Hello Hello Hi. It's been a while so I thought I'd post up a trio of mixes that have been giving me brain erections over the last few weeks. Every time I listen to them in the office where I'm ''working'' I have to cross my ears over my skull just to hide the bulge. Failing that I just concentrate very hard on data entry and my brain begins to shrink to a manageable size - say, that of a tennis ball.
The mix I've been listening to the longest is Ben UFO's Fabric Promo Mix (right click and save). It's intesting that the kind of 'dubstep' Ben's playing nowadays is so percussively led that there isn't a very obvious point where he moves from stuff like Omar S and Karizma to Peverelist and Mala. It's all mixed up, and it BANGS the whole way through (not the way a porn-star bangs, more like the way Seal probably bangs if he's pissed). Worth a special mention are the tunes by James Blake and Joy Orbison - both fucking bootiful and full of happyweird vibes.
Greena - Maracay (Forthcoming Applepips)
Omar S - Busaru Beats (Sound Signature)
Aphrodisiax - Unfinished Business (Jus House)
Karizma - 33rd Street Anthem (Defected)
Unknown - Unknown (Unreleased)
Altered Natives - Rass Out (Fresh Minute)
Pearson Sound - Wad (Unreleased)
L-Vis 1990 - Hey! (Unreleased)
Brackles and Shortstuff - Sutorito Faita (Forthcoming Planet Mu)
Deep Cover Inc. - Deepin' Side [NYC dub mix] (FX)
Ramadanman - No Swing (Unreleased)
STP - The Fall [T++ remix] (Subsolo)
Peverelist - Teachings (Unreleased)
Shortstuff and Mickey Pearce - Tripped Up (Unreleased)
Untold - I Can't Stop This Feeling [Pangaea remix] (Unreleased)
Bump and Flex - Promises [Hardstep dub] (Urban Heat)
Untold vs. Tempz - Nextaconda (Unreleased)
Youngstar - Bongcat Riddem (White)
James Blake - Air and Lack Thereof (Unreleased)
Untold - Flexible (Unreleased) Ikonika - Unknown (Unreleased)
Mala - Hunter (DMZ)
Joy Orbison - Hyph Mngo (Unreleased
Next up is a mix by Alex Bok Bok for Lucky Me (right click save) which is, barring the most tasteful (but good) thing I've ever heard from Doneao, approx. an hour of veiny sausage meat riddims.
01 - REFUGE - U Best Believe
02 - DONAEO - Love To Happen
03 - MOSCA - Square One
04 - DRE SKULL - I Want You (BOK BOK remix dub)
05 - ALISON HINDS ft MACHEL MONTANO
06 - DJ CLEO - East Rand Funk
07 - R1 RYDERS - Rubberband
08 - DORIAN CONCEPT - Trilingual Dance Sexperience
09 - SHORTSTUFF & MICKEY PEARCE - Tripped Up
10 - ZOMBY - With Lasers
11 - ELECTRIK RED - Drink In My Cup
12 - JOKER & GINZ - Purple City
13 - TERROR DANJAH - Sidechain
14 - BOK BOK - Crew dub
15 - DJ ASSAULT - Vandalism
16 - MR DE - Time Space Scrilla
17 - BASUTBUDET - Take Them Out To Eat (BOK BOK's sundown edit)
The tunes on this mix are nuts, I don't even know what genre a lot of them belong to - but it's in the area of funky/garage/dubstep/grime/soca/rave... Remember this post? All the mixes in this post wot I'm doing here mix up different genres, but there are also quite a few tunes in each mix which are spanning genres on their own - margin tunes which are forming a new and turbulent centre in this kind of mix.
Last but by no-fucking-means least is Untold's mix for Fact Magazine (Link HERE). In Blackdown's recent interview with him, Untold talks about how he is interested in combining cliches from various genres to see what will happen to them - 'mongrel' beats. You'll see what he means as soon as you hear this mix. His tunes feature recognisable synth/bass sounds from Grime/8-Bar, jungle, hardcore etc. placed together in rough harmony - and whether or not the combination always works, you can't deny the energy and excitement that such a scattergun approach provokes (to both the listener/dancer and the budding producer/DJ).
These tunes are mixed down perfectly well, and will no doubt devastate a dancefloor, but they don't sound at all slick or tasteful: you can see the joins. In this respect, they do justice to the references they make to early 90's hardcore music in using certain sounds in exhibiting a similar sort of 'chuck it in if it works' quality. I don't want to go overboard on the chin strokery analysis which the use of 'nuum' samples invites, because really the achievment of this music is to make you twitch around in your chair like a human hamburger leaving death row.
The tunes on this mix are nuts, I don't even know what genre a lot of them belong to - but it's in the area of funky/garage/dubstep/grime/soca/rave... Remember this post? All the mixes in this post wot I'm doing here mix up different genres, but there are also quite a few tunes in each mix which are spanning genres on their own - margin tunes which are forming a new and turbulent centre in this kind of mix.
Last but by no-fucking-means least is Untold's mix for Fact Magazine (Link HERE). In Blackdown's recent interview with him, Untold talks about how he is interested in combining cliches from various genres to see what will happen to them - 'mongrel' beats. You'll see what he means as soon as you hear this mix. His tunes feature recognisable synth/bass sounds from Grime/8-Bar, jungle, hardcore etc. placed together in rough harmony - and whether or not the combination always works, you can't deny the energy and excitement that such a scattergun approach provokes (to both the listener/dancer and the budding producer/DJ).
These tunes are mixed down perfectly well, and will no doubt devastate a dancefloor, but they don't sound at all slick or tasteful: you can see the joins. In this respect, they do justice to the references they make to early 90's hardcore music in using certain sounds in exhibiting a similar sort of 'chuck it in if it works' quality. I don't want to go overboard on the chin strokery analysis which the use of 'nuum' samples invites, because really the achievment of this music is to make you twitch around in your chair like a human hamburger leaving death row.
Stereotyp - Uepa (feat.Joyce Muniz) - Man Recordings
Untold - Just for You (Roska remix) - forthcoming Hotflush
Hot City - No More - forthcoming Infrasonics
Untold - Never went away - unreleased
Untold - I can't stop this feeling (Pangaea remix) - forthcoming Hemlock
Untold - No one likes a smartarse - unreleased
Untold - Gonna work out fine - unreleased
Untold - You didn't win the holiday - unreleased
Untold - Stop what you're doing - unreleased
DJ C - Jump Up and Bounce (ft. Ms. Thing) (LV remix) - unreleased
Littlefoot - Sell my soul - unreleased
Mount Kimbie - Esasub - unreleased
TRG - Siberian poker - unreleased
Ramadanman - Bleeper - unreleased
Ramadanman - No swing - unreleased
Joe - Perculate - unreleased
Untold - Flexible - unreleased
Shortstuff & Mickey Pearce - Tripped up - unreleased
LV - Crossfire - unreleased
Generally speaking, this is raw and 'shallow' music. There's not much depth (there's no room for it - it's surface orientated, sounds jostling for position... it's too ADD also - warping, pitch-eluding synths, rhythm evading drums and almost childish: ecstactic, restless, joyful... emotions as unambiguous as in rave music...)... but who cares? It's rave music. Dance music. It's fun music, not po-faced: but not a joke either. Being taken away from genre, from specific places, is a double edged sword - certain things are lost but the focus becomes more about the sounds: how they're used, how they can be clashed and mashed together etc. And the lack of deference to generic rules results in things you haven't heard a hundred times before (if you're me, at least).
I've clearly got too much thought on my brain.
That Roska RMX is raw, and his remix of Neighbourhood (see HERE) sounds even better.
