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

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

honestly your definition of quality excludes so many DJs, probably every disco "legend", that I'm not sure how it stands up at all.

also how is one style "lazier" than the other? Where does "hard work" come into talent exactly?

This is yet more Joe Satriani Guitar Magazine monthly bullshit. No place on a dance thread.

Honestly no point arguing further with someone who has such a facile grasp of "talent/quality", it is EXACTLY like discussing music with a metal fan.

Another DJ excluded by your definition, Jeff Mills! Not saying anyone is beyond reproach but just to show the variety of DJs who don't do long overlaps.

btw, i hate Jeff Mills' mixing style. doesn't mean he's a shitty dj, but i don't like his style.

it's also difficult to play 4000 notes in 3 seconds on a piano but that doesn't mean it sounds better.

Also it's not cutting Mayer slack for "uninspired djing", you're being too absolute, he can actually mix and he does mix, he just doesn't frequently do long extended segues.

it'd be like talking about gilles peterson's dj'ing.

I still can't see how stylistically the way he mixes is somehow inferior, why is it so hard to believe that someone might choose an "easier" way of creating art (in whatever sense creative processes can be dismissed as "easy") because they believe it to produce superior works?

It's verbatim the same argument as criticising the Beatles or something because their songs are "easy to play".

Can we spin this off into the "Mayer is a crap DJ" thread, I really want to figure out where I'm going to order actual Border Community vinyl from, even gemm is looking good by now.

Ronan, i'm going to ignore the moron remark and move on. Sasha and Digweed's "Communicate" mix consisted of loads of dark, linear progHouse tracks that were overlayed in the mix quite a bit. I don't rate Communicate very highly even though the mixes were long. I dislike the track selection, and only listened to it the week it was released. Mayer's Fabric mix has been caned at my place yet i find the mixing lackluster. Mayer's "skill" as a DJ is purely in selecting the tracks, not in his ability to overlay tracks in a long mix. I enjoy his selection but his mixing falls short in my opinion. I've continuously stated these ideas as my opinion and my preference, not as the definitive chart to grading DJ mixes. Plenty of Dj's who can produce long mixes between tracks have shitty track selection. Plenty of DJ's with great track selection can't mix. It goes both ways and i'm simply stating my belief that a person who can choose the best tracks and fit them together in a seamless mix is the better DJ. This breaks down to 2 simple catagories: Selecting and Mixing. As i see it, Mayer only has 1 of those down. You obviously don't DJ and if you do, you probably can't match beats, which is the only reason i see for you defending unskilled DJ's. Anyone can choose great songs. Most of the folks who post on ILM have great taste, but can they sequence those tracks in a seamless mix?

If anyone needed further proof that your over emphasis of mixing is macho rubbish then there it is.

-- biz (b...), August 25th, 2005.

dude the only reason anyone's arguing with you is because your idea of what constitutes good sequencing and seamlessness is so... i dunno...one dimensional. dullsville.

I disagree. Most dance DJ's can learn basic technical mixing (beat matching and phrasing) in a month or two. Great track selection, at least in dance music, is something that can't be "taught" and requires years of work to master.

I'll take a few botched transitions over uninspired track selection any day, whether at the club or listening to a mix CD.