There we are, the last Friday Night Special of the year. We’re a little early this week, in order for you to enjoy the mix with your family under the Christmas tree. An extra special, long and deep edition with 21 tracks and 100+ minutes. Somehow, it wasn’t that hard to fill those minutes with great tracks. As a matter of fact, I even had to exclude a lot of fresh ones. There really was an abundance of good tracks this year. Even though about 95-99% of the thousands of tracks that come out every year are crap (rough estimate), that still leaves hundreds of good-to-amazing ones that are released every year. I’ve tried to gather as many as I could find for the 15 FNS mixes this year.
Two fantastic slower tracks by Kollektiv Turmstrasse and Shoe Box kick off this week’s mix, before a Ray Okpara banger lifts the pace. Robert Johnson’s San Laurentino follows with “Somewhere Under The Stars” (number 1 of 2012 on many lists), followed by some more spacey, tropical, chimey techhouse goodness from Re.You, Matthew Dekay, Tube & Berger, Monkey Safari, Bakermat, Marlose and Miguel Lobo. When Guy J’s Mercury arrives things start to go deeper. Two amazing ethereal techno tracks from Chymera and Nadia Struiwigh are the apex of the mix. To close off some great techno tracks by Guy J, Boris Werner and Sigha.
One year and 15 mixes later, we’re still up and running. Let’s see what the next year has in store!
A new month, a new FNS. This one starts off with some epic techhouse tracks by Dj Phono, Booka Shade, Joris Delacroix, Leland McWilliams and Alexis Raphael. Then some tracks that lean more toward techno than house, by Steffi, Martin Dawson, Kollektiv Turmstrasse and Guy J. The last 35 minutes are straight-up “real” techno, with the bpm rising to 127-128. And somewhere in between there are also some freaky tracks by Benoit & Sergio and U.
Check out the “timestamp” feature to identify separate tracks. Hope you enjoy it folks!
Light Sound Dimension is in deep hibernation, but once in a while it wakes up for a new Friday Night Special. This one is a day early, right in time for the ADE. So if you are going there this weekend (I’m jealous, can’t make it myself) this is a perfect warm up mix.
I always try to make the mixes progressive, because even if they are for home-listening I believe a build-up from softer tunes to harder beats works best. I think I found some amazing tracks for this one. It starts off with a nice Hrdvsion remix of Nina Simone and the latest Pachanga Boys. Then new releases by Barnt and Steve Rachmad, followed by some deep tracks by Kruse & Nuernberg, Soy Mustafa and Mark Henning. Special mentions for tracks by Contra Communem Opinonem and Mario Basanov & Vidis, both go straight into my top 5 of the year. Two tracks, by Maetrik and Johannes Heil, to end with a bang.
Some deeper techno tunes this time. The mix starts with some great minimal by Coma, Dominik Eulberg, Ryan Davis and Pantha Du Prince, and then slowly builds up to a deep, melodic technojourney with tracks by Edomite, Jerome Sydenham, Phil Kieran and a classic by Steve Rachmad from his recently reissued breakthrough album. And this “dj” ain’t afraid to play a long version of a m$%&(*@cking record, so hang in there. After about 60 minutes the mix slowly comes down again with tracks by Luke Hess, Maetrik, Stephan Barnem, Redshape and Pitto.
Summer is coming to an end, but we’re not there yet. Let’s make it an “Indian Summer”. This Friday Night Special should provide a good soundtrack for it. It’s also the 10th installment. Yippy! We start off with an older track by Ellen Allien, followed by an amazing recent release by Makam. We slowly reach a climax through Dionne, Max Cooper and Maetrik, followed by a plateau of P’Taah, Matador and And.Id tracks. Then some sunny tracks to come down, closing it off with Monkey Safari’s epic “Hi-Life”. “Dirty Thirty” has been featured in a FNS before, but I wanted to mix it again because it is just so awesome. Enough with the dumb cliches, listen up!
Is (minimal) techno gearing up for a neo-psychedelic, retro-1960s kind of phase? I certainly hope so!
This track by Italian producer DJ Tennis, with vocals by PillowTalk (of ‘Soft‘ fame), sounds like a combination of minimal and house beats with Beatles-esque psychedelic vocals. Not strange, since PillowTalk are from San Francisco. But this is a combination that I would very much like to see pursued further!
The set by Johannes Heil (such a name) was one of the highlights of the Fusion Festival in Lärz, Germany, this year. And it just so happens that someone has made a good-quality video of it, with excellent sound. Almost, just almost, manages to capture the indescribable atmosphere of this festival.
And if you want to revel in some sweet memories, check out this, this, and this.
From Berlin producer/dj Shed comes a new album, ‘The Killer‘, hailed by Resident Advisor as contender for techno album of the year, which can be streamed until July 27 here (much better sound quality than YouTube, so make sure to take a listen). It’s full of sparse, dystopic techno, but intermingled with all kinds of dub, breakbeat, ambient and classic house elements, making it a true sonic journey, rather than an album full of dancefloor killers.
For instance, check out this brutal, old-fashioned techno track, ‘I Come By Night’, very much the Berghain/Ostgut sound, but with an almost religious kind of melody on the background.
Also check out Day After. Possibly even better. Great interplay between kick and snare drums and a great melody, rather original too.
A lot of great electronic music is being released, but it’s hard to find something with the “wow-factor”. This new release on Ostgut Ton comes close. The title tracks needs to be heard with a decent headset, or even better, a Funktion-One system. It doesn’t make sense on regular earplugs. The drumloop sounds fresh and lacks the cliché tricks. The track even made it to number 2 on RA’s May Chart, which consists almost exclusively of house.
The tracks on the B-side are less brutal, but very deep:
A brutal, wicked, pure techno set by Dispar Vulgo (Jerry Teunissen), which was the closing set at the Compound stage of the absolutely wonderful first edition of the Secret Garden Festival in Amsterdam’s Noorderpark.
Judging by the comments on the event page, this guy made an impression on more people than just me. This was epic.
A great mix by young and upcoming German dj/producer Egokind, featuring all kinds of dreamy, epic and spacey techno, house and tech house tracks. Especially recommended are the tracks that start at 3:00, and particularly the track that reaches its zenith from the 25:00 mark on.* Definitely listen to that one!
Egokind will turn the tables tomorrow night in the Beatrixpark in Amsterdam, together with label colleague Alle Farben – of whom another great set can be heard here (an earlier set on this blog here).
Steve Rachmad is one of the true Dutch techno legends. His breakthrough album Secret Life Of Machines was released 17 years ago. For that occasion, a remix album is going to be released in June.
As promotion for that album and to honor Steve Rachmad, who is one of the best Dutch producers of the last two decades and maybe also the coolest, most laidback dj, this mini-documentary was made. Almost the entire techno nobility (Ricardo Villalobos, Dave Clarke, DJ Rush, Richie Hawtin, Chris Liebing, and local heroes like Dimitri, 2000 and One and Joris Voorn) pays respect to him:
Listen to snippets from the new Secret Life Of Machines:
And here’s a couple of classics from the original album. Check out Astronotes and Satyricon, pure industrial, spacey techno with a classic 808 sound:
A very short documentary that sums up in three minutes the importance of the Roland TR-808 drum machine for electronic, hip hop and pop music in the last thirty years. Originally designed in 1980 as a tool for studio musicians to create demos, due to its relative cheapness it became used in the then-underground electronic and hip hop scenes to compose beats.
The by now vintage, distinctive, artificial sound of the 808 not only gave birth to the techno scene (in addition to tools like the TB-303 bass synthesizer), but also influenced the evolution of all kinds of relevant styles in the last decades. By now, their sounds are available digitally, but original machines are highly sought after. If you listen, you hear those kicks and hi-hats everywhere.
Also check out this video, already blogged about earlier, demonstrating the possibilities of the 808.
Those Andhim guys keep on delivering. This time it’s a remix of Format:B‘s “Desire”. It’s the same progressive minimal build-up as usual, with an extra instrument and a twist and turn every 30 seconds, but it works every time.
Great way to kick off your saturday night: an amazing set by Paul Rose (Scuba & SCB) and John Osborn from last weekend in the Panoramabar (downloadable).
According to John Osborn:
Before the gig I was apprehensive about a B2B set with SCB at Panorama Bar for two reasons: one being that Paul Rose is a DJ of such high caliber, and second that I am quite a selfish DJ in the sense that I generally have my own plan and I like to lay that plan out and adjust it as I see fit. So I wasn’t sure how this was going to work out at all, especially that it was at Panorama Bar! These apprehensions were laid to rest as it very quickly became clear that this B2B set was a very fluid process of reading each others track choices providing plenty of ‘I’ll set ‘em up and you knock ‘em down’ moments. I think Paul later tweeted something like ‘nothing like Panorama Bar & Berghain when it is on the point’ – that pretty much sums up the set.
According to Scuba on Facebook:
for the record i was high as hell for the whole of this this set… 9am til nearly 1pm, you only get part of it though alas
Hidiho, the Friday Night Special returns. I will be brief, so you can start listening as soon as possible. The first half hour is dedicated to some of my favorite techhouse and minimal tracks of the last few weeks. The second half is rolling train techno all the way, with tracks by Marco Effe, Mark Broom and Marco Brugattu, finishing off with Christian Smith’s take on an Underworld classic. Enjoy the ride:
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