Drum and Bass / Jungle - Mid 90's
Discussion
51 mins, just transferred to my phone so I can't FFWD -no issues, will immerse and enjoy. Sound quality by the way is 99% - perfect and clean. Bass is tight, treble nicely in control, mids are working well and soundscape is on point. I am immersed.... I am listening at full volume on Sennheisers so trust me, sound is deep and punchy....
So Stussy - some genuine feedback and questions for you. And I did watch some of your live link a few months back.
Its clear you know what you are doing,. The musical journey is clear, the transit is fantastic. I can't fault the mixing talent, gaps / pauses / intros / outros. Its a polished version that I suspect many DJs cannot match.
- This is a modern jump up set. I like it but it isn't my go to. That said, your tune selection kept me engaged. See above (the skill of the DJ).
- Some of these tunes, are they yours / did you make them?
- How frustrating is it that - and I maybe wrong - that you have such skill, yet it is hard to get a break? ( I don't mean any disrespect and also don't want to assume, but I guess that you are doing this as a sideline now?). If you are a current full time DJ then fair enough and apologies but therein lies the same question - how hard is it to make it into something everyone knows about? ( I kind of know the answer already but wanted to get your response).
- My life experience is that those that perform best at, and are masters of a craft are often underrated. For various reasons. I hear your transitions through your tunes your dial adjustments, the bass and treble and I can feel the inputs as a listener. (Many won't). The fact that most won't have this attention to detail almost makes the effort flawed. I know that it isn't, because if you touch one person it is all worth it, and the fact is you will touch more than one. But what is your perspective / attitude to what the outcome is, of your input. As in, you output the sound, and you may only get a minimal outcome.( Those that know / appreciate ).
Sorry for the deepness. Genuinely interested. Still listening as I type. The stand out point for me is sound quality - not sure of your setup but this is fine dining on the ears. Very very impressive sounds coming through on Soundcloud, but I can tell it is from the original upload. Pioneer? Gold plugs? Very well done.
Its clear you know what you are doing,. The musical journey is clear, the transit is fantastic. I can't fault the mixing talent, gaps / pauses / intros / outros. Its a polished version that I suspect many DJs cannot match.
- This is a modern jump up set. I like it but it isn't my go to. That said, your tune selection kept me engaged. See above (the skill of the DJ).
- Some of these tunes, are they yours / did you make them?
- How frustrating is it that - and I maybe wrong - that you have such skill, yet it is hard to get a break? ( I don't mean any disrespect and also don't want to assume, but I guess that you are doing this as a sideline now?). If you are a current full time DJ then fair enough and apologies but therein lies the same question - how hard is it to make it into something everyone knows about? ( I kind of know the answer already but wanted to get your response).
- My life experience is that those that perform best at, and are masters of a craft are often underrated. For various reasons. I hear your transitions through your tunes your dial adjustments, the bass and treble and I can feel the inputs as a listener. (Many won't). The fact that most won't have this attention to detail almost makes the effort flawed. I know that it isn't, because if you touch one person it is all worth it, and the fact is you will touch more than one. But what is your perspective / attitude to what the outcome is, of your input. As in, you output the sound, and you may only get a minimal outcome.( Those that know / appreciate ).
Sorry for the deepness. Genuinely interested. Still listening as I type. The stand out point for me is sound quality - not sure of your setup but this is fine dining on the ears. Very very impressive sounds coming through on Soundcloud, but I can tell it is from the original upload. Pioneer? Gold plugs? Very well done.
Random_Person said:
So Stussy - some genuine feedback and questions for you. And I did watch some of your live link a few months back.
Its clear you know what you are doing,. The musical journey is clear, the transit is fantastic. I can't fault the mixing talent, gaps / pauses / intros / outros. Its a polished version that I suspect many DJs cannot match.Thanks, Ive put untold hours practice into my mixing. When I used to play out I would come home from work and literally mix for 2-3 or more hours every single night. My brother and mates would be round my flat, and literally the decks and music were always the centre of the room, always tunes being mixed by someone! Sometimes I would even get up early and have an hour on the decks before work.
I've always had my own unwritten rules for mixing, not that it makes it robotic, but just little things I would never do that I hear others do that frustrate me, such as never chopping half way through a vocal, never two vocals at once, never two sets of strings at once. All mixing on the 16th bar (I have a real hate for people mixing "off loop"! Worse still, on those rare occasions when a tune naturally goes off loop, you simply cannot mix through that.
I love long mixes, take two tunes and make a third new one, literally minutes long mixing between tunes. Sadly you cant do that with modern dnb, 4 minute tunes with 43 second intros frustrate me! I love mixing past the drop of the incoming tune. It's all down to literally decades of practice my style.
I NEVER plan mixes, never have and never will. All of my monthly mixes are one take recordings. The only thing preplanned is choosing the first tune to play. Planned mixes are a funny subject worthy of a separate post in the future!
- This is a modern jump up set. I like it but it isn't my go to. That said, your tune selection kept me engaged. See above (the skill of the DJ).
I spend ages finding tunes for a mix to post online, unfortunately with the amount of new tunes released these days its a massive task to weed out the good stuff. This is exactly why I don't do a mix every month, simply because some months I struggle to find enough tunes that I think are good enough. I try to avoid fillers for the exact reason you mention, to try to keep people engaged.
I think I've mentioned it before, but its been a frustration of mine since digital releases became a thing. To me, it watered down and lowered the quality of releases. Back in the day you, or a label had to have some faith in putting money into pressing a tune. This seemed to work as a quality control, you wouldn't pay to release something crap that wouldn't sell (funny that plenty did still though). Where as now, you can write some total crap and upload it for sale for pennies or for free. This obviously puts tons of tunes out every week, and the majority are nothing better than s
te.I usually start by building a playlist of tunes, and as the month progresses I listen to it over and over while at work, weeding out the weak tunes and adding more potentials. Hopefully I'll end up with 15-20 to do a monthly mix with. In my head I'm also thinking which tunes will work together well, and which one will start the mix.
- Some of these tunes, are they yours / did you make them?
The April mix has two tunes written by my brother and me last month, I wasn't going to include them as they're not mastered yet and dont have the volume or punch to match the others, but he wanted to hear them so I put them in. I'll get them mastered soon.
- How frustrating is it that - and I maybe wrong - that you have such skill, yet it is hard to get a break? ( I don't mean any disrespect and also don't want to assume, but I guess that you are doing this as a sideline now?). If you are a current full time DJ then fair enough and apologies but therein lies the same question - how hard is it to make it into something everyone knows about? ( I kind of know the answer already but wanted to get your response).
I kind of consider myself to have had a break, I was lucky enough to play at tons of events in the 90s, especially Milwaukees (yes I know I go on about it a lot, but I played there every friday for years, so have a lot of memories). I was lucky enough to play along side the biggest and best names in the world on a weekly basis. I sort of feel that Ive been there and done it all. I hate sounding bigheaded, and never want to come across as a show off, but I simply love recalling memories, talking about the music I love and sharing the knowledge Ive built over the years. I literally lived and breathed the music and scene every spare moment I had. My head became an encyclopaedia of record label, release, artist, catalogue numbers and any other info that could be learnt about all of the music. I was a sponge and just soaked up as much as I possibly could, and I loved every moment of it.
These days there are so many people desperate to be djs and recognised I have no time or energy to be part of that.
I've never done it full time, I've never asked to be paid for a set. If someone ever wanted to pay me it was because they chose to, and that was a nice bonus. I was paid every week at Milwaukees, and all of that was spent every week on new tunes!
People always said you could earn money from it, my reply was always the same. I mix because I love it, its my hobby and interest. If I start doing it for money then it becomes a job, you start to rely on that money, and the love is lost. Ive seen big names play sets where its blatantly obvious that they literally didnt want to be there and were simply going through the motions. Lazy tune selection, and lazy (and often crap) mixing. I loved going on after those as it was so easy to look better!
- My life experience is that those that perform best at, and are masters of a craft are often underrated. For various reasons. I hear your transitions through your tunes your dial adjustments, the bass and treble and I can feel the inputs as a listener. (Many won't). The fact that most won't have this attention to detail almost makes the effort flawed. I know that it isn't, because if you touch one person it is all worth it, and the fact is you will touch more than one. But what is your perspective / attitude to what the outcome is, of your input. As in, you output the sound, and you may only get a minimal outcome.( Those that know / appreciate ).
These days I mix simply because I love it, I upload mixes for friends to listen to and I enjoy listening to them too. I rarely ever post my link to the new mix anywhere apart from this thread. I don't have the time or interest to spam it in every dnb group or forum, as above, Im not in that desperate to be heard crowd. If anyone else finds them and enjoys them thats a bonus. I remember an intereview with Roni Size, he said the same as you pretty much.
Do what you do, stick to it, even if only one person likes it then you're doing something right. I know people who could write awesome tunes, but chose to water them down and changed style just to be more popular. I can understand that, but personally Id rather carry on doing what I loved rather than selling out.
Sorry for the deepness. Genuinely interested. Still listening as I type. The stand out point for me is sound quality - not sure of your setup but this is fine dining on the ears. Very very impressive sounds coming through on Soundcloud, but I can tell it is from the original upload. Pioneer? Gold plugs? Very well done.
Nothing to be sorry for, I love the questions and interest in my mixes, plus as above, I love chatting about the music, mixing and scene. I could go on all day long!
Sound quality wise, I use a Pioneer XDJ-RX with KRK Rokit 7 monitors and Sennheiser HD25 headphones (still going strong since 1994 and had a very hard life in many clubs!). All new tunes are 320k mp3's. After the mix is recorded as a wav I nomalize, level and amplify it before encoding to 320k MP3 and upload to Mixcloud. I have a paid account so I can keep it as a HD upload and not lose quality.
Hope I've answered everything and not bored you to death! Finally, I'm glad you enjoy my mixes. I do need to do some new ones of old tunes, and some more live mixes too. I might find the time for one tomorrow!
Random_Person said:
Something rarer, special and unknown. My pleasure to present:
I've had an mp3 of this for about 15 years, loved Trace's early stuff, have you seen/heard the new 9 Windows stuff he's doing?Always loved the I like it remix you posted, but for me this was the best version, Ray Keith always used to play it, sadly never managed to get my hands on it though!
Truly bombaclaart dark!
For myself and my brother (he is just as knowledgeable as me and shares my taste in tunes and mixing style), its all about the beats.
Fast rolling heavy breakbeats is what its all about, thats why I dont play a lot of the darker stuff from 98 onwards, the minimal 2 step beats didnt do it for me.
Heres a perfect example from the one and only Photek (awesome remix!)
Ive been a huge Photek fan since 92, this was years before its time, and yet another example of fast rolling breaks
Finally for now, my brother and my holy grail. The one tune I would kill for, sadly remains unreleased to this day, written around 97.
Bryan G absolutely loves it, and has begged Roni and Die to release it, but for some reason they still refuse.
Got to be a soundcloud link, as I cant find a clip on youtube
https://soundcloud.com/ethereal94/scorpio-life-for...
This is it for me, utter perfection. The galloping beat on the intro, the eerie strings that I could listen to on loop forever.
The whole tune gives me chills and goose bumps like no other has done.
2:06 onwards in the clip, utterly hypnotic.
2:50, chopped amens rolling like only the Full Cycle lot could do.
Simply mind blowing!
Fast rolling heavy breakbeats is what its all about, thats why I dont play a lot of the darker stuff from 98 onwards, the minimal 2 step beats didnt do it for me.
Heres a perfect example from the one and only Photek (awesome remix!)
Ive been a huge Photek fan since 92, this was years before its time, and yet another example of fast rolling breaks
Finally for now, my brother and my holy grail. The one tune I would kill for, sadly remains unreleased to this day, written around 97.
Bryan G absolutely loves it, and has begged Roni and Die to release it, but for some reason they still refuse.
Got to be a soundcloud link, as I cant find a clip on youtube
https://soundcloud.com/ethereal94/scorpio-life-for...
This is it for me, utter perfection. The galloping beat on the intro, the eerie strings that I could listen to on loop forever.
The whole tune gives me chills and goose bumps like no other has done.
2:06 onwards in the clip, utterly hypnotic.
2:50, chopped amens rolling like only the Full Cycle lot could do.
Simply mind blowing!
And finally, I just stumbled upon this!
For those of you who do Cardle, I found Trainspottle!
Just had a go on todays... quite an easy one in my eyes (or ears!)
You 'spotted today's tune within 1 second.
https://trainspottle.continuumizm.com
For those of you who do Cardle, I found Trainspottle!
Just had a go on todays... quite an easy one in my eyes (or ears!)
You 'spotted today's tune within 1 second.
https://trainspottle.continuumizm.com
Will listen to all those at some point over the weekend as at work now all day. But read all your replies, fascinating thanks for taking the time to reply.
Sounds like we have a lot in common, the main difference being I became the emphatic listener and collector whereas you went out and bought the equipment to DJ. I used t MC a fair bit, in private however I got quite good at it. I used to use non MC tapes from tape packs, stick both tapes in a double tape deck and record me MC ing over the original tape onto the other tape. I came out with lots of decent demo tapes. My rich mate had a set of 1210s and I did used to mix - I had around 100 - 120 vinyls. But I never had the cash to get my own setup. However I did love mixing and without being big headed I was ok. I was a percussionist music scholar at a posh boys school so timing, phasing, beats/bars and understanding music was inherent to me anyway. After throwing my education away and starting work at 18 I carried on following the scene, morphing into Trance and latterly House.
But I retain a strong link to DB / Jungle and the resurgence over the last few years, particularly at the moment is fantastic. There is so much coming through on youtube at the moment, main players going back to the old skool. live uploads from shows, pirate radio sets, tape packs, its great. The only issue most of the time is the sound quality - so overlooked by so many.
Sounds like we have a lot in common, the main difference being I became the emphatic listener and collector whereas you went out and bought the equipment to DJ. I used t MC a fair bit, in private however I got quite good at it. I used to use non MC tapes from tape packs, stick both tapes in a double tape deck and record me MC ing over the original tape onto the other tape. I came out with lots of decent demo tapes. My rich mate had a set of 1210s and I did used to mix - I had around 100 - 120 vinyls. But I never had the cash to get my own setup. However I did love mixing and without being big headed I was ok. I was a percussionist music scholar at a posh boys school so timing, phasing, beats/bars and understanding music was inherent to me anyway. After throwing my education away and starting work at 18 I carried on following the scene, morphing into Trance and latterly House.
But I retain a strong link to DB / Jungle and the resurgence over the last few years, particularly at the moment is fantastic. There is so much coming through on youtube at the moment, main players going back to the old skool. live uploads from shows, pirate radio sets, tape packs, its great. The only issue most of the time is the sound quality - so overlooked by so many.
Stussy said:
Links above
Honestly, ok but those tunes don't do it for me.Interested to hear the Scorpio tune. Beats are good, but this is why I am so into Sci Wax. What are your thoughts on Sci Wax - personally I love it all but Nebula is at the top of the tree with their releases. Those for me are the same as that tune is for you.
One example of literally tonnes - stinks of 95/96 with an air of Gaschet, Logical Progression, JMJ and all the rest of it. Sublime! The Sci Wax stuff would suffice for me if all presses on Earth got deleted, and it was just these left.
Gassing Station | Music | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff