after downloading this mix I checked out what else I could find on Shanghai 24/7′s collection of podcasts and found a reggae mix featuring all Chinese artists (available for free download as mp3 or Apple m4a). At first I didn’t realize it was created by all Chinese artists; I might not have downloaded it if I had. But I did, and when I listened to it in the car I was blown away by how strangely awesome it is – these are some very talented Chinese artists playing good reggae music, sometimes singing in English, sometimes in Chinese… one song, in fact, is by a Chinese group (Lions of Puxi) singing in French!

one interesting discovery – I studied Chinese as part of a Masters program and I was surprised that I was able to understand parts of some of the songs (and not just the songs in English, by the way!)… one song by Long Shen Dao, The Heart Guides the Way, was quite slow in tempo and featured some easy-to-understand phrases. So I would even recommend this mix to learners of the Chinese language.

be sure to check it out, and revel in the awesomeness that is Chinese reggae.

Johan Nilsson, also known as DJ Irish, is a Swedish DJ who plays a lot of trance, hard trance and progressive. He also has a page of old skool mixes that are pretty incredible – these mixes are chock full of songs that take me back to the early 90s when I used to listen to a lot of this stuff. And they’re all available for free mp3 download.

featured on the page of old skool mixes are three Acid Trance Classix mixes, some Inspirations mixes with some old classics thrown in there (Union Jack, Sven Väth, etc), and also some mixes of Labworks and Hardfloor tunes. I haven’t listened to all of the mixes yet but looking the selection he’s mixed in they’re probably all pretty quality. I’ve really been getting into the Acid Trance Classix mixes – for some reason I especially like the third one.

I’ll definitely be checking Johan’s site now and again when I’m looking for that acid sound…

a while back I was listening to the Area channel (now called Electric Area – personally I preferred the name Area) on SIRIUS|XM radio. A segment called the Yoshitoshi Show came on by a DJ named Sharam that I had never heard of… and I was pretty much blown away by how much this guy’s style matches with my own tastes in electronic music! Turns out I shouldn’t have been surprised, as Sharam is Sharam Tayebi, half of the DJ duo Deep Dish, and Deep Dish I was quite familiar with (though obviously not familiar enough to recognize the name Sharam when I first saw it), because they are awesome!

Sharam’s mixes are available for free online at SHARAM, his official website. They are all quite deep, featuring tunes with some excellent drum machine work and catchy vibes. Two of my favorites are Wildcast 23 and Wildcast 21. Wildcast 23 is the podcast I first heard in my car, and what an intro to Sharam’s mixes – some great progressive house tunes capped off by Chemical Brothers and Underworld! Meanwhile, Wildcast 21 features a mix of grooves by a variety of artists who, for the most part, I have never heard of, but together they form a great mix.

definitely worth a subscribe!

naturally I started looking around the web for some good mixes, and by searching for “acid house podcasts” I managed to find the page of DJ JuJu, a British DJ from South London (now living in Norfolk).

I’ve never heard of him myself, but this fellow has a pretty good grasp of the acid. His site has a series of free downloads of mixes ranging from acid to vocal to hip house, and I’ve linked to them below.

Classic House Part 1: Vocal house and garage from ’88 to ’90. Some big tunes in here (like Tribal House’s Motherland and Sweat by Jay Williams at the end of the mix), though as I have mentioned I wasn’t as big into the vocal house as I was the other stuff.

Classic House Part 2: More classic vocal house. Listen for Chanelle’s One Man and the Steve Hurley mix of Ten City’s That’s the Way Love Is.

Classic House Part 3: Deep classic house from ’88 to ’90. The instrumental version of ESP’s It’s You is one of my favorite house tracks of all time (and so much better than the vocal version), and Can U Dance by Kenny ‘Jammin’ Jason & Fast Eddie is guaranteed to bring it back.

Classic House Part 4: An awesome mix of acid house and Detroit techno, some of my favorite genres. Reese & Santonio’s The Sound is a true classic, (love that 808 drum line), plus there’s Ride the Rhythm’s This Ain’t Chicago for a killer acid line and the jammin’ Work It to the Bone by LNR.

Classic House Part 6 (there is no part 5): Some hip house classics. Yet another of my favorite genres of classic music! I recommend you skip the first part of the mix and start at minute 25:00. From there you’ve got the 1997 remake of Doug Lazy’s Let It Roll called Rollin’ On, the club mix of Mr. Lee’s Get Busy, Musto & Bones’ Dangerous on the Dance Floor, I’ll House You by the Jungle Brothers, Fast Eddie’s Yo Yo Get Funky and the white label Planet E. Seriously, this stuff is tremendous. If you don’t like this stuff you may in fact have no soul.

and this next mix isn’t a classic house mix, but…

JuJu 4 Hour Radio Show 19th April 2009: A mix of classic techno and rave music, for the most part. This is a massive four hour mix, containing three of my favorite classic techno tracks, Tronik House’s Up Tempo and Altern8′s Infiltrate 202 followed by Comin’ On Strong by Rhythm Section. If you want to listen to what I think is the sweet spot of this mix, start at about 2:25:00.

DJ JuJu has plenty of other mixes on his site (the last one uploaded on February 18th, 2010) so I recommend you visit his site and check it out! I’ll be heading back there on occasion to see if he’s put out any more compilations of some of my favorite classic tracks.

a while back Deadmau5 released Project 56, a series of 56 ideas, melodies, clips and grooves that he originally created as a compilation project for people with short attention spans. In the end he decided to stick the whole series online so that people could download them for free and to, as he indicates, “exploit these tracks in any way your evil heart desires”. His only request is that if you do use them in a production, give him some credit for doing so.

so… why not! 56 clips of interesting ideas by one of the biggest names in the business, available for free download. Is at least worth checking out.

I’m wondering if Information Society (or someone else) were to make a version of this today, how well it would perform in the clubs. It would need a better drum kit – a deeper kick, some better compression, and some cymbal sweeps – and a more thorough bass sound, but with a little work I think this song could bring people to the floor in clubs today. Heck, it probably could right now, as it stands.

this may of course be one of those cases that my own sentimental value of this song outweighs its true value – I’d appreciate any feedback on that! And speaking of nostalgia… what the heck is with the clothes Information Society is wearing on their album cover? If we bring back classic dance tunes from the 80s, let’s not bring that part back as well…

while the Amen Break is not as widely used now as it was in the 90s it certainly played an essential role in the development of modern electronic music (and, when sliced apart and sped up, pretty much kicked off drum ‘n bass), and for that it holds a special place in the hearts of many, including myself.

I’m especially fond of this side chain compressor plugin that you can download from some random site in Japan for Windows and Mac. The site looks totally dodgy when you get there, but I haven’t had any issues with the plugin (of course you’ll want to run virus scans on anything you download, just in case). It’s probably not as necessary as it used to be due to the fact that Ableton Live 8 now includes a side chain compressor, but this one is pretty simple to use once you download it (Ableton’s is not), and effective. Perhaps I’ll make a short tutorial about how to use it in a future post.

there are tons of excellent DJ mixes out there, mixed by a whole bunch of different DJs and producers, that will simply appear for you, fresh out of the oven so to speak, as soon as they’ve been uploaded by their creators! Those of you already into podcasts are probably pointing and laughing at the screen (well, at the guy behind the screen) and saying “well duh, of course”, but to me, this is pretty big news.

so to celebrate my late discovery of this fantastic technology, here is a podcasted mix by Steve Helstrip, aka The Thrillseekers, a producer who I mentioned a few posts back. I’m linking this mix because I’m really loving the Nitrous Oxide and Adam Nickey song Moon Dust. I even burned a CD of this mix so that I could listen to it in my ancient car.

in other news, as soon as I finish this post I’m going to work on my latest song. It’s been a long time in the coming, but it’s almost done! And I’ll post it on this site when it is.

at any rate, I hadn’t heard from him for a while, so the other day I checked his web site and discovered several mixes he’d created ready for free download (right click on them to snag them) – and better still, the mixes are completely banter-free, just the way I like them! From what I’ve heard so far they are more melodic and less hardcore than some trance mixes – very easy to listen to.

the only downside here is that James Williams appears to have stopped making mixes – the last mix on the site was put there in November of 2008. I don’t know what he’s been up to lately, but I do hope he’ll eventually get back to work putting some more mixes onto his site.