Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Top House mix picks

Since getting acquainted with my records/turntables again, I've not only re-developed my old vinyl-buying habit, but I've also got an appetite for listening to House music tracks and mixes on my iPod. I've been scouring Soundcloud for mixes from some of my favourite artists and there are a few that I've been coming back to time and time again.
I thought I'd bundle my favourite three together in a post here so you can enjoy them too:


JAMES JOHNSTON VIBE AND PEPPER PODCAST 01/12/11

After being out of the loop for so long, I knew there'd be a few names floating about that I wasn't familiar with. One of the first I'd discovered and was really impressed with was James Johnston; every sample of his productions I listened to was bang on the money and I subsequently bought a load of his tracks. His 'After Everything' on his own label No Matter What is absolutely fantastic and was well worth spending a few quid shipping it in from a Belgian Discogs seller.

James' well-stocked Soundcloud account is a great cross section of his production and DJ work and should be a first port of call for anyone unfamiliar.
This brings me nicely to his mix, made for Vibes and Pepper recordings at the end of this year. It is posted on James' Soundcloud account for you to stream or download and features a fine selection of House sounds which spans deep, detroit, garage and tech influences.
A tracklist isn't available but I know for sure that XTC from the After Everything EP is in there towards the latter part so well worth taking the time to listen

KASTIL vs DJ MISTER, LIVE @ HOR DAGO! NOCHEVIEJA NEW YEARS EVE 2011
http://soundcloud.com/kastilmusic
http://soundcloud.com/dj-mister
Another mix I've been enjoying from the end of last year is a live recording of a New Years Eve set by Kastil and DJ Mister. It's a five-hour vinyl only session that begins on a slow-house disco note and builds towards House and Deep House moments and heads towards a more up-beat, garagey end. There are real gems aplenty throughout and lots of track I.D queries that are too numerous to even pursue. The mix has since been removed from Kastil's Soundcloud account unfortunately but then I bet a five hour mix was taking up a fair bit of hosting space! So it kind of makes this post a little redundant, but still - Kastil/DJ Mister, if you're reading, great job!!! It's on my iPod and I listen to this all the time - gardening, cleaning, lunch-breaks, tea-breaks, commuting...even played it at a recent party of mine as I was too occupied with drinking to take to the decks myself. Great comments were aplenty
FULBERT, SOUL NOTE PODCAST
I'm a fan of the old-skool style House productions of French artist Fulbert and particularly enjoyed his recent work for Local Talk. On an entirely unrelated note, I've really been enjoying the output of the Soul Notes label of late. The two have combined here, with Fulbert providing a podcast for the label, presumably to warm up for a possible release on the label.
It's free to download and spans a carefully programmed selection of deep cuts of all shapes and sizes. Fulbert manages to offset the warmth of deep chord washes with jacked out cuts, woozy trippiness, disco wobbliness, proper old-skool sounding House music and a whole lot more.
I notice towards the end that he makes good use of a Slowhouse piece from their superb but rare vinyl-only series. Well worth a click is this

No comments:

Post a Comment