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[Marathon mix] Theme Challenge 4 (COMPLETE) (pg. 9)
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| Sand Leaper |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
Great God! I'll aim to get onto it this weekend. Any plans to listen to mine in the next million years? |
I'm not really into progressive house in 2019, so I don't know how much helpful critique I can cobble together. I'll try over the next few weeks, though. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
I don't think it's very fair to take part in a "Challenge" where you don't bother to listen to anyone else's contribution. Otherwise, what's the point? We might as well set ourselves our own private challenge and then dump it on the Internet for our own fans.
At the very least you can assess how a DJ has interpreted, approached and pulled off the challenge we've all been presented with. |
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| wotyzoid |
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| Sand Leaper |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
At the very least you can assess how a DJ has interpreted, approached and pulled off the challenge we've all been presented with. |
Yes, that's what I had in mind. |
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| Mr Game+Watch |
Is this still going on? I obviously missed the deadline but will definitely want to (eventually) contribute.
Jack, there was a point in the second half of part 2 of your set when I was going crazy... the more bass heavy tunes with almost a bit of a swagger. Very awesome work, though I hope to soon listen to it all in one piece for better context. |
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| ziptnf |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mr Game+Watch
Is this still going on? I obviously missed the deadline but will definitely want to (eventually) contribute. |
Yes! I'm just gonna have people submit hopefully before the next challenge this summer. If people don't make it they don't make it. I'd recommend it though, it was fun to make and has been enjoyable listening to the mixes. |
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| Sand Leaper |
Finally gave SYS-J's mix a listen as well. I get much of the same impression here as with ziptnf's mix, namely that the precision and structuring of the mix is almost clinical, which is always impressive. You can easily hear the points where it becomes clear to the DJ that the night is still young, and therefore, it's important to keep your powder dry until a few more hours in. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary with the transitions themselves, either.
Even though progressive house is too clean and streamlined for me to really get into these days, the few bits and pieces that stood out from that still meshed well with the meat and potatoes of the mix, such as the Hardfloor tunes, Das Glockenspiel and the Watson/DeGeorgio collab. It makes me wonder how much further outside the genre norm you could have taken it without killing the groove, perhaps with some breaks? No complaints beyond that, though. |
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| wotyzoid |
| I'm gonna try to reupload mine today, whoever wants to hear it, make sure you grab it this time. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
Yes, with hindsight my one regret is not playing any breaks. I've generally been pleased to hear from a few people in this thread that they enjoyed the little lulls in the set where I took things down a notch, because I wasn't sure if I did enough of that over 6 hours. But having listened back, I'd agree a little 15-20 minute switch-up from straight four-on-the-floor would have broken things up really well. The simple truth is I just don't come across many breakbeat tunes these days, not at the tempo I play at. I suppose if I'd planned it in advance and spent a couple of days trawling I could have dug out some Bicep-style faux-retro tunes, but it didn't occur to me.
Cheers for listening, anyway. I just need to find a relaxed Sunday afternoon/evening where I know I'm going to be in front of the stereo for four straight hours in order to do yours justice. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
So, I finally got through Jan's mix on a slightly hungover Saturday afternoon spent ironing, tidying up, cooking and general living room pottering.
Assessing this mix is interesting because it is based on an actual event, and as with many live sets, what makes sense at home and what made sense at the time are not necessarily the same. Case in point: I found the opening half hour of this a bit of an odd one. After a very lovely opener, you proceeded to get into a party-ish and somewhat goofy vibe very quickly, leaving me at times feeling like I'd wandered into an abandoned Avalanches demo. My conclusion at this point was that the bar in question must have been fairly lively, but before much longer you got into some lovely mellow Chicago-ish tackle from D'Marc Cantu and Jeremiah R and the mood suddenly became a whole lot deeper and more introspective. At this point the mix transformed into a much more conventional dance music set and built up in a fairly linear manner for the next two hours or so. When you went back into some disco and funk after that it made much more sense, as the mood had been steadily building up for quite a while.
Again, without being there, it's hard to judge exactly why you went with that opening half hour or how well it did the intended job. For me, however, this mix starts properly around The Lodge, and anything prior to that can be safely discarded (in particular I couldn't stand that "Plastico" track, Latin music in general being a total musical blind spot for me). Once that's out of the way, however, there's plenty of great music to be found in here, riding a nice balance between variation and cohesion. I particularly enjoyed the way you wrapped it up with the last two tracks. Not everything was to my taste, but that's an almost inevitable byproduct of an eclectic set. |
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| Sand Leaper |
Cheers, appreciate you taking the time out to check the whole thing.
The opening was basically me being a bit too eager to get people in the mood for dancing. At the start of the night, after having played Dopeness and Plastico, I got this sudden alarming feeling that things were building up way too fast for a four hour set. So, I decided to slow back down again and go through a lot more of my slower house tracks before taking the mix back up into the uptempo funk and broken beat territory again. I normally wouldn't do this for a mix put together at home, but I kept it in here to keep this reconstruction faithful to the way the night went. |
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