best dj mixes of 2004 (so far)

you just reminded me to check that! he's on fire. Ooh just saw the tracklist, more Chelonis R Jones is ok by me!

My favourite is not commercially available but definitely Tobias Thomas/Superpitcher Live@Kamera, it's technically from the end of last year but perhaps only online this year.

Also worth a mention-

DJ Touche-Essential Mix (surprisingly ace, 'eclectic')
Crosstown Rebels-Rebel Futurism (good but kind of too techy and dull in places on repeated listens)
Ivan Smagghe-Death Disco (listened alot to begin with then not at all, still good though)

Oh it's worth hunting down that DJ Falcon/Cassius set from Pacha last August too, very high octane and it's Falcon doing the laptop stuff so you get big bootlegs of LRD and Daft Punk and stuff. It's a bit badly recorded is the only problem, parts where it goes silent or an ad comes on. Still.

Sorry I don't want to be the only one to answer your thread Toby, but also just noticed that Black Strobe mix of Moskow Reise is on it, which I think is way way better than the actual new Black Strobe single.

Philip Sherburne's BarkingSpiderMix is the one i have enjoyed and listened to most. I'm sure that Kill the DJ Part 2 will beat it though.

The final hour of M.I.K.E.'s Asta set, 28/2. I was there, it tore the house down & I still can't stop playing the radio broadcast of it. I've never been impressed by his sets before, but this is the shit: varied, high-energy, full-on banging and none of that middlebrow ironic/eclectic bullshit.

(instant threadkiller)

God "Suck My Deck" really IS good isn't it, dark and sweaty from minute one, seems to unashamedly reclaim alot of old school signifiers without sounding like a completely retro project. On the contrary it is like an affirmation. MUST SEE IVAN SMAGGHE.

i'm usually all over these threads but i really have nothing to say - i've been listening to last years dj mixes all spring.

having said that i think i may spirit myself down to the record store to pick up ivan smagghe presents death disco ... it looks pretty good, i think.

akufen's got a fabric mix coming out soon, i guess.

Suck My Deck is pretty good yes - I especially liked the inclusion of "Murder Was The Bass" which was one of last year's top tunes.

i like it better than either smagghe mix.

i was really let down by those smagghe mixes. making tracks based around synth riffs is cool, but then you have to make sure the riffs are really catchy. aside from the "moskow reise" remix and chelonis' "the rush" i was really struck by the lameness of the hooks and beats on "suck my deck", especially compared to something like the miss kittin: on the road mix.

the "death disco" mix was a little better but again i thought the whole middle section was un-catchy, snoreworthy, blah. the tracks all have the elements of greatness that tracks like redshift's "glide" or blackstrobe's "number one" remix have WITHOUT the hooks, the hummable melodies or catchy samples or mindbending FX (like the ascending cymbal crash in "number one" or the glitched-up pauses in the drumrolls on "glide"). it's all sort of ... workmanlike on smagghe's part.

the woolford mix OTOH is packed full of cheap gags and dirty tricks. the first track mashes up "testfour" and timbaland's bit from "are you that somebody" over a new bassline, and guess what, it's stormin'. in the rest of the first half-hour we get totally ridiculous retro manoeuvres from tiga ("pleasure from the bass"), codex+flexor styled sad-house by infusion ("girls can be cruel"), vocal science, buzzing 303s and fat wobbly reese basslines.

yeah there's some boring latin house to sit through, and the mix leans a bit heavily on old material ("blue monday" again???) but this is easily easily my favorite mix of the year so far.

naturally subliminal vol 6 is also a strong contender for first place dj mix.

new stuff?

Ellen Allien 'My Parade'

=== worst of thread ===
Liked what Jeff Mills was trying to do some of the time on 'Exhibitionist' that summery-fast-latin-afro-techno-carnival thing... shame it only really came off well in small moments :-(

That CD free with the Warp DVD is a pile-of as well. Technically interesting but god damn I just don't find it the least bit exciting in practice.
=======================

Weatherall's Fabric mix. And I don't want to hear any of that jaded ILM "ah was really letdown. His mix for the Bulgarian DJ-mag Mikski in 1993 was far more imaginative" talk.

haha you won't hear that from me.

Me neither

well let's see. to this we can add

the trip: tom middleton (there's a whole thread about this somewhere)
how to kill the dj : part two (optimo)

haven't listened to much of XFM'S THE REMIX this year as it's
Not As Good As It Used To Be, but i'd appreciate someone pointing us all in the direction of the best superchunks since the summer.
any guesses?

M.A.N.D.Y's Get Physical mix is the most glaring omission from this list so far.

The undiscovered country: Jeremy P. Caulfield's Dumb-Unit Public Works

i know it gets a lot of polarized reactions here, but erlend oye's dj kicks mix is the best for me so far this year. by far. if only because i like every single song on it.

My love'd be less conditional if only the too-cute-for-its-own-good "2D2F" selection hadn't been made.

Erlend Oye's mix is great if it gets twee-folk fans into microhouse!

what i would'nt give for a really good jaxx dj kicks with bootlegs and all taht stuff they do on. there's a WE LOVE SUNDAY...thing
(from SPACE?) all over soulseek which is great, if a bit big beach/pete tong-y.

weatherall fabric is sick. FREAKS UNITE.

Exclusive Radio Mix (32.06 mins)
Official radio mix to promote the fabric album 'fabric 19'

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

PS, Not on Fabric's payroll, just thought some (like myself) would enjoy a preview of Weatherall's Fabric.

fuck the weatherall mix. i'm sticking to paul woolford. feel free to email me if anyone wants me to gmail them the mix.

also i'm rating this coco machete mix highly but it would've been a lot higher if some of the more recent coco machete releases (dj don casino ft razor cain, dj don casino ft hazel, the chicken lips remixes) had made it onto the mix.

it got great reviews in all of the dj mags but didn't get a mention on ILM.

Some unmentoned stuff on here.

Wasteland "Vulture Culture Mix"
/rupture "Shotgun Sessions"
Aaron Spectre "Bastard Mix Live"
Lil Jon "We Run The South"
MIA/Diplo "Piracy Funds Terrorism"
Bug vs. Soundmurderer "Peel Sessions"

why does woolford play such good tunes when he makes so so many shite ones!

yeah it's hard to trust a dj who puts out 12" releases as "the hip therapist", "toe jam" and oh yeah, "the wackdaddies". except did you ever hear "pay up"? that was an amazing track, actually, but they left it off the wackdaddies album for some reason.

now that he's put out "4 my bleeps" under his bobby peru alias all is forgiven. i guess it's going to be on this mix which i wouldn't mind hearing at all. anybody else heard it?? (also isn't underwater darren emerson's label?? that can't be a bad thing, right?)

Yeah Underwater's been like a sort of UK Subliminal though, intentionally too I'd wager. Some ok releases and alot of rubbish.

I wasn't mad about "For My Bleeps" I must say, or anything on 20/20 for the last while. Last thing I liked was the Fred Everything "Light Of Day" remix thing, the nice Jimpster one.

that What it Dew mixtape hosted by Chamillionaire.

Okay, it's totally been their year anyhow, but IMHO Tiefschwarz have done it again with the mix disc of "Misch Masch" which is bloody fantastic.

Loads of stand-out tunes, particularly that "ITWFM" (it works for me) one and "Safari". In general it's much more actively "electro" as opposed to "electrohouse" than I was expecting, but actually all the better for it - it's like the lost ground between 90s electro nerdery and 2004's big club bombast - manages to be quite overtly "smart" but immediately compelling at the same time.

I also think it's interesting that Weatherall's fabric mix mines a pretty similar vein of sleazy acidic stuff to the Smagghe mixes. I was expecting it to be much less retro.

Other omission from this thread is Morgan Geist's "Unclassics" which is certainly distinctive, though I can't quite decide where it sits. Not as immediately thrilling as "suck my deck", fabric 19 or "Misch Masch" but maybe has more longevity...

Ooh, also, we haven't mentioned DJ Clever - "Troubled waters" here either - I thought it was totally meh at first but it comes alive in headphones, you get sucked into its internal logic and the tunes acquire all sorts of extra dimensions...

My ranking:

1. Tiefschwarz - "Misch Masch"
2. Ivan Smagghe - "Suck my deck"
3. MANDY - "Get Physical second anniversary"
4. DJ Clever - "Troubled waters"
5. Superpitcher live at Mayday (despite a couple of totally clunky mixes, it's still great, particularly when Ferenc's "France" comes in...)
6. Fabric 19 (dunno, it's cool an all, but doesn't hit as hard as the first three)

Also - is it just me, or was this kind of a rub year for hip hop mixtapes? There was nothing to rank alongside the DJ Vlad and Dirty Harry 2pac/Biggie tapes from last year, or Green Lantern's "Conspiracy theory" or Kay Slay's "No pork on my fork"...

I've not heard "What it dew" but the Roy Jones and DJ Jelly ones were dire...

HOLY SHIT

blackstrobe essential mix!!

listen to it while it's still up!!!

the first 20-25 minutes had me literally glued to my seat. perhaps in response to jess' assertion that he needs some LFO to balance out the sweet exorcist in his mixes he drops the "leeds warehouse mix" over "miura" at like -8 or something, with heavy delay (and other fx too). a few minutes before that he did a similar trick with "unique 3" (though why doesn't anybody ever use the vocal version??)

this mix is about 1000x better than it looks from the tracklisting owing to what sounds like serious postproduction. or maybe these guys really have their dj skills decks/fx shit down or something (yeah right).