Radley Marx

New Old School DJ Mix: “Hamsters Hoovers and Toy Pianos”

Happy to announce I just finished up a new 90+ minute old school mix full of the great sounds of early techno and UK hardcore (’91 – ‘94):

Download (220MB, 320k)

or

Mixcloud (web player)

For those that need an explanation, the title comes from nick-names from the genre: hamsters for the sped up vocal samples, hoovers for the Juno stabs and builds, and toy pianos for that slightly out of tune, tinny kiddy piano sound.

All of the tracks used in this mix came and went long before the intertubes yet somehow they managed to cross the digital divide and exist as decent quality mp3s. A few were surprisingly easy to purchase as downloads (Good 2Bad & Hugly) while others are still expensive to find in digital form (Unity – North/South Remixes).

I also found large fan collections of old school tracks which contained a lot of bad knockoffs and really dated industrial beasts. But among those were gems, some of which I loved but could never name (Gordon Edge – Feef Logic aka Un-fucking-believable) and others I had never heard but were clearly classics (Sly T & Ollie J – Help Me).

Other nice bits:

• three Prodigy tracks
• Way in my Brain remix (didn’t think it could be as good as the original)
• two back-to-back Kickin’ Records tracks including the over-the-top drug choon: Xenophobia  - Rushing The House
• a beautiful CJ Bolland remix of NRG  - I Need Your Lovin’ to finish it all off.

Full track listing is included in the mp3’s lyrics.

As for the mix: I used my Vestax VCI-100 instead of decks and trusted the sync controls to manage most of the beat-matching. This approach made it much easier to produce a tighter, more well constructed mix utilizing cue points and loops, as well as easily going back and adding new tracks/mixes and even re-recording particular mixes that spiked or didn’t work. In the mix-down, along with removing pops and normalizing I liberally cut phrases of certain tracks that took too long, slowed down the mix, or were very painful parts of otherwise great songs (i.e. the shrieking banshee in The Prodigy’s Your Love).

Just for fun: here’s a pic of my Vestax VCL-100 (for which I’m anxiously awaiting a new midi-map plastic overlay):

Migrating Mixes to Mixcloud

Backstory: Soundcloud changed the nature of their service last week, switching from five uploads / month for their free account to a “mixtape” policy with a total duration. As such I’d have to pay €9/month to host six or seven mixes. I can do that for free right here on my blog. But it’s nice to discover mixes that other DJs are making so I’ll keep my Soundcloud account and start posting my own mixes elsewhere.

So I decided to give Mixcloud a spin. I’ve heard good things and they’re part of my personal network. I’ve already posted two of my mixes, Sunday Old School and the Larry Levan Funk Mix I made for Mike which has been making the rounds.

One of the surprising cool features of Mixcloud is the requirement to provide a full track-listing for each podcast or mix (Mixcloud actually pays royalties for mixes played based on some form of radio rules). These listings are cross-referenced, so you can click on the name of any artist and discover any other mix containing that artist.

For example, I had a Quadrophonia track in my mix through which I discovered another old school mix for FACT magazine containing the same track. And within the mix was two excellent tracks on R&S records by Outlander and Second Phase that I knew well as samples, but never knew the true origins. This feature alone is quite sexy.

There’s no API (yet) but there is an RSS feed and embeddable widget. We’ll be talking to them very soon about Cloudskipper =)

Here’s the disco funk mix Jesse’s mom is currently getting down to:

Tribute To Larry Levan – Funk Mix by Radley on Mixcloud

Sunday Old School – new mix on Soundcloud

It all started with Sonz Of A Loop Da Loop Era – “Higher” – a super tongue-in-cheek track with a great sample “And I was so high off the ground that I could see for miles around.” This was the B-Side to “Far Out” which had the extra bonus of really creative etching and pressing patterns. I lost my copy years ago and decided it was time to resupply which led me to Discogs.

Three months later I ended up a whole new crate full of records (oh noes!), most of which date back to the pre-internet era (’90 – ‘94). These are the “music before recorded history” tracks that came and went so fast that most never really made the transition to digital significance.

My Sunday Old School mix is just me goofing off and playing my favorites out of the new batch. I made a few of these mixes, but this one was the most blatant and fun. It starts off with some of the most beautiful tracks I’d not heard in years and then takes off at the 10 and 20 minute marks. Tempo ramps from 128 bpm up to 153 bpm, dropping down to 124 bpm to eventually settle in around 134 bpm.

Sunday Old School by radley

Most of these tracks were anthems of the moment, but these moment seldom crossed paths since each was strictly “out of style” by the time the next arrived. These were also the first generation of mash-ups with everyone blatantly ripping each others samples and beats. But that’s history…

Link to mix on Soundcloud

Crate Classics – Mix Set

A few weeks back I played a 6+ hour set featuring a lot of tracks that, while once popular, had been set aside to mature. The set was a lot of fun but alas, half of the recording was lost due to a technical glitch.

I had so much fun pulling out those records, I went back last weekend to redo the missing stuff. Naturally, I couldn’t stick to the script and ended up playing something that could only be described as classic tracks made up of refined bin diving in a collection spanning over 25 years (or so).

This new 50-track, all vinyl mix is just over four hours long and features dubby chill tracks, buzzy techno and breaks, pop trance, disco house, a few 80s synth hits, and a few surprises.

Tracklisting is in the ID3 tags (lyrics).

Stargaze 5 Chill Set (1999)

Late one night, crossing over into early morning and sunrise, high up in the mountains somewhere between Oakhurst and Yosemite.

In the picture, Half Dome overlooks the bridge that I eagerly jumped off to gain a seriously sprained ankle. I played the set standing up via crutches for over 2 hours.

It’s been almost 10 years since I did this set… One of my favorites…