commendation for outstanding service to human race: resident advisor

I'd never heard of Trickski, and didn't know what to expect, but it's great. The first 25 mins or so, up until where he loops Marvin Gaye and it speeds up is fab.

I'd like to hear more mixes at that tempo (about 105bpm?). It reminds me of all those Quiet Village remixes (esp that Gorrillaz bootleg).

Like the Tobias Freund one as well. Haven't heard the Optimo yet, but looks great.

I stupidly deleted the Dixon one earlier in the year, but they put it up again as one of their best of the year and I've been listening to it loads. I don't know why I didn't take to it before. Having got some of the tracks in the meantime (esp Alice Smith) helps. I'd second Kevin John Bozelka's request from the thread on it for more mixes like this.

mike, you gotta hear the frankie knuckles mix

jamie, the marvin gaye bit is trusme - w.a.r. i think

Lindstrom - The Contemporary Fix (EYE mix) - Smalltown Supersound

i'm surprised this hasn't gotten more love, I think it's one of eye's best remixes

jamie, the marvin gaye bit is trusme - w.a.r. i think

Thanks.

I actually just checked the tracklist and you're right. (It also starts with a Quiet Village remix, which makes my comment above sound stupid, but I didn't know that one!)

OMG I had no idea there was a Twitch podcast! Will get onto this tonight.

Cheers for that, Macallan!

It reminds me of all those Quiet Village remixes (esp that Gorrillaz bootleg).

bootleg ?

totally official. included on the recent D-sides comp. or is this a different remix ?

I'm listening to the Twitch mix on headphones at work and this shit makes me want to dance in my cubicle. Is it really this fucking good ? The transition from Gamma Ray into Mederico, whoa.

i don't think i liked it but i listened to 20 minutes or so. The current one (Kalabrese) is doing it for me. nice warm creamy centre.

The JD Twitch one is in fact amazing.

i have not heard the twitch mix yet (need to remedy that asap), but i am listening to the pole mix right now and it is doing my head in in the nicest way.

havent't heard that pole yet. itching too though. right now im bumpin that ame mix and it is also doing my head in, in a nice way.

yeah the pole looks very tasty. has anyone heard the sasse mix? it was getting a lot of plugs in the comments section

dunno who this MARA TRAX is but i like her already

i don't know a single track on this mix!

52:00 is nice

actually all of 40:00 - 60:00 is rather choice

oh i see, one of these ladies is miss fitz

01 Chaton - Catch The Beat (Agnès - Limmat Luftmadratz Redive) - Sthmlaudio Recordings
02 Miss Fitz & Shaun Reeves - Bobby Lonesome - Unreleased
03 Stephan G & the Persuader - Kaos EP - Svek
04 Digitaline - Fenetre - Cadenza Records
05 Ricardo Villalobos - Farenzer House – Sei Es Drum
06 Klockworks - Klockworks 02 (Edit) - Klockworks
07 Scott Ferguson - Any Day Now (ElectroVox Remix) - Deep Vibes Recordings
08 Grant Dell - Sleeping Dub - Worship Recordings
09 Flow - Blue Skies - Low Pressings
10 Markus Fix - Midnight Frogger - Unreleased
11 Dimbiman - First Laki - Perlon
12 Andomat 3000 & Jan - Frost - Cadenza Records
13 Andy Vaz - You Got? - Yore Records

looks good. was into the Mara Trax, uh, track on Ronan's blog recently..

very sparse, very percussive

emphasis on VERY
xpost

their mixing is perfunctory at best. some good trax tho.

agree that the end of this mix is what makes it good. the first half a tad boring.

I meant to say Vahid, this stuff like Mara Trax and Oslo Records seems basically made for your tastes.

yeah, you should listen to some of the mixes on miss fitz's website, she tends to go alot deeper and leans towards more us style tracks than in the ra podcast. i think she's a great dj.

RA started out strong, but they've become a little too proggy for my taste. As someone from the US, who is this Mary Hobbs, I like her shows quite a bit.

Mary Anne Hobbs, I should say.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radioassets/photos/2007/1/4/12438_2.jpg

she's a radio 1 dj, dubstep champ, used to go out with miles hunt (FACT!).

was married to Miles Hunt, went out with Clint Mansell (not in that order)

Mary Anne Hobbs does a great job championing some of the murkier echelons of electronic music but boy, i could really really do without her hyperbolic chatter. her introduction to that villalobos mix he did a few months back made me want to hurl my mp3 player into the river. "this mix is the stuff of legend..." my ass.

i thought she would look more goth for some reason

wait weren't those dudes in a band together?? what a tramp!

Derek Plaslaiko mix is really good.

It sure is...

RA started out strong, but they've become a little too proggy for my taste.

Not quite sure how recent podcasts (Freund, Maclean, Optimo, Claro Intelecto, Kalabrese, Pole, etc.) can be considered "proggy"...

i agree with that, especially given the list that is parenthesized there, but there's definitely an argument for minimal techno as the new (and newly mutated) progressive house.

"i agree with that, especially given the list that is parenthesized there, but there's definitely an argument for minimal techno as the new (and newly mutated) progressive house.

-- tricky"

i agree with that idea, mnml is definitely the new prog house.

though i will say that i think RA started out more proggy and has since moved into better territory, covering much more different kinds of stuff.

I thought the Mara Trax one was a snoozer. It was cut from an eight hour set, so there's more than a chance that we got them at their most spare and percussive (seriously, though, 30 odd minutes of drum tracks without much else is hard to get excited about, especially in a non-club setting) from an otherwise lively set.

That being said, I saw Miss Fitz DJ recently and I ended up feeling more or less the same about her set.

"i agree with that, especially given the list that is parenthesized there, but there's definitely an argument for minimal techno as the new (and newly mutated) progressive house.

-- tricky"

i agree with that idea, mnml is definitely the new prog house.

-- pipecock, Thursday, 13 March 2008

about when it (mnml-whatever) began to lose me really, perhaps getting on for a couple of years now?

but honestly pipecock has doubtless been saying that since 1999 to begin with! not sure there's really 'agreement' going on here....

the Mara Trax has bored me so far. maybe i need to give it a deeper listen.

playing the jd twitch one right now and man is it awesome!

yeah fandango i wouldn't necessarily consider progressive to be pejorative.

me either, really!

I didn't mean to mention that (my own disappointment & creeping sense of deja-vu post-Get Physical) as if there was a direct link. It's probably as much that 'minimal techno' is pretty much just mainstream 'techno' (or whatever classier house isn't electro or big room boshbosh) out there these days.

yup, that's kind of what i mean, too.

x-post - taking into account fandango's disclaimer...

The problem with the whole "minimal is the new progressive" argument (as I've said several times so forgive me for boring some of you) is that the aspects of the two styles are similar are not usually the ones which would make a useful stick with which to be beat either style.

When we look at what people who disliked prog house used to say, their complaints were:

1) Its general apparent lack of any relationship to "warm" house proper (with some exceptions) and a general overreliance on a more subtle version of trance synth melodies.
2) Its rhythmic unadventurousness.
3) The way DJs seemed to focus excessively on merging between tracks indistinguishably rather than setting up contrasts between tracks.
3) The extreme polarisation of identity-factor w/r/t DJs and producers (i.e. superstar status for Sasha, Warren etc. but relative anonymity for even big producers like Tilt or Quivver).

Certainly we can identify individual minimal tracks that have some of these qualities but rarely if ever all of them; and the scene as a whole doesn't fit any of the above characteristics consistently.

agree upthread about the mara being for the most part kinda eh. the letter end of the mix is nice. the twitch mix is one of the best i've heard in a while.

3) The way DJs seemed to focus excessively on merging between tracks indistinguishably rather than setting up contrasts between tracks.

this happens a lot in minimal

but i can't think of any logical explanation for this bizarre minimal=prog belief. there have been a fair amount of successful proggish minimal tracks in the past couple of years, but that seems to have kind of petered out (correct me if i'm wrong). are you people talking about some "meta" connection that i'm not seeing?

Mary Anne Hobbs does a great job championing some of the murkier echelons of electronic music but boy, i could really really do without her hyperbolic chatter. her introduction to that villalobos mix he did a few months back made me want to hurl my mp3 player into the river. "this mix is the stuff of legend..." my ass.

Funny thing is, back when I first listened to teh Breezeblock in about 1998, i actually found her breathless 'enthusiasm' genuinely exciting... maybe i just didn't have enough confidence in my own tastes? – anyway nowadays i find it grates...

"are you people talking about some "meta" connection that i'm not seeing?"

it's not the sound so much as the popular aspect that i am talking about. it's just the big thing and now it seems to be in the process of being superceded by a more traditional house or techno (take your pick) sound.

"but honestly pipecock has doubtless been saying that since 1999 to begin with! not sure there's really 'agreement' going on here....

-- fandango"

nah, there was kind of a movement from "glitch" or whatever you wanna call it style techno in the early 00's (when it was wildly popular) into the more mnml sounding stuff, even though some of the players (hawtin obviously a big one in that transition, taking it from closer to the edit into mnml) stayed the same. it was somewhere in that transition that the attitude associated with the music changed, and the kind of people who listened to it changed as well. that mix comp with richie and sven vath editing in bits of conversation from their ibiza trip or whatever was pretty much in stark contrast to the kind of air that "techno" had before then and signalled the change into nu-prog attitude. it was only a matter of time after that before the sound fell more into place and you started seeing "prog" deejays playing Kompakt records and the like.

the kind of people who listened to it changed as well.

always important

"x-post - taking into account fandango's disclaimer...

The problem with the whole "minimal is the new progressive" argument (as I've said several times so forgive me for boring some of you) is that the aspects of the two styles are similar are not usually the ones which would make a useful stick with which to be beat either style.

When we look at what people who disliked prog house used to say, their complaints were:

1) Its general apparent lack of any relationship to "warm" house proper (with some exceptions) and a general overreliance on a more subtle version of trance synth melodies.
2) Its rhythmic unadventurousness.
3) The way DJs seemed to focus excessively on merging between tracks indistinguishably rather than setting up contrasts between tracks.
3) The extreme polarisation of identity-factor w/r/t DJs and producers (i.e. superstar status for Sasha, Warren etc. but relative anonymity for even big producers like Tilt or Quivver).

Certainly we can identify individual minimal tracks that have some of these qualities but rarely if ever all of them; and the scene as a whole doesn't fit any of the above characteristics consistently.

-- Tim F"

i'm not sure those are the entire set of criticisms against prog house. here is my comparison: both prog and mnml are both white washed versions of their respective black dance musics. most of the main players in each are white guys from europe and england. each seems more interested in taking influence from within their own genre (though now that mnml is stealing from "deep house" that could change) than looking outside of it. both attained popularity with a relatively new to dance music crowd. each style was focused on the "new" music, and heavily on particular superstar type deejays.

aside from those, the first 3 of your points are present in mnml as well. im not sure your 4th point really makes any real difference, does it matter how popular a producer is vs. a deejay?

"the kind of people who listened to it changed as well.

always important

-- deej"

i'm not sure i would say that it is important, but it definitely signals an overall change in style.