Hi everyone, hope you had a great weekend!
Here’s a bit of good news – I’ve now posted M-Zone’s hard trance classics mix in the Old School Marathon mega-post. To grab it, click here. I’ve also posted a split version of Proteus’s amazing old skool mix, recorded live at Superstition in Helsinki. Tell your friends, neighbors, and grand-parents!
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.
The weather is terrible in London … so why not some stats?
Welcome to 2012!
It’s been a pretty cool year for me – I became a dad, I got a new job, I moved back to London, and I even had the time to do a few new mixes along the way.
Anyways, I thought it would be nice to put together a post looking back at the last year here on the Sonicrampage blog, because, well, I like numbers and statistics. If you don’t, feel free to skip this post. 😉
All in all, it was quite a good year for the blog, especially considering that it wasn’t updated super-regularly, with almost 54,000 page views over the course of the year, an average of over 4,000 a month, which was very nice. Thanks to everyone who visited, and a special thanks to all the regular reader/listeners!
First up, here’s how those 54,000 page views break down:
Merry Christmas to you from Sonicrampage!
I hope you’re having a great day, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. I’m with my parents, sister, wife, and daughter, and we’re having a lovely day.
I’ve got a present for you tomorrow … a new mix! More details to come …
Also, as a bit of site news, I’ve also recently updated the About Me and the Top Mixes pages, and I’ve also changed the commenting system to Disqus and updated the Facebook Like Button.
Anyways, have a great day, and check back tomorrow for some electro/techno/house bass-fuelled goodness.
Happy Friday!
I’ve got two cool bits of news to report today, that have come about as a result of doing Rampage Turbo 8 back in October. Firstly, DJ Meke (whose Nostrumo mix appeared on Sonicrampage last year) invited me to take part in DI.fm’s Oldschool Mix Marathon IV, which will be running from Thursday, 29 December 2011 at 00:00 until Friday, 30 December 2011 at 23:30. It took all of about five seconds to say yeah!
Check out who else is contributing mixes:
M-ZONE [UK]
“the godfather of UK hard trance”
PROTEUS [Finland]
“resident DJ of Superstition club]
MEKE [Finland] vs YOKO [Germany]
“Flashback duo from DI.fm”
ALLY ASYLUM (UK)
CIRILIOX (Spain)
DAVE ELYZIUM (UK)
DECK JAGGER (Finland)
DJ MINDFLASH (Austria)
INDIVIDUAL (Finland)
MARIO TEKNO (Belgium)
XYBO (Finland)
Fine company to be in! Meke asked me for an old skool trancecore mix, so I’m going to be putting together Rampage Turbo 9, and I’ve even bought in a few old skool goodies from Discogs for the ocassion! More details to come soon, but if you would like to join the Facebook event, click here.
Secondly, Stray from the Freeform Forum has been in touch to ask if I would like to be one of the residents on rotation for the Freeformaniacs show on KraftyRadio.com. Again, I’ve said yes, and I’ll be contributing an hour long old skool freeform mix about every nine weeks, probably starting some time in the new year. More details coming soon.
Exciting times!
Hi all, here are some goodies to cheer you up on this Tuesday evening.
First up, I’ve updated the XLR8R cue file frenzy post with five more cue files for five more mixes, including cue files for DJ Rolando, Roska, The Heatwave, 2562, and Kingdom. Enjoy!
Secondly, I recorded a grime mix about ten days ago. I’m still pondering it, but I reckon it’s a good ‘un, and having some positive feedback, I think I’ll post it as is. All instrumentals, all vinyl, all old skool. Nice.
Thirdly, I’ll be posting another guest mix in a few days, just need to write up a short post to accompany it.
Fourthly (!), I’ve been offered a slot in a DI.fm special old skool mix marathon, so I’m going to do Rampage Turbo 9 … yet more old skool freeform goodness! If you liked Rampage Turbo 8, then you’ll love this.
Finally, here’s a little treat for you; it’s an old techno mix from Brooklyn legend Frankie Bones.
Just a quick word to let you know that I’ve now set up a subscribe button on the right-hand side, so that you can receive an email whenever I do a new post, whether it’s a mix, a cue file frenzy, something random, or just a little news post like this.
Traffic in London … totally irrelevant to XLR8R, which is in San Francisco, but such is life
Here’s a second edition of my cue file frenzy, in which I admit to my ridiculous obsession with chopping up online mixes for my own listening pleasure … and, having come clean, decide to share the fruits of my labors with you!
This time I’ve provided cue files for 20 mixes from the XLR8R Podcast series, as curated by XLR8R Magazine.
Enjoy!
Updated November 29th, 2011
Podcast 105: The Heatwave’s Funky Bashment Mix (Cue file) – UK Funky/Dancehall
Podcast 106: Roska (Cue file) – UK Funky
Podcast 125: Martyn (Cue file) – Electro/House/Techno
Podcast 136: Ikonika (Cue file) – UK Bass/Dubstep
Podcast 137: Ben UFO (Cue file) – House/UK Bass
Podcast 143: MJ Cole (Cue file) – UK Funky/UK Bass
Podcast 147: Todd Edwards (Cue file) – Garage/House
Podcast 155: Guido (Cue file) – Dubstep
Podcast 156: Girl Unit (Cue file) – UK Bass
Podcast 160: DVA (Cue file) – UK Funky/UK Bass
Podcast 165: Bok Bok (Cue file) – UK Bass
Podcast 168: Toddla T (Cue file) – UK Bass
Podcast 170: DJ Food & DK vs Coldcut (Cue file) – All kinds of stuff
Podcast 172: Lil Silva (Cue file) – UK Funky
Podcast 175: Elijah & Skilliam (Cue file) – Grime
Podcast 178: Oneman (Cue file) – UK Bass
Podcast 179: T. Williams (Cue file) – UK Funky/House
Podcast 185: 2562 (Cue file) – Techno/House/Bass
Podcast 188: Kingdom (Cue file) – Bass
Podcast 200B: Mala (Cue file) – Dubstep
Podcast 206: Rolando (Cue file) – Techno
Podcast 207: Dark Sky (Cue file) – UK Bass
Podcast 210: xxxy (Cue file) – UK Bass/House
Podcast 216: Altered Natives (Cue file) – UK Bass/House
Podcast 218: Robert Hood (Cue file) – Techno
Podcast 227: Om Unit (Cue file) – Beats
Podcast 236: Champion (Cue file) – UK Funky
Podcast 254: Ben Sims (Cue file) – Techno
Podcast 264: DJ Stingray’s New Forms Mix (Cue file) – Electro
If you like UK Bass, make sure you check out my Taste The Rainbow mix, for my selection of the best bass tunes of 2011.
Also, if you enjoy this sort of thing, check out my guide to chopping up mixes.
Update 17/02/2013: Added links for the Om Unit, Champion, Ben Sims, and DJ Stingray mixes
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?