Journey Through The Deep

Journey Through The Deep by Magnofon on Mixcloud

I work in the upholstery trade and this afternoon I came across a close-up photograph of a fabric swatch and decided to earmark it for a music project. I was particularly keen on the tone of it, as it had an almost African feel to it. Then this evening, I was washing the dishes and listening to music as usual when I came across an old mix of mine from back in 2006.
And here we are...another blog post!

2006 was a year where in terms of DJing, I was pretty much in my prime as I was starting to get quite a few gigs. This was my first and possibly only recorded mix as I had some terrible problems with my laptop at the time and even to this day, I'm pretty proud of it.
I intended to make a set that was so deep that it would tread a strange, almost dark territory and scoured some of my weirder, more underground records.
The result is something that's consistently dubby, hypnotic, deep and beautiful at times. Occasionally, my developing interest in ambient music can be detected and the mix has the odd flicker of African influences too. It's the latter which ties in nicely with the cover image I have selected.

As for the mixing, it's pretty decent on the most part. The only real blemish is the recording quality, due to that ancient heap of junk laptop I used to capture it. There is a consistent hiss which is present throughout but hopefully the quirky and hypnotic deepness will prevent your ears from focussing on it too much...

Warehouse Decay Sessions #3

Warehouse Decay Sessions #003 by Magnofon on Mixcloud

01  Dan Curtin - My Deep Love

02  Demarkus Lewis - Do You Really Know?

03  Casey Hogan - Update The System

04  Giles Smith Presents Two Armadillos - Butterfly Bee

05  Sakro - Hold Me Tight

06  Detroit Swindle - The Wrap Around

07  Tomska - Deep Inside

08  Jimpster - Get A Hold On Your Soul

09  Dan Berkson and James What - Onika

10  Patrick Turner - Skywalking

11  Chris Carrier - Junction

12  Brawther - Do It Yourself

13  Atjazz - Looking Glass

Warehouse Decay Session number 3 continues the vinyl-only airing via my Mixcloud account. After the last session's occasional trainwreck, I was keen to concentrate nailing the beatmatching this time round. I kicked things off with possibly my favourite House track of all time - an old Dan Curtin record I bought off a mate when he was skint. I think it cost me the price of a pint at the time, which was about £2.50 in those days! 'My Deep Love' is a fine deep cut with skipping beats, surely Curtin's best piece as far as I'm aware.

On from this, despite a slight mismatch of keys, I went for Demarkus Lewis's 'Do You Really Know?', another all time favourite of mine. I've a lot of Demarkus's records so they'll crop up regularly in the Warehouse Decay Sessions. Further into the mix, I opted to juxtapose deep vibes with a techy edge before airing a trio of recent purchases. First up is the bass heavy 'Hold Me Tight' by Sakro which moves into a superb dancefloor friendly moment by Detroit Swindlers - this is the piece I often skip straight to if listening when I'm pressed for time. Next up is a piece from Tomska's record on Vibes and Pepper Recordings, all of which are excellent.

I then drop in a big deep House tune from Jimpster, which I remember playing heavily at gigs just before I put DJing on the backburner. This record got a lot of support at the time and it's easy to hear why. I follow it with a hypnotic techno groove by Dan Berkson and James What - this is the flipside to their massive collaboration with Robert Owens - I'm sure I'll give that an airing some time in the future. I drop another personal classic after this, Patrick Turner's 'Skywalking' brings in a fine slab of electronic funk. I was considering packing the mix in at this point but I saw that I hadn't been mixing for that long and fancied carrying on for a few more records. I left it very late and just about brought in the minimal beats of Chris Carrier's 'Junction'. Since this noticeably depleted all of the energy that 'Skywalking' had built up, I decided to prat around with some strange scratching effects, that I still can't decide if it works or not. In hindsight, it really wasn't necessary but what the heck. The deep keys return with Brawther's excellent 'Do It Yourself', a piece with a strong old skool feel and hints of garage. I close it all off with Atjazz's 'Looking Glass'; another classic in my books. The needle started to gather dust from too much weight being applied on the tone arm...so the sound started to distort. A perfect reason for me to call it a day.

Warehouse Decay Sessions #2

Warehouse Decay Sessions #002 by Magnofon on Mixcloud

01  Rick Wade - Moving On

02  Dubbyman - Kirigi Is Coming

03  Four Walls - Untitled

04  Ray Valioso - Groove Memories

05  Alex Flitsch meets Audiofly - Conversations

06  Santorini - Out Of Bounds

07  Brawther - Spaceman Funk (Deep Club Mix)

08  Demarkus Lewis - Rise Above

09  Ray Okpara - The You Of Cool

10  Modi - Aputicat

11  Frank Leicher - Other Peace

12  MAW ft. Roy Ayers - Our Time Is Coming (Jazzanova The Guestlist Remix)

13  Hidenobu Ito - Beauty

14  My My - Going Going Gone

15  Bebel Gilberto - Aganju (Spiritual South Sub Rub Instrumental)

After a successful short mix a few days prior (WDS#1), I was keen to press on with a follow up and I decided to ring a few changes. This woud naturally throw down the gauntlet and see whether the first session was just a flash in the pan or whether I really should be on the front cover of Mixmag.

So, firstly I wanted to extend the airplay to around the hour mark to include more tracks. I wanted to go deeper, include a few harmonic transitions and throw in a good range of House sounds.

I decided this time not to mix on the fly and spent about two hours testing the transitions and building the tracklist. Well...I wish I'd never bothered, as I messed up a couple of mixes when I eventually hit record. The transition between tracks three and four is particularly unbearable but please don't let this put you off! The bulk of it works and there are some very nice moments to make up for it. One such is the harmonic mixing used between tracks seven and eight; just click and hear it for yourself! Oh, then there's Roy Ayers...we'll come back to him in a moment.

Musically, the tempo is set slower than the first mix and starts of deep with the dubbed out detroit-style sounds of Rick Wade, Dubbyman and Four Walls. Whilst these records aren't all recent, they are new purchases I have made. The mix eventually gets to techy and edgier territory which reaches a bit of an early crescendo in Santorini's Out Of Bounds, before heading deeper again with Brawther's Spaceman Funk. When this hits a breakdown, some percussion comes in and I fade in a real classic from Demarkus Lewis. There is a tribal element to this warm track which I built upon with Ray Okpala's The You Of Cool. The tribal element heightens here before it gets weirder on Modi's Aputicat. Things are broken back down with a Frank Leicher track before one of my favourite records comes in - the Jazzanova remix of a Master's At Work and Roy Ayers classic. 'Our Time Is Coming was given to me about 8 years ago when I got my first set of Technics and although I would regularly listen to it over the years, I would rarely ever mix it live. This was because I found the broken beats ridiculously difficult to mix - so I avoided it. I can't tell you how delighted I am to have included it here! Such a wonderful track. There's not much that can really follow this and I did intend on finishing the mix here originally. I decided to mix on the fly from here on and included three very different records. The straight up funky deepness of Hidenobu Ito, the electronic quirk of My My and then broken bass heavy beats that make for a Spiritual South remix of an old Bebel Gilberto record.

Warehouse Decay Sessions #1

Warehouse Decay Sessions #001 by Magnofon on Mixcloud

01  Carl Finlow - Islands

02  Tom Ellis - Bounce Point

03  Seuil - Musm

04  Slowhouse - Track 1

05  Baaz - Something

06  Peace Division - Get Over

07  Tomska - Let's Get It On

08  Ekkohaus - The Healer (Kreon's Linderman Remix)

09  Federico Molinari - Dos

Kicking things off with a short mix that clocks in at just over half an hour, this is my first proper attempt at recording a mix in about 3 years, so I was chuffed that it turned out okay. If anything, the fact it went so well is perhaps what got me back into this whole thing again!

I had bought a few new 12"s in the run up to this session and then went about setting aside a few piles of records. I set the recording levels and got right onto it in on-the-fly fashion.

Opening the mix is an old favourite deep electronic cut by Carl Finlow and then the mix chugs along at a steady pace through garagey moments by the likes of Tom Ellis and Tomska, via more stripped back/techy pieces by Seuil and Peace Division. I also managed to shoehorn in a coupe of favourites from Baaz an Slowhouse - I dare say I'll be flipping these EPs over to the B side for use in future mixes.