RFI: Border Community - Nathan Fake, James Holden, The MFA, Petter etc.

Ha! Saw Nathan Fake play a liveset last sunday (after Michael Mayer) and he indeed started out with a blissfull storm of MBV style noise. The great thing: somehow there was a implied beat in there...oh boy when it materialized. :) I had to leave after a while (I saw Tiefschwarz the night before -out of this world btw- so I was a bit tired) As a result I missed James Holden. But now I'm obsessed by this bunch.

And then "Panoramic" sounds like the Mayer "Happiness" mix, right down to the same vaguely malevolent glower.

http://3voor12.vpro.nl/3voor12/festivals/media/index.jsp?event=22956363&episode=23221079

Mayer/Nathan Fake/James Holden sets available here:

http://3voor12.vpro.nl/3voor12/festivals/media/index.jsp?event=22956363&episode=23225470

But yeah some added love for 'Manderine Girl'.
Goes nice with that Holden remix of 'Safari' doesn't it? (as M.A.N.D.Y. proved...that 'Safari' remix is so...woozy? Can't imagine actually dancing to it, just sort of sway and make funny faces.)

Will Holden ever be able to live down his Nathan Fake Remix? The track already has an almost legendary status.

"Will Holden ever be able to live down his Nathan Fake Remix? The track already has an almost legendary status. "

It's interesting how it's this track that has put Holden over the edge for a particular crowd (the one that's come to all of this stuff via German/electro-house), whereas all the prog fans seem to imply he's yet to top "Horizons", which i don't think I've even heard. I think my first love will always be "A Break In The Clouds".

Also interesting is how malleable discussions of influences and sonic signifiers can be - whereas it would seem obvious to "us" that Border Community is part of the German/electro/micro house interzone (albeit a proggy end of it), the prog fans talk about it in entirely different terms, as if this is a form of experimentalism entirely internal to prog, which can be explained immanently or, if one needs to look outside, by reference to rock music (how long before Holden does a Back To Mine??? I see Adam Freeland's just done one). Do these people just ignore things like Fake's Traum release? Or do they see all that stuff as a moment internal to prog as well? I noticed that in the interview upthread that Holden describes Michael Mayer as being basically a very good mid-90s UK prog house revivalist, which of course rings true in many senses but I wondered to what extent Holden was trying to speak the lingo as such.

That interview article also puts Holden in the same boat as James Zabiela - is this accurate? I always thought Zabiela was just Sasha - The Next Generation, or at least that's the impression one gets from looking at his Global Underground or Renaissance comp tracklists. (BTW I listened to Involver in store and it sounded really disappointing - why get all these great distinct tracks and then mix them as if they were all one bleary stompy prog workout???)

Zabiela and Sasha are followers I think, though Zabiela is even more preoccupied with crap breakbeat.

Maybe I'm just resistant to what Sasha does to those particular tunes. I think I'm so used to the Mayer approach to DJing with this sort of stuff, letting the tracks really emerge as songs and having their own distinct identity. The blurring together that Sasha does is annoying in that context, whereas I'd probably be fine with it if he were playing honest to goodness prog.

prog trance producer/dj with idm pretensions and wide knowledge of currently-fashionable tech-house? yes, that's accurate.

And I say this as someone who has largely been sympathetic to Sasha over the years.

Also Zabiela is not popular, he's nowhere near as popular as most of the minimal DJs. Sasha may be popular but regardless of skill even the tracklisting on his latest mix was all quite old, for someone with access to any promo around you expect to hear a good record you hadn't heard before, not a load of tried and tested tunes mixed up. I mean that's like what you get from a friends mix CD.

Also this sweaty talk of "skill" makes me feel like a metal fan, please stop it. It's nonsense.

And Tim otm, what's the point of Ableton if people just use it to eliminate any tension between tracks.

James Holden's Balance mix rocks in so many different ways. Did anyone hear the Jonathan Lyles mix? Somehow i doubt anyone on here did since it was put out by Bedrock, but it's worth checking for sure. Minimal/Koln type DJ's generally can't mix for shit but they select good tracks. Lyles, Sasha and Zabiela can actually mix with precise skill but don't play the wank material obsessed on at ILM.

PS: Mayer is honestly an excellent dj (mixing/selection etc.).. never heard the rest

i don't really think it's fair to lump dan bell in w/ mayer, herbert, superpitcher. he can do the things your talking about - although i wonder why you're still banging on the point when clearly almost everyone here prefers track selection (the tracks they like) to dj'ing skills to the point where they'd probably rather hear mayer spin dubplates w/ NO mixing than listen to well-mixed prog house or breaks ...

Honestly this bullshit of "he can't mix" as a diss for any new DJ is such old school dance fan tossed off rubbish. If you don't like the records someone plays just wheel out the "he can't mix" chestnut.

Plus if the ILM stuff is such "wank material" why is your beloved Sasha playing ALL OF IT (6 months after release date) on his latest mix CD??

Well?

But other than that I think people here are as bothered with skill as anything else, not least cos track selection fucking is skill! It is the biggest skill of all by a million fucking miles and why Sasha is so fucking lost lately (Goldfrapp mixed into microhouse on Fundacion????, plus as I said totally safe tune selection)

But ignoring that, Mayer actually is a good DJ technically, I have enough live sets of his and have seen him twice, the notion he can't mix is utter fucking rubbish perpetuated by early 90s dance fans flexing their anti-fashion muscles as per usual, "it's fashionable therefore the technical ability must not be present"

DEATH TO FALSE METAL.

"he's not playing the right tunes together" does not make someone bad at mixing, that's just personal opinion.

well, he's mixing a lot of very formless tracks together - i'm not sure w/o specific examples what you mean, but he's working with some pretty abstract source material, as opposed to sasha's perfect 4/4 dj tools.

"Fabric 13" are about as good as it gets for DJ mix CDs

i don't really agree w/ this either, though. doc martin? tyler stadius? ivan smagghe? adam beyer? and this is only counting the fabric mixes - if we throw in jacques lu cont and bent there's a half-dozen which blow the doors off mayer and that's just in the fabric series.

classic!

I enjoy both types of mix but I don't think you could say Smagghe creates a vibe in the same way as Superpitcher, that said I can be almost certain Smagghe is a more clubby DJ to see out.

The "bad mixing" thing just rankles with me bigtime though, everytime a fucking DJ plays here, whoever it is (once it's not Clarke/Mills etc) somebody's fucking whining "oh his mixing was awful", it's just a lame attempt to make the subjective sound objective, and is almost always directed at new or newly popular DJs.

take Fabric 13 for example. Mayer should have had time to find tracks the mixed together well and created a vibe but there are several transitions that are either fade-ins or trainwrecks. he can pick a track, he just can't mix it as well as some.

xpost: Sasha's early mid-nineties mixing/track selection was near perfect. Fundacion was a drop in selection but the way they're put together is more pleasant to listen to than if Mayer had taken the same tracks and mixed them together. I've never seen Mayer live so my opinion is only based on Fabric 13, Immer and Neuhaus (plus a couple downloaded sets). He comes clean and admits he's more of a Selector than Mixer.

i think maybe part of the issue here is the difference between song-oriented mixing vs. track-oriented mixing. some tunes sound excellent when they are played all of the way to the end whereas some are made to be mixed and blended like crazy.

You may prefer the track selections of the three, but they're not finer mixes in terms of technical skills. Mayer does play it pretty safe, but I'd say the same for most Fabric mixes.

I do like Smagghe's creative risks, especially w/r/t that Kills track, but it's honestly not a very smooth transition either technically or in flow.

Tyler Stadius does SMOKE THEM ALL, though- I agree with that.

And I don't hear these trainwrecks in Fabric 13, where are they? Fade ins also are just as valid a way of mixing, if that's what the mix requires, if you inherently believe every track should have a 3 minute transition overlap then of course this is not the case.

I don't know what ridiculously ott standard of "good mixing" you have biz, but I'd love to hear you explain in the abstract why it is better, aside from you simply preferring it.

Part of the beauty of the mix albums released is that you can perform enough tweaking to get disparate tracks to blend together so you end up with well-beatmatched and tone-matched mixes with a lot of variation. I'm fickle, though: I enjoy an occasional straight crossfade or paused transition in the middle sometime, if it works. The ableton aesthetic is pulling the live sets closer to this and it's worrisome if people are just using this to smooth out the bumps in their homogenous sets -- they should be doing more adventurous mixing and throwing in craziness! Suddenly you've lost a lot of worries about being in tune or on time...

If anything we're outing ourselves as a bunch of nerdy trainspotters with this stuff. Like biz said, it's wank material, but he's got a point. Often we end up discussing the tracks that have very distinct personalities, stuff that doesn't quite qualify as "anthemic" but is close. It might just be because the 4/4 dj tools stuff really are tools and we're more into discussing "songs" as they may be. Maybe it's the home listening aesthetic transposed back to the clubs, I don't know.

Back on topic, has anyone heard this Holden set from Sonar 2005? He really throws in some of the kompakt stuff with what I assume is his normal type of set, along with some random stuff like that Blue Monday acid house remix that was on rephlex. Mixing is great as far as I've taken notice even though he's pulling from a variety of sources.

Yes, I'd also like to know what "trainwrecks" exist in Mayer's Fabric mix.

Sorry, but I'm thinking they exist only in your head, maybe via the collision between the quality of the music and that little voice that keeps saying to you "He's so popular right now- I just hate him, Hate Him, HATE HIM!!!!"

Do you mean his admission that he likes to play tracks out? Because as far as I know, none of those was recorded live so it's not like it's even possible the mixing is going to be fucked up unless it's pure laziness or a broken computer.

xpost: i don't hate Mayer. In fact, i really enjoy Fabric 13, Immer and the other mix of his i have, however, his ability to mix records together is subpar.

Ronan, by your description above of a set you witnessed from Mayer, we're saying the same thing about his mixing ability but you translate that into a specific style while i see it as lazy DJing. It's one thing to pick great songs, it's another to be able to sequence them in a seamless mix. I don't consider a person who just selects good songs to be a DJ. I know my opinion is not popular but that's the way i feel about it.

xpost: Border Community have all their releases available to purchase in MP3 format at www.bordercommunity.com