Buckle Up!

My next mix doesn't come with such a long story. This is a mix I did at the start of September, of "breaks" material, you know, Thursday Club, Y3K, that kinda style. Not a scene I follow closely, and one which sometimes seems to me to get into a rut all-too easily, some of my pet peeves being:

• samey beats - even a simple boom-tsh-boom-tsh half-step being an excuse for a "breakbeat" on all too many tracks, the ones where you get two kicks to a bar but no syncopation anywhere
• over reliance on re-edits of classics and remixes of well-known tunes from the mainstream house scene.

But that is not to say there is not some stonking stuff and some excellent, innovative labels, and after all dance music is about having fun, and if it makes you dance, then that is what matters.

I can hardly claim this mix to be a showcase of carefully selected tunes or anything like that. I just had a big pile of CDs knocking about, picked up cheap from record fairs etc, and eventually enough breaks tracks built up for a decent mix.

Here's the tracklist:

FX: Alan Key - Get Ready Keyhole
Mylo - Muscle Car (Tiga's Nightmare Chords Mix)
Deep Dish - Stranded (Brother Brown B-Mix)
The Doors - Hello, I Love You (Adam Freeland Remix)
Stanton Warriors - Blue
Ferry Corsten - Watch Out (Lee Coombs Remix)
The Egg - Work (Atomic Hooligan Remix)
Freestylers - Push Up (Steady J re-edit)
Stanton Warriors - Still Here
Freq Nasty - Sil Num Tao (Plastic Pervert Remix)
Merka - Mystic Man (Retro re Dub)
ILS - Next Level
Splitloop - Electric Fence
ILS - Cherish (ILS Instrumental)
Backdraft - Labrat
Freq Nasty - Brooklyn to Brixton (Freestylers Raw as Fuck Mix)
S.C.A.M. - Killer
Pendulum vs Freestylers - Fasten Your Seatbelt

That intro is from a sample disc that came with iDJ Mag (I think), while several (Splitloop, Backdraft and S.C.A.M.) are off another iDJ disc, "Premium Breaks" which really is an excellent compilation. The Deep Dish tune is perhaps not what would be expected, but this mix has a wicked old-skool beat sampled under it; this is pretty much the oldest track on there (not counting the original of the Doors of course!). The "Steady J Re-Edit") of Freestylers "Push Up" is nothing so grand in reality - just live use of the looping and other features on the CDJ-400s to extend this excellent track, because I only have the short version of this mix. In my usual style, I worked the tempo and the intensity of the tunes towards the end. I didn't even have the Pendulum track lined up for the mix until I dropped the S.C.A.M. tune and realised I had a good fit and a real stonker to finish off the set!

Enjoy the Mix!