I recorded this mix with a tremendous hangover on a Saturday afternoon. I don’t remember the party where I was the day before, but I was somehow in a special mood. I used two Technics SL-1210Mk2´s, an Allen and Heath Xone 32, and some fucked up scratchy needles (you will hear). Some parts of the mix I planned and others not. It’s semi-improvisational.
The first song I played is from Miles Davis. It’s an old record from my father’s collection. It’s not rare, but since my childhood, I liked to listen to this record. Then I come over with the dinosaurs from Kraftwerk.Everybody knows 'Die Roboter'. I used this track to start slow to make way for the other slow records that come later, after I play some current slow house hits.
I think for either a podcast or playing at a bar, this music is the right thing.The record from Space Dimension Controller is special for me. I found it at Hardwax in Berlin. I was hit by the colours on the cover so I gave her a try and boom! There's some really great shit that’s coming up to us from SDC. The last one is from a band called Dominique. I got this from my favorite record store: Smallville Records. The whole album is so beautiful.
For me, doing digital studio mixes are a bit of a challenge. I’m usually trying to pull together the perfect mix often hyper-editing the songs till they fit perfectly. In a way, doing a studio mix is not unlike writing a song – just instead of samples and synth sounds I’m using full songs.
Mixes like this are always something I like to do when I’m in route to a gig. It seems to pass the time nicely, and Ableton holds up really well in Windows power saver mode. I’m usually able to get about 3.5 – 4 hours of battery life out of my Toshiba laptop which is enough time to get the job done.
The mix I did for Kristina Childs’ ‘Plasmodium’ podcast was a little different than the mixes I’ve done in the past. Previously, the structure was pretty standard – beat match the songs to fit the tempo of the mix, and select songs which contribute the overall flow of the mix while staying in key with their counterparts.
With the Plasmodium mix, I wanted to see if I could adjust the overall tempo of the project and leave each song at its original tempo. So rather than beat matching each song and warping them into place – the project is constantly adjusting itself to the music. The idea is to leave the majority of each song unwarped, and only warp the audio file during the mix. To make things a little more tricky, I figured it would also be cool to migrate my way from a slower funk tempo (90-something), ending with a more up-beat dance tempo (120-something).
Doing this was a little tricky because the transitions needed to sound natural with as little warping as possible. I needed follow a bit of a hierarchy:
1. Song Selection: First and foremost I needed to stick with the songs that are going to work with the mix. So I put together a pool of music that I felt was in-line with my vision for this mix. The end result was a pool of about 60 songs of various tempos.
2.Sort by Tempo – Then by Key: It seemed easiest to run the songs through Mixed-In-Key to measure tempo first, this way it would be easy to see which songs were closest in timing, then I could see which songs were closest to each other in key.
Since the point of this mix is to keep the songs beat matched while mostly preserving the full integrity of each song, I decided to only warp each track only while it was in the mix. To do this, I had to lay out the mix first. I sliced each song from the start of each mix to the end of the mix, and changed the timing algorithm (in live 7) to “complex” during the mix. After the each song was finished being mixed, the following clips were left unwarped.
The end result was pretty nice – very little to no degradation in sound for each song that I used, and a full beat matched mix of music leaving each song as it was intended to be heard.
01. Fatback Band - Summertime Funk 02. Rayko - Transfer (Endless Melody Edit) 03. Submoave - Garden With Blue Grass 04. Kraak and Smack Feat Ben Westbeech - Squeeze Me 05. Audited Beats - Trailer Party 06. Nego Mozambique - Wake Up For The Music 07. Lewie Day - Lychee Martini (With Francis E Dec Radio Rant) 08. Audion - I Am The Car 09. Soul Clap - Concious 10. Koze - Mrs Bojangels 11. Hakan Lidbo Feat Vincent Inc - We Fall So Deep (Addex Remix) 12. Sebastian Davidson - Nightbird (Aki Bergen and Seb Davidson Mix) 13. Daze Deten - Downtown Hustle 14. DJ Leandre - I Tried 4 U 15. Mark E - Human 16. Soundstream - Rainmaker 17. Bubba - Grander Scale Of Love 18. Lee Curtiss - Smoking Mirrors 19. Andre Lodemann - Where Are You Now 20. King Tubby - Psyche Out
In this jaunt, I decided to start off ambient because I made this mix in the morning (and I don't like listening to intensity in the morning). However, as I woke up during the process of mixing, my neurons started connecting again. So I ended it with dubby beats. This is for those slow mornings, where the dog is staring at you, the newspaper has nothing really shocking in it, the cell phone is out of batteries, the computer is off and for a few minutes you are in a moment of meditation of sorts. This train of thought reminds me of a line of spoken word I heard in the N. Sotomayor song Dreaming I. "We are all individual, as individual as the anxiety that kills us.” Turn it all off if it’s on. Our natural state isn't attached to a cell phone or staring at a computer screen. And at our core we know it, which makes moments of stillness so amazing. I don't know about you but I treasure the organic.
I named this Mangolian mix because I finished a mango as I mastered it. It was simply tasty.
Intro: YMO - Snakeman Show KDD (My Company is Called) 01. James Murray - Eleven (Decades Mix) 02. Triola - Schildergasse 03. Mooma - Herd Forming 04. Green Empathy - Walk the talk 05. Sarah Corbe - Lichtreise - Original Mix 06. Taban Hayes - Chutney (unreleased) 07. Reaganz - Freerotation 08. Rocket Empire - Simmer Down Jammie 09. Blaze Dem - Dubness of Creation 10. Federico Aubele - El Amor de Esta Pueblo - Original Mix 11. Mother Nature - Night Call - Original Mix 12. Tosca - Everyday and Everynight
In this mix Sawf tried to combine seemingly disparate tracks from different genres like Industrial, House, Breaks etc. By ‘combine’, he doesn't mean it in the classic way of mash-ups, like going from soft beats at the start of the set and ending in a hard way. Rather, using four decks on Traktor, he really layers these separate genres after exhaustively equing and filtering them. He always wondered why people use four decks to mix four techno tracks or four house tracks. It’s boring to him as a DJ as there's no real challenge in mixing tracks in the same genre since the beatmatch is automated. Sawf has no boundaries . He creates in a world where edges don’t exist. Trusting in his intuition, his ideas eventually loop back around and come out in his music with greater range and depth. While techno is in the main structure of this mix, you also get a million things coming in and out as they pass by each other and create new contexts.
01. Ripperton & Agnes - Zeitgeist (tool edit) [Num Records] 02. Milton Bradley - The Unheard Voice From Outer Space [Prologue] 03. Sawf - Vafla [N/A] 04. Oskar Offermann - Only My Shorts [White] 05. Sawf - Slim [Perc Trax] 06. Aaron Carl - Down Revisited [Wallshaker Music] 07. Sawf - Okladon [N/A] 08. Motor City Drum Ensemble - Got It [Prime Numbers] 09. Sven Wittekind - Sucker Fuck U Too [Abstract] 10. tINI - That's Right [Desolat] 11. Sawf - Body (Dub) [Perc Trax] 12. Moodymann - Dem Young Sconies [Planet E] 13. Martin Buttrich - Back It Up [Desolat] 14. Dollkraut - Loot [Doppelschall] 15. Ben Klock - Viscoplastic [Deeply Rooted House] 16. Ancient Methods - The Whip [RSB] 17. Martyn ft. Spaceape - Is This Insanity? (Ben Klock Remix) [3024] 18. Dj Slugo - Taris Sleeps Wild [Dance Mania] 19. QX-1 - Work That Motherfucker (Sawf Dubapella) [N/A] 20. Sawf - La Kouva [Perc Trax] 21. Perc - Benwell (Sawf Remix) [Perc Trax] 22. British Murder Boys - All The Saints Have Been Hung [Counterbalance] 23. Blackpocket - Ure A Sta (Martyn Remix) [Fat City] 24. Jeroen Liebregts - Hunter / Grazer (Sinecure Remix) [Audio Assault] 25. Dj Godfather/Starski - On Da Flo [Twillight 76]
Rather than plan out a set like I often do, this time I just picked tracks out of a pile: some new, some unreleased and some that I have been playing out. No thought process. I just let go and, in one take, this mix is the result. It's not perfect (although I don't think that is the point). It's more about discovering the possibilities. There is something artful about it and yet still playful at the same time. I enjoyed this exercise in that it allowed me to not program – just play and see what happens. This reminds me of the early days in the 90's in the basement jamming: no program, no process. I hope the listeners will enjoy what is being presented and shared here.
01. DJ Spider - Nang Yerk (Feat: Venus 7) - Plan B Recording 02. DJ QU - Secrect Place - Strength Music Recordings 03. Analog Diaries - Sketch 9 - CDR 04. Patrice Scott - Eclipse - Sistrum Recordings 05. DJ Auqa Beat (AQBT) - 11 - CDR 06. Adultnapper - Monitor - Lion1Music 07. DJ Jus Ed - Listening In - Underground Quality 08. Move D - Aspiration 2010 - Soul People Music 09. Joey Anderson - Untitled - CDR 10. DJ QU - Circuit - Strength Music Recordings 11. ? 12. Black Jazz Consortium - The Om - Soul People Music
Music is so personal, and in turn so endlessly subjective. It’s the personal relationship I have with music that I wanted to explore, given that - to me at least - the nature of these mixes is a little…different. It wasn’t planned at length or mused over with a fine edit comb; it was recorded and arranged hastily in one night.
For people who might have read my writing or those who follow the blog for the specific kind of music it covers the choices could be a little weird for weird’s sake, but it was a simple exploration of a neglected record collection that bore it. Obviously there are songs and artists I needed to include for whatever tenuously personal reason, but the particular ‘sound’ I was looking for in all the material exposed itself rather obviously to me at the time.
This mixtape is dedicated to the memory of Ted Danson in Three Men and a Baby; he lived the rawk’n’roll actor lifestyle hard but bolted at the final hurdle. I’d rather be Steve Guttenberg from that film any day; Selleck had the career, the sharp suits and the mustache but Steve...Steve was the one with all the creative flair.
01. Gerhard Trede - Technischer Bewegungsablauf (mlr’s Ted Danson edit) [Normal] 02. Foot Village - . (mlr’s Skip To The End edit) [Tome] 03. Mountains - Map Table [Thrill Jockey] 04. Birdengine - Alone With The Beast Folk [Drift Collective] 05. Hymie’s Basement - America Won/America Two [LEX] 06. Skeletons & The Kings Of All Cities - Fake Tits [Ghostly International] 07. Bill Callahan - Invocation Of Ratiocination [Drag City] 08. Liars - It Fit When I Was A Kid [Mute] 09. 13&God - Superman On Ice [Anticon] 10. Instruments - Black Kite [Free Download] 11. Sixtoo - Cue Burner/Soft Weapon [Bully] 12. Soso - All The Useless Things These Hands Have Done [Endemik] 13. Aesop Rock - Coma [Definitive Jux] 14. John Baker - Codename [Trunk] >> Charles Bukowski Outburst 15. 10cc - I'm Not In Love [Mercury]
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