I have written some notes about this mix in case you were wondering:
There are two remixes of Seismic in this mix. There is a third to come which will likely be in my March mix. Check the new Hybrid remix – they continue to crank the big choons out. My favorite mix of that new Cream Sound tune called Intromodul is the original mix, but it is slightly unmixable as it starts with a 95bpm break and continues with the melody through a breakdown and starts back with a 130bpm breakbeat over the same melody. Tricky at best, maybe the start of my next mix. We’ll see. Other remixes are quite good and will definitely see some play from me, including the rather large Elfsong remix. Yes that is a real remix of Britney Spears by James Holden. Commissioned and then decommissioned, there are two remixes he did – one is a dub which is much more tech than this one. They were never officially released. Oliver Lieb (AKA LSG) did one of his 2 remixes in the last 4 years of Chloe Harris, a rather excellent DJ from Seattle. Big spacey sound to this one and fits pretty well with the Powerplant remix of Seismic. Not too much to say about the Fretwell remix of Aeron Aether other than this is a fine piece of ear-candy. Distant Fragment brings us a quality piece of atmospheric breaks in the form of “Luminous Clouds”. The mix finishes with Stefan Anion‘s remix of Seismic – though it is not exactly the same remix as I played in the November 2007 edition of Pacific Front Sessions. Here we have an updated version of the remix. I actually played the first version of it in November erroneously. This is why it is good to keep your hard drive clean and clear..
Tracklisting:
- James Holden – A Break In The Clouds (Acapella mix) – Border Community
- Chloe Harris – Skooch (Oliver Lieb remix) – Mashtronic
- AFK and Dustin H – Seismic (Powerplant remix) – Pacific Front Recordings
- Britney Spears – Breathe In Me (James Holden Vocal mix) – Unreleased
- Cream Sound – Intromodul (Embliss Capturing the Void remix) – Morphosis Records
- Aeron Aether – Abandon (Fretwell remix) – Tilth Music
- Distant Fragment – Luminous Clouds – Morphosis Records
- Long Range – Just One More (Hybrid remix) – Long Range Recordings
- AFK and Dustin H – Seismic (Stefan Anion’s Running For Cover remix) – Pacific Front Recordings
Download: AFK – Pacific Front Sessions: January 2008 (mp3)
Right click and Save As, or option-click the link on a Mac to automatically download
Woohoo, downloading, will report back with my findings 🙂
ditt-o
Findings, play-by-play stylez:
Classic intro track, and the mix into Skooch is totally seamless. I love it. Bow down to the phat Lieb sound. Sounds like something Diggers might put on his next Transitions comp (wouldn’t be that big a stretch since I know he digs Mashtronic).
Here comes Seismic! Woot… neat percussion. I like oldschool acid stabs. The bassline was a surprise! But I like it. Actually the ambience of this track reminds me of something from Speedy J’s album “G-Spot”. Okay, now I’m really digging the bassline. Solid groove going here now. Or maybe that’s the start of the Britney track? Does it have a long intro? Suppose I’ll find out in a minute.
*moments later*
Ha, uh, I guess that’s a no. lol. Jungley, bongley noises. Okay reverse piano noises… sounds like James Holden alright. Oh, I recognize this track… huge. Davin, did you play this for me when you came down last time? Giant stuff. Love that bassline coming in, soooo awesome. Cue bass drums, radular. Not hard to see why Mr. Holden gets the attention he does with productions like this.
Bleeps! I must have gotten an extra guy!
*Spy Guy says I’m tuned into PFS*
Neat bassline stuff going on here… ribbed bass as it were… whoa… fading into ambience. neat. Ok this sounds like Aphex Twin, but I guess it’s Aeron Aether?
Whoa, awesome strong bassline intro. Very assertive. Aha… those sound like Hybrid’s breakbeats… am I right? No, apparently not, lol. Does Fretwell have anything to do with Hybrid? Neat backwards samples. Reminds me of the end of a set I heard recently. Love the airy sound of this track, for some reason it’s reminding me of playing Turbografx 16, haha. Nice quiet piano breakdown.
Now I’m wondering if I’m still listening to Abandon, or if somehow this track is Luminous Clouds and I missed the transition. Whichever track it is, it’s still the one with that assertive bassline/Hybrid sound.
Okay here comes the next track. Sounds like more breakbeat.. this is gonna lead into Hybrid well… if it’s not Hybrid already. Haha. Love the sustained bassline.. hooverphonic! And the breakdown, and we have neat ambient guitar picking textures… I love how we come out of the breakdown here. Bam, right back to the breaks. I’m guessing *these* must be the aforementioned luminous clouds. Another breakdown, and more guitar picking textures… sounds great. Love guitar picking textures, reminds me of that first FSOL album I had. And BAM. Right back out of the breakdown.
Ooh… next track coming in. Repeating sounds.. some high-end frequencies coming in… and *node* Giant breakbeats.. block rocking breakbeats even? Not much going on so far… okay whoa… deep warbly bassline just came in under said giant broken beats. Subtle strings. Definitely not like Hybrid’s older stuff but more like something from Morning Sci-Fi (and probably from “I choose noise”, which I still haven’t heard completely). Man this is spooky. Bleep boo boo boop. Okay, just checked the time remaining for the first time, and there’s 21 minutes to go, so either the last two tracks of the mix are super long, or I messed up (I’m picking the latter, since this isn’t really sounding all that Hybrid…dy).
*Spy Guy*
Whoa.. haha giant bass anyone?
Okay next track is coming in, and there’s 16 minutes left. Wow… this is crazy busy. Sounds more like the boys from Swansea. Okay, there’s some Hybridesque snarls… this must be “Just One More”.
Zoning out there for a bit… WHOA WTF!!! What was that?! Holy bright supernova whoa. Awesomeness. Bassline brrrrrrrrm. I am fully paying attention now, lol. A little over 10 minutes to go. Breakdown. Falling stars. Cool. Noise tweakery. Can anticipate it coming back… yep. Very Hybrid. The falling star noises are still audible… cool…
Oho… here comes the next track.. Whoa, deep bass… bassdrop. We must be onto the last track now. Can still hear Just One More, but Seismic is coming into full view now. Nice bassline! Very get-up-and-dance. I really like the production in this, it’s new and oldschool at the same time, really nice work. The chopped up vocal samples are cool. Haha, nice fill with the real drums. That was unexpected and fun. Breakdown now…. spiky ambience. Like we’re about to get shot out a rollercoaster… but it didn’t happen like I was expecing… wow, this is smooth… whoa. Okay, here we go… hahah… NOW we’re out of the breakdown. 🙂 Tricker!!
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Overall, a great genre-busting set (I hear tech house, prog, ambient and breaks) yet you manage to keep a flow through all of it; no simple feat. Nice work!!
Whoa, nice review there Krishen, I think that’s the most in-depth anyone’s ever listened to one of my mixes, or at least the most in depth documentation of said listening. One never knows how hard people are actually listening, so it’s pretty cool to hear it from your point of view. 🙂
The track you were probably trying to find between the Holden remix and everything else is the Cream Sound track. FYI Fretwell has nothing to do with Hybrid but they do have some similar styles going on. Put them side by side with new tunes I’ve never heard before, though, and I could definitely tell them apart, but mostly because Fretwell has a style of percussion and compression on his tracks that he seldom deviates from, much like Starecase back in the day did.
Woah, that is one big review! NICE! While I won’t be disecting your mix as thoroughly, I will say that I quite enjoyed it. It has really great flow throughout. I’m especially fond of the track coming in around 22 minutes with the piano. That song just makes me feel all warm inside.
btw, nice addition of the subscribe link up at the top there… very handy. i may have to go dig up the rss reader again… i seem to have this love-hate thing going on with them. i want to know about the updates without visiting the sites, but i want to view the content in its orginal format.
Yup I feel the same way about RSS but it’s more about making it accessible for others than myself. I also like viewing the content (if there IS new content) in its original form but I get tired of visiting sites that do not get updated very often.