I was listening to my old mixes from 2002 which is basically just after I got my first decks and started DJing.
Well actually my first pair of decks got pinched, one of them belonged to Marek. I think at that stage I’d cobbled together an ancient pair of direct drives, or possibly one was a belt drive with a pitchfader.
Crazy business.
The reggae mix which I put up on soundcloud was pretty sweet but the D’n B mix “Doom” which I put together for a punk party I was playing at – I remember it was the night Bailey was playing in Auckland 2002 – that was just awful.
I wil put it up in the archives one day just so people can laugh at how hopeless my shocking mixing was back then.
But it was also a bit of a shock to hear how dated the tunes were. Sure most of the tunes on the mix were 98-’02 vintage and there were a couple that still stood up including one of my all time favourite dark destroyers, “Quadrant 6″ by Dom & Roland.
I definitely had much darker taste in heavier driving drum’n bass but a lot of it was just, man it wouldn’t stand up right now, that’s for sure.
Dillinja’s “Nasty Ways” was a real suprise. I remember you could always hear a Dillinja tune because it just cut through the mix and was so damn loud, now it’s as if the Dillinja tune was the only one that sounded half way decent by todays standards, all that early BC stuff, man, sounded awful!
I used to love it!
It just really gave me some perspective on it.
People often joke, “man if I’d written this song 5 years ago . . . ” I think it’s true. What was a drum and bass smasher 5 years ago is merely okay sounding now. That’s progress.
It also feeds into that idea at the back of my head that makes me think it’s really just kids shit, it’s a kiddies world, all this drum and bass, y’know I remember how rapid I was about it when I was in my early twenties and I listen back and hear this racket? What was I thinking.
I used to take it so seriously, just like all the young kids I laugh at do. I put my life on hold for this? No wonder my girlfriends and most of my friends weren’t that interested.
No, that’s just a backlash, I think the most important thing is the perspective. There’s so many opportunities to say . . . where did the last 7 years go . . . but when I listen to this music, think about the way I thought, and the way I lived, the music I was making man . . .
come a long way in 7 years, and Drum and Bass sounds wicked now!
All that crap is out of the way, we’re writing truly mature beats . . . I can see now why guys like Calibre, Alix Perez etc. who shook the scene with a certain sound were embraced because it was part of a progression, and I may have been into this game for 12 years now but I’m still at the point where the new music is being made, I’m still about of te progression, I haven’t been left behind yet!
Check out the reggae dub mix for some chill vibes yo
