DJ Harvey - Essential Mix 12.26.1999

DJ Harvey, BBC Radio One Essential Mix December 26, 1999 Part 1 (Filemojo link)

DJ Harvey, BBC Radio One Essential Mix December 26, 1999 Part 2 (Filemojo link)

tracklisting in comments

I'm liking the idea of throwing up some long mixes on Friday, give everyone some nice listening for the weekends. We haven't done an Essential Mix in awhile, way past time to throw up one of these. We're going way back for this one, to a different century in fact. Hopefully some readers remember those glorious 90s, when the biggest issue our country faced was a blowjob and . House music entered its peak years then, as it absorbed the blueprint and expanded on it in every major city on Earth.

One of the world's great DJs, DJ Harvey, closed out the decade with a 2 hour mixing looking back at the best of house music for the preceding 10 years. I actually know Harvey mainly through his Sarcastic Disco party and various disco-y edits over the years. Clearly though, the guy is just as well-versed with house music. You get big names like Moodyman and Orbital, lesser-known-but-no-less rad artists like The Basement Boys and 4 To The Bar, plus some disco goodies here and there. Harvey's mix makes the connection between those two genres nicely, covering much of the developments along those lines in the 90s as disco stopped being such a dirty word and more artists started to be openly influenced by the sound.

Laidback Luke - Essential Mix

Laidback Luke, BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix February 23, 2008 (YSI link) (Sendspace link) tracklisting in comments

Let's stay in the present and upload the most recent Essential Mix on Radio 1 featuring Laidback Luke. I've actually been meaning to drop a few tracks from this new wave of big-room house music coming out of Europe that has dominated in Ibiza. Laidback Luke is a Dutch producer, who has been around for while but only has taken off in the last year or two. Some of his biggest successes like "Get Dumb" have come in collaboration with members of The Swedish House Mafia - Steve Prydz, Axwell, Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso. All of these names are essential, producer/DJs bringing that old funky Chicago house sound back with some electro and minimal thrown in.

This 2-hour mix is just awesome, awesome, awesome, like a night at Pacha without the Asian mafia or Jerseyites. It ranges from vocal house to electro to some techno, hell, there's even a trance-y euphoric vibe at moments. Listening to it, it's hard for me to believe that this is the overground in dance music; this set is so dynamic and sounds so great, nothing like the untz-untz stuff you have in your head. What I love most is the tempo changes, how he will drop out to just a vocal playing and slowly let the beat come back in and away we go once more. It's one of the best Essential Mixes I've heard in a while, wonderfully paced, a nice mix of current favorites, some Luke remixes and even some of his edits of classics like Daft Punk's "Teachers." I can't recommend this one more highly, especially for anyone who wants to get a sense of what clubland is like right now in Europe and the States.

Hot Chip - Essential Mix 12.29.07

Hot Chip, BBC Radio One Essential Mix December 29, 2007 (YSI link)(Sendspace link) tracklisting in comments

Ahh, I love a nice tie-in/segue. Props to Pete Tong and crew for bringing Hot Chip in at the end of 2007 to put together an Essential Mix for the BBC Radio 1 program, giving me a nice 1-2 Hot Chip punch today. This is a pretty special opportunity for the band, as I can only think of one other Essential Mix by a musical group - The Rapture. Like that Rapture mix, this one covers a ton of ground, giving you everything from Snoop's latest to a Todd Terje disco edit to Burial's futuristic dubstep. It's a great listen for anyone still trying to jump into dance music, giving it to you in its most melodic, poppiest forms and mix some more popular/vocal stuff throughout. For fans of the band, here's a great chance to hear some more stuff from the upcoming album, plus a healthy amount of white labels and unreleased stuff. Interestingly, they have broken themselves down into two DJ teams; the first team (Alexis Taylor, Joe Goddard and Owen Clarke) does the first hour, while the second team (Felix Martin and Al Doyle) finishes strong in the second hour.

We've been doing these Essential Mix posts for a while now, one of the great resources for dance and electronic music fans. It's amazing to get the chance to hear such a varied assortment of DJs and producers exploring all of the various genres and subgenres every week for two hours. That's not to mention all of the other amazing programming from the likes of Mary Ann Hobbs, Annie Mac and the like. It got me to thinking how completely worthless radio has become in the United States, a wasteland and a huge change from earlier decades. In doing some research for a theme this week on a particular city, I saw just how influential radio was in helping to break and develop house and techno in this country in its earliest days in Chicago and Detroit. I don't really have a grand point here, guess it's part observation, part nostalgia. Obviously, Internet radio, blogs and podcasts have filled the void; I just worry that these vehicles aren't reaching as many people as a good radio signal once did.

Claude VonStroke - Essential Mix 11.10.2007

Claude VonStroke, BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix November 10, 2007 (YSI link)(Sendspace link) tracklisting in comments

We're coming up to the final few days of 2007, the time that we look back and list our favorites and wrap up a year of posts. For me, one of the biggest names of the year was Claude VonStroke, the man behind Dirtybird Records and some of the biggest dance tracks and remixes of the past two years. From his original productions to his remixes to the monthly party he and and the label began at New York City's APT club, the dude has been an essential part of my soundtrack this year.

It's fitting then that he would make an Essential Mix for the BBC Radio 1 program, capping off a big year. While it's super rad to see CVS get his due with this invite to the big leagues, it's way more rad that our man killed it on this one. Unlike the Mixmag mix I put up a few weeks ago, this 2 hour mix gives us a look much more into the man's influences, which I always love. He covers classic Chicago house, a lil' booty stuff, lots of new stuff from the techno and house worlds, edits, even a little hip-hop. Check the tracklist if you need to, but honestly, I'd just download and listen. This one is siiiiiccccckkkkkkk, like goosebumps and smiles and memories of past dancefloors and dreams of future ones. This dude has become a big Pound for Pound favorite in 2007, I cannot wait to see him solidify his lofty standing with an even bigger 2008. Yeah!