A few days ago I mentioned that I will be hosting a number of guest mixes in the coming months. One of them will be by Brisbane’s Tyssen, an old mate, who will be contributing a tribute to Pendragon, one of London’s most legendary hard trance parties. Until then, however, be sure to check out the great tribute to Dynamic Intervention that he posted to Bangingtunes over the weekend. If you were a fan of my hard house tribute mixes, this should be right up your street!
Just a quick note, but I’d like you to know that I’ve got a bunch of very exciting guest mixes planned for the next few months. Watch this space …
There are loads of ways to connect with me across the net, so I thought it might be useful to round them up into one post.
First up, I should mention my other blog, which is called Randall Helms DOT com and is about social media marketing. At the moment, I am finishing up an MBA at the University of Edinburgh Business School, and the last stage of this process is writing a dissertation. I am looking at how consumer goods (or FMCG) brands can best use social media to engage with customers (particularly their core customers). As part of this process I have been doing a blog (somewhat intermittently) for the last couple of months where I have been discussing the issues raised in my research. If you are at all interested in the subject, it’s worth having a look.
Secondly, for the last few months I have been on Twitter using the alias @sonicrampage. Mostly I use it to post links to music-related stuff, whether mixes, tracks, or interviews, but I also talk a bit about other stuff. If you are interested, please follow me!
On Facebook there are two ways to connect, firstly through my group Pearsall’s Mixes, which now has more than 140 members. More recently I’ve added a second option, which is to become my fan. I use Facebook mainly for sending out updates about new mixes; occasionally I might use it for other purposes, but don’t worry, if you sign up to either, I won’t bombard you with spam!
Finally, in the last two weeks I have set up an account at Mixcloud, which is an online streaming music service. I’ve only uploaded a couple of mixes so far, but as you can see from the number of plays I’ve gotten, it’s not exactly been a success so far! Anyways, it’s always worth trying these things, and if I want to make it work I’ll need to rethink my strategy.
I guess a better avenue of self-promotion would probably be YouTube, but since I know nothing about making video, that’s not a path that I’ve actively pursued. Having said that, if you are experienced with making video and want to collaborate on a project for YouTube, drop a comment below and I’ll be in touch, since I’m curious to see what impact (if any) it would have on the site.
So there you go, lots of ways to connect with me across the web! 😉
So, finally, voting for my next mix has finished, and the 81 votes break down as follows:
01. Heartcore (Old Skool Hardtrance) – 19 votes, 23% my next mix
02. Cold World (Techstep Drum n’ Bass) – 14 votes, 17%
03. Squat Rocking 5 (Acid Techno) – 11 votes, 14%
04. Beyond the Valley of the Acid Vixens (Acid) – 10 votes, 12%
05. There Must be a Future (UK Acid Trance) – 10 votes, 12%
06. Urban Takedown (Jump-Up Jungle) – 10 votes, 12%
07. Drop the Hammer 8 (Grime) – 6 votes, 7%
08. Now You’re Cool (House & UK Funky) – 1 vote, 1% which came from me, lol 😉
These are very interesting results, actually, which have a lot to say about who actually comes to this site and downloads my mixes. I’m going to chew over these for a few days and then post some longer reflections on this little experiment, but for the moment, I have to say that this has been quite eye-opening in terms of illustrating what people actually want from me (which is not necessarily what I feel like providing!)
Below the jump, check out the widget from Sodahead (the site I used to run the poll):
Those of you who have been frequent visitors to this site will know that I often mention the fact that I always have a variety of different mix concepts in mind, and that sometimes it will take months (or even years!) to turn an idea into an actual mix.
Sometimes I will cheerfully announce an idea for a mix and then won’t get around to doing it for, well, quite some time (as an example, see this thread on Bangingtunes where I’m asked about a UK acid trance mix that I announced I would be doing quite some time ago and had then more or less forgotten about).
Anyways, I thought a neat alternative would be to put the next mix up for a vote, and you can see the voting options on the right-hand side of the page. I’ll be keeping the vote up until Sunday the 18th of July to give people plenty of time to vote for a new mix. In the meantime I will be doing a short 15-20 track mix of some deeper dubstep tunes for a bit of summer flavour (see the tracklist from my set at last year’s Hackney Flea Market for a flavour), and there might well be a guest mix as well.
For those who are curious, here’s some more information about the different mix ideas:
My Eurotrash 3 mix will be played on the Oldschool Electronica Channel at DigitallyImported.fm tonight at 8:00 PM UK time if you are curious. Let’s hope their listeners enjoy it!
Of course, you can always go here and download it instead. 🙂
If you’ve ever wanted to know more about the Roland TB-303, the beautiful acid box, check out Bassline Baseline, a documentary by Nate Harrison, which is available on Google Video.
If you’re curious, here are my ten most popular mixes, as measured by pageviews:
01. Eurotrash 2
02. Kariminology
03. Squat Rocking 3
04. Forever Fierce
05. Squat Rocking 1
06. Wobble City
07. The One True Dominator
08. A Tribute To Baby Doc
09. Liquidate
10. The Waveform Cult
What’s your favourite of my mixes?
Here are two mixes of classic techno that I’ve recently downloaded and enjoyed – you will too!
Chrissy Murderbot’s Year of Mixtapes, Week 48: Detroit Techno – As part of his efforts to do a year’s worth of mixtapes spanning a kaleidoscopic range of genres, Chicago dj/producer Chrissy Murderbot has recently dropped this excellent Detroit techno mix, featuring a whole bunch of classic Motor City cuts from the likes of Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Underground Resistance, Drexciya, Carl Craig, and more. Great tunes, great mixing … great stuff! For those of you who like their mixes cut into individual tracks, I’ve done a cue file for it, which can be grabbed here.
Barry Choonz – Pure Anthems – This mix was featured a little while back on the Ripped in Glasgow blog, and it’s an excellent tribute to the legendary Edinburgh techno club Pure by someone named Barry Choonz (‘barry’ being a local slang word for good). Even though Pure was still running when I moved to Edinburgh the first time around, I don’t think I ever went to one of their events, as they had mostly stopped by the time I became more interested in ‘purist’ techno. So for me these tunes don’t have much nostalgia value … which is not to say they aren’t great, because they are! Loads of classics from the likes of Richie Hawtin, Joey Beltram, Underground Resistance and more. Sure, it’s pretty much a straightforward classic selection, but none the worse for that. Very enjoyable stuff. As with the Chrissy Murderbot mix, I’ve also done a cue file for this one, which can be grabbed here.
Ironman’s DNB Tape Pack Sickness – A totally ridiculous collection of drum n’ bass sets, including mix cd’s, live sets, and radio recordings. Amazing.
Kito guest mix for KMag – Excellent dubstep mix from Australian producer Kito; not really wobbly, but instead an excellent melange of deep, colourful, spacious, and funky beats. Well worth a listen.
Bongo presents Old Acid Trance – Bongo, whose Furious Finnish Freeform I posted a litle while back, has now posted an excellent old skool acid trance mix. Quality stuff.