Watchtower has just announced that Two Against the Void, Epyx & Cyrez’s new artist album, will be with us next month. The previews are already online and the mix of melodies and harder tunes is looking excellent, along with remixes from Endemic, Tyranoid & Strongstream and Pain on Creation & Substanced.
Congrats to Watchtower and E&C for what’s sure to be a blinding release – head over to the Watchtower site now to place a preorder.
The Top 3 Tracks post will be coming soon – it’s already a good one, but just waiting for responses from one or two more DJs. In the meantime then, here are my picks for the Top 3 mixes of 2012. There were plenty of excellent efforts last year, but the three here do an especially great job of creating their own atmosphere, finding exciting connections that add to the set, or pushing the sound that TYFTH was set up to promote (or sometimes all of the above). If you would have chosen differently (including any nice sets that didn’t appear on TYFTH, of course) feel free to give them a shout in the comments below.
First of all we have Pearsall’s stupendous tribute to FINRG, mixed to tie in with the 10th anniversary.
Next is really two mixes in one – the Freeformaniacs session between BEEZEE and Alderz.
Finally, I’ve gone for Tyranoid’s Elder Signs, a wonderful hour of darker music that pips the competition to third spot with some brilliant connections (mainly the 2023 – Engel combination that I’m still in love with).
Honourable mentions: Wyrm, Dyzphazia, Alchemiist, AT, Cuedy
For those who weren’t aware until now, there’s one heck of a freeform release on the way from one of the founders of the sound, Electronica Exposed. Following on from the excellent Freeform Exposed, this second edition will have two Shanty-mixed sets and 37 (!) unmixed tunes spread over 3 parts, set for release in February, March and April. No sign of tracklists just yet, but check out the release page for a very promising list of artists and a schedule for the promo clips (starting with the great Finfish remix).
If you’re after a 30 minute burst of NRG and freeform, look no further than this great Dyzphazia set from last week. His finger’s on the pulse as usual with some brand new selections, but the second half also has some lovely, unexpected choices that flow very nicely towards the manic Night Prey.
It’s finally time for a look back at 10 Years of FINRG and my escapades in Finland and the UK – part of the reason for this write-up’s massive delay is the difficulty of doing justice to what was an utterly stupendous trip from start to finish. This might well be a long one (and in fact is version 3 of the post), but feel free to skip through to the event section where you’ll find my tracklist and a few other bits and pieces of behind the scenes-related stuff.
Important edit: Apologies to Raver71 for not crediting his photo of the Senssi decor. Check here for his awesome album from the night, and click here for the equally great Sessions2 photos, where you’ll find me looking especially psychopathic.
Thanks to the Munted! organisers I’ve got permission to upload my Betwixt & Between tribute set a little earlier than originally planned, which sets us up nicely for a little belated Christmas present tomorrow.
This was one of the most difficult sets so far to put together, not only from the emotional side of things, but also in terms of track selection. Any Betwixt fan would agree that you’d need a lot more than an hour to do justice to his sound, but here I tried to at least give a taste of his different styles, while also including a few favourites and some unusual stuff for the more knowledgeable crew in a set that would still get people dancing/head-nodding. Ambitious stuff then, and I’m sure there are a lot of omissions that people thought were must-plays, but thankfully it went down well during the event and has had some nice feedback since.
Given the circumstances, to start I went for some melodic tracks that really show the emotional side of Kaoru’s sound – it was hard to look past Stairway to Solstice as the first tune, while Isolation has always been my favourite ‘new’ tune on the Nanosecond Eternity album. After stumbling on the Tout est Bien – Burst! combo, I decided on a harder detour to show off his other styles, before going (almost) freeform-only for the second half. Then it was a matter of judging when to throw in the big anthems like Zusammengehorigkeit, while happily the City of Solitude – Reincarnation connection near the end (one of my favourites) was a big success on the night.
01. Betwixt & Between – Stairway to Solstice
02. Betwixt & Between – Tankobu Hesotarou no Hourou
03. Betwixt & Between – Isolation
04. Betwixt & Between – Self Extortion
05. Betwixt & Between – Tout est Bien (Sein zum Tode)
06. Poly Calamity – Burst!
07. Poly Calamity – Unam Sanctum
08. Betwixt & Between – Nanosecond Eternity
09. Betwixt & Between – I Think We Can Go To The Moon
10. Betwixt & Between – Zusammengehorigkeit
11. RaverRose – Broken Visage
12. RR-ThermalForce – Moving Flare (Betwixt & Between edit)
13. Betwixt & Between feat Yukacco – Nothing Compares 2 U
14. Betwixt & Between – City of Solitude
15. Betwixt & Between – Reincarnation
16. Poly Calamity – Decillion Catastrophes
17. Betwixt & Between – Flowless
I stopped myself from playing promos simply because they’re promos, or anthems that wouldn’t have suited the flow of the set, but that means I still have a lot of tunes that didn’t fit into this mix. Sometime soon, then, I’ll be playing an alternative tribute on Ustream with some of the tracks that didn’t make it into the real set.
Finally, huge thanks to Munted! for the chance to play at a great event, and special thanks to all the listeners and chatroom ravers who stayed until 4am GMT to hear my set and pay tribute to Kaoru. I hope he would have approved of this mix – I owe him such a lot, and his memory and music will always be part of what I do in this scene.
There’ll be a roundup of the other sets once they’re all online – stay tuned.
A nice set from Grimsoul here that was in danger of going under the radar, and is another great collection of modern freeform sounds in the Substanced/Amini style. Indeed, the set gets things going with TYFTH’s Lost Elegy, before running through a lot of newer/recent tracks. Things take a turn for the unusual in the second half, with some lighter sounds mixed in with Grimsoul classics and an oddly bouncy finale, but without a tracklist I’m pretty lost as to what’s going on.
Plenty of quality here though, and well worth a listen.
Big thanks to everyone who tuned into today’s/last night’s Munted! Xmas party – I was there for the second half and had a great time with the rest of the crew. Expect to see downloads appearing very soon.
Tonight there’s yet more Krafty-based freeform action, courtesy of the Smiling Corpse podcast and this episode’s host, Dyzphazia. Making this extra special is his guest, none other than Qygen! As he mentioned in his Watchtower interview, he rarely (if ever) DJs, so a mixed or live PA Qygen set is a real treat. I’m hoping to catch this as it airs, at the usual place from 10pm GMT tonight.
Plenty of nice mixes to catch up on over the next few days, so let’s start with a great Freeformanics effort from Cuedy. Definitely a set for the Horsers, this one features a lot of new tracks and some very interesting connections, leading into a quality finish. The standout for me was the excellent use of L.E.D Galaxy – it’s not easy to suddenly throw in a Qygen track, but here it makes perfect sense and Eternal Cannon works very nicely as a follow-up. Final thanks to Cuedy for ending with TYFTH’s very own Glacial, it’s brilliant to see how it’s still getting plays these days.
The timetable for this weekend’s Munted! extravaganza is now public, and is looking very nice indeed. Sadly the curse of work-on-a-Saturday has struck again, so I’ll have to rustle up a cunning plan that gets me home in time for my set (3am GMT, midday on Saturday JST). In a perfect world I’d be able to catch Aryx too, but that might be asking too much this time. For the Europe crew this has all the makings of a lovely night, so settle in for a full 8 hours of freeform and I hope to join everyone in the second half.
GMT Timetable, Fri. 21st Dec
10-11 THUMPA
11-12 ENDEMIC
12-01 SUBSTANCED (HISTORY OF SUBSTANCED SHOWCASE)
01-02 DOUGLAS
02-03 ARYX
03-04 PLASMADANCER (BETWIXT & BETWEEN TRIBUTE SET)
04-05 A.B
05-06 MIDAS
JST Timetable, １２月２２日 （土）
07-08 THUMPA
08-09 ENDEMIC
09-10 SUBSTANCED (HISTORY OF SUBSTANCED SHOWCASE)
10-11 DOUGLAS
11-12 ARYX
12-13 PLASMADANCER (BETWIXT & BETWEEN TRIBUTE SET)
13-14 A.B
14-15 MIDAS