dressing up whether in fancy clothes or in neon bollocks with bracelets up to your elbows. It was about going out, dancing, meeting people, and having fun – about not worrying about impressing people or being cool or anything like that.
It’s the same with the dancing – the point was that you didn’t have to be a good dancer, but that you went out, expressed yourself, and had fun. When I spent a couple years back in New York and went out to raves that was one of the things I always noticed – lots of people standing around watching other people dance. That’s not how you do it! Just have fun and enjoy yourself and who cares if you look silly?
Life is long enough that you have many years ahead of you to worry what other people think about you; when you’re young you might as well take advantage of it and go for it.
Kevin Energy, freeform hardcore legend, founder of the Nu Energy Collective, and general shit-hot dj, announced this week that after more than 15 years in the game, he’s going to be closing down his various labels and taking a break from dj-ing. If you’ve enjoyed any of my Rampage Turbo series of freeform hardcore mixes, then you’ll know that this is a sad day for lovers of the harder side of music.
If you’re into the Nu Energy sound, make sure to pre-order My Rave his farewell double mix compilation, on either cd or download. Featuring two mixes, one of new stuff and one of old, it looks frankly amazing.
A pre-streamlined Skelp playing at Rampage, Edinburgh, 2002
From time to time people ask me if I’m planning on doing any more freeform hardcore mixes … and frankly it’s a pretty good question!
I’d like to, but I left my freeform collection in London when I moved to Edinburgh, so now that I’m moving back to London, it looks like I’ll hopefully get the chance to put together one or two old skool freeform mixes in the coming months.
Until then, however, you could do a lot worse than check out The End of the Beginning, the great new mix that my old friend Skelp has just posted. I’ve known Skelp since the Rampage days, and he’s always had an ear for quality tunage, and this set is no exception, slamming through some golden early freeform/trancecore favorites from labels like XY2, Nu Energy, Digital Beats, and Great British Techno.
As the man himself would say … yaldie! 😀
Oh, and sad bastard that I am, of course I created a cue file for it, which you can grab here.