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Girdler Synthetic’s Lab 4 Tribute – A Must Listen!

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What are you doing right now?

Well, whatever it is, stop it. Right. This. Second.

And go listen to the new Lab 4 tribute by Girdler Synthetic, the Soundcloud player of which I have helpfully embedded above. It’s two hours of wall-to-wall amazing tunes from Lab 4, who were pretty much my favorite hard trance act of all time. I first encountered Lab 4, aged 17, at the Pendragon Summer Solstice rave in Brixton Academy, and I was absolutely blown away by the power of tunes like ‘XL6’, ‘Genetik Response’, and ‘Reformation’ (to be fair, there was a little, um, assistance in the process 😉 ), and I must have seen them at least a dozen more times over the years after that, at places like The Drome, Heaven, The Astoria, The Fridge, Camden Palace, etc, and every single time they rocked it good, and they rocked it hard, the intensity and the tempo building and building into a crescendo of fist-pumping, teeth-clenching madness. Somehow their genius transcended normal scene boundaries, with their sets destroying crusties, Antipodeans, and northern furry-booted donkmeisters with equal efficiency.

Damn, they were good.

In fact, I love them so much I was planning on doing my own tribute, but I suppose I don’t have to now!

I’ve also made a cue file, for anyone else who wants to split up this mix, which you can grab here.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

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Freeformaniacs Update

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Tomorrow on the Freeformaniacs show … Jerome and Endemic! Make sure to tune in at KraftyRadio.com …

Oh, and let me know which of my 2013 mix concepts you want to hear!

Here is a selection of some of the recent episodes:

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More XLR8R Podcast Cue Files …

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Just a little post for today, but I wanted to let you know that I’ve now updated my XLR8R Podcasts cue file frenzy post with cue files for XLR8R magazine podcasts from techno hero Ben Sims, UK Funky maestro Champion, deep beats wizard Om Unit, and Detroit electro mainstay DJ Stingray. Check it out!

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Saturday Mix Round-Up: Luke Vibert, Butterz, Special Request, and more!

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It’s Saturday! Here are a few mixes that I’ve enjoyed recently on Soundcloud (imo, Soundcloud is now hands-down the best music service on the net):

First up, is Fact Mix 362, Special Request’s mix for the Fact mix series, which charts a course through rave sounds, from old to new. Special Request is a new(ish) alias of long-time house producer Paul Woolford, covering some fresh house interpretations of the old skool hardcore sound. Good fun!

Next up is ‘Amenarchy’, an absolutely blazing new skool jungle mix from San Diego’s DJ Rebellion; I found this on the always excellent RaggaJungle.biz site. Some absolutely murderous breaks and basslines on this – I really really enjoyed this mix, and you will too.

Elijah and Skilliam from Butterz have been enthusiastically driving the grime renaissance over the last few years through their label, blogs, radio shows, and club gigs, and, of course, their mixes. Their latest one, a Valentines special for the Special Request mix series, showcases the more romantic side of grime (well, everything is relative) … featuring tracks from Ruff Sqwad, Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, and many more. I thought it was great – an excellent selection of quality tunes, both old and new. If you liked my Drop The Hammer 8 then you’ll dig this.

Staying on a grimey tip, off the back of a recommendation from Mark Jenkins of Fried My Little Brain I discovered this excellent mix by Slackk. Slackk has a unique style, mashing together grime sounds with house rhythms to make a unique London dance sound, all clicks, squawks, and icy cold blasts of Eskibass.

Last but very much not least is this live recording of Luke Vibert’s set at Vinyl Pimp’s Hackney shop last Saturday night in conjunction with Discogs. I’ve been good friends with Man Hon Luk, the Vinyl Pimp himself, for over ten years and it’s really really cool to see his business doing new and exciting things. Sadly I wasn’t able to make it to the party last weekend because my little girl was sick, but just listen to this set – listen to it! A thing of true beauty. If you’re on Facebook you can see an album of photos of the night right here.

Oh yeah, and if you’re a vinyl junkie and you have a Discogs wants list, click here to see what the Vinyl Pimp has in stock for you!

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Mix concepts for 2013

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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:

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Weekend Treat!

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Om nom nom nom … my wife is doing a Cordon Bleu course at the moment, and these are the kinds of goodies I am getting. Life is tough!

On another note, here’s a streamable version of Rampage Turbo 15; proper post and download link coming next week, but for now wrap your ears around this:

Freeformaniacs Round 8 – Pearsall presents Rampage Turbo 15 (31/01/2013) by Freeformaniacs on Mixcloud

Of course, I would be remiss to not include in this post the two other great mixes that have already been done for Round 8 of Freeformaniacs:

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Lift off with DJ Yoko!

Absolutely, utterly banging. No more needs to be said.

(Oh, and don’t forget to download Yoko’s mix from last year’s Old School Mix Marathon IV)

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This Thursday on Freeformaniacs …

So, you voted! And you voted for me to do a Stage One Music tribute in honor of early trancecore/freeform pioneers the Stage One Music Company.

As I am a man of my word, I am very proud to say that this Thursday at 10am I will be premiering Rampage Turbo 13: A Stage One Music Special on the Freeformaniacs show on Krafty Radio.

As ever, it will be available to download here on Sonicrampage the day after.

Make sure to tune in!

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Please Donate to Help Keep Sonicrampage Awesome!

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After four years of running Sonicrampage, after having done dozens of mixes and written all kinds of essays, and after having never asked for anything in return, I would now like to make a small request. If you are someone who has used and enjoyed the site – whether fir the music, the essays, the pictures, or the whole package – I would greatly appreciate it if you would consider making a donation to help me keep running the site.

For the last four years I have paid for this site out of my own pocket because, well, it’s my hobby, but it has become more expensive as the site has gotten more popular and more people have come to download the mixes … which is obviously a good thing! However, it does cost money to pay for the server and for my Soundcloud account, and as I am a family man I would really appreciate a contribution to help keep this site a fun, non-profit musical enterprise, based around exploring old and new dance music.

At the moment, Sonicrampage offers dozens of hours of underground electronic music entirely for free, which is something that I am proud of, and I have plans to make the site even better and offer even more content, however I will need a little financial help to make it a reality.

One thing that I can promise you is that that the donations would be used purely for the upkeep of the site.

How would I spend the donations? Initially, I would like to upgrade my Soundcloud account from Solo to a Pro account on Soundcloud, so that I can continue to provide a Soundcloud option on all new mixes (see here for more info on the various account types). Then I would like to put money towards paying my annual hosting fees, which doubled this year after my hosting company Inmotion forced me to upgrade to a Virtual Private Server to better handle the amount of traffic and resources that it was using. As I would be surprised to get even that much money, I haven’t thought about what I would do once the hosting was paid for! I wouldn’t spend the money on myself or my family, as the donation button is purely for the upkeep of the site – I would just put it against future hosting costs.

Thanks for reading this far, and please consider donating if you can afford it:





Eurotrash 4 is coming very soon, and my acid mix for The Seven Dimensions of Euphoria will be available sometime later this month!

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Who’s Up Next? Forthcoming Guest Mixers on Sonicrampage

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Although Sonicrampage is primarily a website devoted to my own mixes, I also love asking other dj’s to contribute their own guest mixes to the site, and by now I’ve got a nice collection of mixes from other dj’s, covering genres as disparate as dubstep, techno, old skool ardkore, hard trance/hard house, and freeform hardcore. Personally, I’m always listening to mixes and checking out new dj’s, so I thought it would be nice to give you guys a little introduction to some of the dj’s who will be contributing guest mixes this year.

First up (since I am doing this in alphabetical order), is Dubloke, a bass music dj from London that I first encountered on DSF; I’ve asked him to contribute an instrumental grime mix similar to my own Drop The Hammer 8 and, well, this:

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