Taking the waters - 2004 goa set

[Walkabout]

In the spirit of 'everything old is new again', I thought I'd dust off this odd little mix, the first one I did that I really liked.

 

There's a bit of a story behind this. In the mid-2000s I was an aspiring psytrance DJ, and spun at a couple of obscure parties in Southern California (nothing you've heard of, I'm sure). At that time everyone was going in either a full on or dark psy direction, but my heart was still stuck on the music of the 1990s; the 'Goa revival' hadn't really kicked off yet and I was the only person in my circle that still played this kind of music. Without much to go on, and with the kindness of a promoter who let me open the aforementioned parties, I started to travel my own strange path... a few bedroom mixes were made, on pretty cheesy equipment: Denons, a Gemini mixer, and a hardware sampler which I'd use to drop in suggestive things from sci-fi, anime and B movies.

 

What I knew about beat mixing at that time can be summed up in two words: jack and shit. And Jack left town. So you will hear some rhythmically awkward transitions here and there. But! What I was starting to do was match themes and sounds to make the tracks talk to each other and tell a story together. You can hear it (I hope) in the call-and-response between different drum lines, chants and melodic voices. It's rough, but it has heart IMHO.

 

In the last several years I barely attended any trance parties at all, and subsequently my interest in mixing dried up. But I never stopped being a fan, and recently the resurgence of interest in older sounds and styles has brought me out of the woodwork and convinced me to start practicing again. I'm enjoying the process of re-learning.

 

That's enough of my diary. Give it a shot, see what you think. http://soundcloud.com/earwall/taking-the-waters-old-mix

 

Tracks:

The Overlords - The 7th Stage

Cwithe - Memory Foam

Poly61 - Out Here We Aren't

Shiva Chandra - Machine Planet

Taruna - Biosphere Terra Gaia

Medicine Drum - Katakali

Shakta - Shakti/Shakta

Blue Planet Corporation - Generator

UV13 - Psionic Nimboid Membrane

The Antidote - Sunrise

Ozric Tentacles - Sunhair (System 7 Remix)