dj yoko – Sonicrampage

Seven fresh mixes of old skool goodness from DI.fm’s Old School Electronica Channel, plus a selection of classic 90’s mixtapes

For the second year running, Sonicrampage is very happy to present the official blog post to accompany the Old School Mix Marathon V, a very special project organized by Finland’s DJ Meke in conjunction with Digitally Imported’s Old School Electronica channel to celebrate the best in old school rave music (click here to check out the Old School Mix Marathon IV). As I said before, the goal of this project is 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.”

This year’s edition certainly does that, with specially created mixes covers everything from hard trance to rave to Goa trance to, from myself, acid techno.

Here’s a quick run down of the mixes:

Pearsall Slaves to the Silver Box – My own contribution (of which I am working on a separate, distinct post) is another dark, rumbling acid journey, in a similar vein to previous mixes of mine like Beyond The Valley Of The Acid Vixens and The Waveform Cult. IF you like the mind-expanding capabilities of the Roland TB-303, then this is for you!
Yoko vs Meke Rave’O’Lution – The DI.fm Flashback team deliver 80 minutes of relentless European hard trance, covering both classics and obscurities, as well as some modern takes on the classic hard trance sound from Sound Spectre, Artemis Wave, and Yoko himself. High bpm’s, lots of acid, and gigantic melodies … what’s not to love?
Dawn vs Meke RetroActive VI – Meke’s second appearance, alongside Germany’s DJ Dawn, is another headfirst dive into vintage hard trance, with Dawn’s set covering the anthems, while Meke works in some obscurities from SDD label compilations (and I’ll stick my hand up here and say that I’ve never heard any of these tunes before!)
Dave Elyzium Classic Goa & Morden OMGoa – Both Welsh hard trance dj/producer Dave Elyzium and Finnish dj Morden deliver awesome hour long sets of 90’s Goa trance. I haven’t really listened to this stuff in a while … and so I had forgotten how good it is. It’s easy to joke about psytrance and all of its ‘herders of the moon goat’ hippy baggage, but tune wise this early punchy Goa stuff was pretty damn good. I definitely recommend grabbing both mixes if you like psytrance, or even if you are just curious.
Yoko RetroRaveTekk – Yoko’s second mix is a vintage selection of punchy early 90’s rave music, that rich brew of innovation, rip-offs and general dancefloor lunacy from continental Europe that existed at the moment before hardcore, trance, and techno all became distinct genres with rigidly set boundaries. Awesome.
Spacehopper Classic Gabber – Last but very much not least is this absolutely storming set from Spacehopper, covering some of the greatest ever moments in hardcore techno history. Not for the faint-hearted, this high-velocity brain-shredder of a set brings together awesome tunes from the likes of Hellfish, Tieum, Dolphin, and more, and finishes on what is quite possibly the finest moment in hardcore history … Lenny Dee’s Forgotten Moments. Great set.

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

Pearsall – Slaves To The Silver Box (Acid)
Yoko vs Meke – Rave’O’Lution (Hard Trance)
DJ Dawn vs Meke – RetroActive 6 (Hard Trance)
Dave Elyzium (Goa Trance)
Yoko (Rave)
Spacehopper (Gabba)
Morden (Goa Trance)

Enjoy the mixes!

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Old School Mix Marathon IV

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:

Enjoy the mixes!