Here are some recent DJ mixes for you to enjoy.

November 21, 2011 4:58 AM

If you're looking for some uplifting dance music to help you get your week going, Goldroom's Otoño Mix 2011 is a very soulful nu-disco collection that pairs nicely with The Magician's Magic Tape Sixteen. Need something with more energy? Edwin van Cleef's November mix is a bit more hands in the air, perfectly suited for the elimination of afternoon doldrums.

Of course, if you're looking for pure adrenaline, Fear of Tigers has two collections of his remixes up for grabs in advance of the new album.

posted by beaucoupkevin (41 comments total)

(And I somehow forgot to include Mighty Mouse's November mixtape, which is a corker in the nu-disco vein as well.)
posted by beaucoupkevin at 5:15 AM on November 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

I dig! How can I find other tracks that download? I stared hunting around but the tracks I am seeing don't have the download option like your choices. Good stuff!!
posted by snap_dragon at 5:52 AM on November 21, 2011

DJs and producers put their mixes up for download because they're "promotional," but they'll want you to buy their actual releases. I generally find new artists to follow by using the Soundcloud interface to see who's following whom and poke around a bit.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 6:09 AM on November 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Thanks, beaucopkevin!
posted by snap_dragon at 6:20 AM on November 21, 2011

I also like Free Music Archive, mainly because of the endless curated playlists. They are mostly crap, mind you, but I can put it on while coding and every once in a while I hit a rich vein, small strike or isolated gem (talking about This is the New Yeah, although the other tracks are OK too).
posted by DU at 6:30 AM on November 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

If your need some angry, disgruntled dance music to get you through the day check out the Dark Wave mixes by The Black Dog (on SoundCloud).
posted by sixohsix at 6:36 AM on November 21, 2011

One of my favorite mixes of the year isn't dance music and isn't by a DJ. Motion Sickness of Time Travel makes modern ambient synthesizer music. There are some similarities to new age music, but it reminds me more of other things: Orbital's Belfast (without the beats), the slower side of Cocteau Twins (with a more submerged voice), a less cloudy version of Grouper. (This is a good place to start on her Bandcamp page.)

She has made a great overview of what's current and interesting in this style of music. The tracklisting is here.
posted by Hubajube at 6:41 AM on November 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

That Black Dog stuff is more like it, for me. Is that the same Black Dog I remember from about 15 years ago?
posted by Frasermoo at 6:49 AM on November 21, 2011

Promomixes is a unique DJ mix series. Each DJ makes a mix that they would have sent to a club to try to get booked there.

Going by this mix, I think Lucy's 90s were a lot like mine (and his current take on techno is right up my alley too).
posted by Hubajube at 6:49 AM on November 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

turned out the goldroom was just this dingy underground concrete room with some gold ingots inside

those are really hard to dance on

they don't even have a bar

no, the kind with alcohol in it
posted by LogicalDash at 7:04 AM on November 21, 2011

Hubajube, that Motion Sickness of Time Travel mix is one of my favorites from mnmlssg these past few months. Aaaand thank you for pointing out promomixes.
posted by azarbayejani at 7:09 AM on November 21, 2011

I think today's The Black Dog has a somewhat different lineup from the one from 15 years ago, but the spirit is the same. They also did an ambient album called Music for Real Airports, which I highly recommend.
posted by sixohsix at 7:35 AM on November 21, 2011

Mefi needs a "random DJ mix links" section to avoid the monthly version of this post.
posted by Theta States at 9:54 AM on November 21, 2011

Hey, it's been like two months since I last posted a spate of DJ mixes I enjoyed, Theta States. C'mon.

Also: I forgot to include Little Boots' cross-genre fiesta Shake Till Your Heart Breaks mixtape, which is a lot of fun.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 10:47 AM on November 21, 2011

And here I just found out that Dave Dresden (of Gabriel and Dresden) is posting lots of high quality sets to SoundCloud.
posted by effugas at 7:28 PM on November 21, 2011

Holy crap, has Soundcloud always been that expensive? Did they raise their prices? Wow.
posted by Theta States at 8:13 PM on November 21, 2011

(i have quite a few of my own deep house, house and nu-disco sets, mostly recorded at parties, up on sound cloud as well. let me know if you'd like a link and i'd be happy to share!)
posted by flaterik at 10:08 PM on November 21, 2011

Post away, Erik :)
posted by effugas at 2:36 AM on November 22, 2011

Well, if we're going to self-link to our own mixes, the left sidebar at Disco Potential, then, even if I've not updated in two months.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 3:35 AM on November 22, 2011

Probably my favorite (thus far) of the Gabriel and Dresden sets.
posted by effugas at 3:53 AM on November 22, 2011

Late to the party, and with an older 2011 mix: Letherette "cassette" mix, from January 2011.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:37 AM on November 28, 2011

And because I'm a terrible Indie-Dance trainspotter, here's the Magic Tape Sixteen tracklist.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:41 PM on November 28, 2011

Welp, best I take advantage.
I will be unveiling a new mix via livestream this Wednesday at 9pm EST, with a public release coming on Monday...
posted by Theta States at 3:03 PM on November 28, 2011

you can find a variety of stuff from me here! My most recent - and by far the most nu-discoy - is still not public, because I'm waiting for sawdustbear to finish the painting she promised me as cover art.

She made the one for grinning and I like it too much to go back to using random party shots/flyers for it!
posted by flaterik at 4:28 PM on November 28, 2011

One of my friends puts together the Unreasonably Hard series. It's what it says on the box.
posted by effugas at 5:15 PM on November 28, 2011

After complaining a bunch about Soundcloud, I have discovered Mixcloud. Free, no time limits, no randomly applied copyright considerations for mixes...
I have my own website hosting my mixes, but I figure best get them on whatever social sites to promo them as well.
posted by Theta States at 5:13 AM on November 29, 2011

But mix cloud doesn't allow downloads, and I hate forcing people to stream. Cause I know I don't listen to most things that I can't download...
posted by flaterik at 4:29 PM on November 29, 2011

If you like the first mix, check out more Poolside which is a band that has one (remixed) track around the midpoint. Great music if your'e into that nu disco thing. http://soundcloud.com/poolside_music
posted by cell divide at 4:59 PM on November 29, 2011

But mix cloud doesn't allow downloads, and I hate forcing people to stream. Cause I know I don't listen to most things that I can't download...

For the price of a basic membership at soundcloud you can have a website with more space than you would ever need.
Mixcloud doesn't allow downloads, but you can just put the download link at the top of the description, so simple. I also like Mixcloud's time-based song tagging feature, and that they require a setlist.
Both sites are swarming with mediocre DJ mixes, but nothing is worse than a mediocre mix that doesn't include a tracklisting. (OK, it can get worse if add in a slew of self-promoting hipster PR package stuff on top of that...)
posted by Theta States at 6:01 AM on November 30, 2011

Well, just having storage and bandwidth isn't the same as having a website. I like what sound cloud provides and I think it's worth money, so I pay them for it.

And yes, 90% of everything is crap, including free DJ mixes.

Some of my sets have track listings, some of them don't. Almost all of them were recorded at parties and are rarely planned at all, so I don't know what the track list is unless I got figure it out. I've never known anyone that won't do a track ID if you ask, though, and the timed comments are great for that.
posted by flaterik at 11:13 AM on November 30, 2011

OK, I'll try not and derail this thread with my necessity for DJs to always include track lists.
posted by Theta States at 12:00 PM on November 30, 2011

Well, if it makes you feel any better, it'll likely rattle around my head the next time I have a mix I'm going to put up without one, and shame me into writing it down.
posted by flaterik at 2:14 PM on November 30, 2011

Oh. Oh good. :)
Do you play a lot of tracks you wouldn't recognize when listening to your mix?
posted by Theta States at 6:36 AM on December 1, 2011

There's a difference between recognizing and always remembering both the artist and title. There are a few times when I get a bunch of new music at once and don't mix it enough (as opposed to just listening, which doesn't give as much associative memory) and can have a little trouble finding a given track... but most of the time I know in which cd book and roughly how far into it something it, or which CDs it's adjacent to, and could FIND it quickly, but would have trouble naming it. I feel bad about it because really, I'm just playing other people's music and they deserve the credit, but that's just not the way my memory works.

That was actually one of my big hesitancies in moving from vinyl to digital media - I often found the next song to play just by going through my box until I found the record that FELT right, by feel and visual. And it worked really well - I'd often go "oh, yeah, that tom rhythm totally meshes with this bass line", but I couldn't have told you why I picked the next track until I did... much less the NAME of what I was looking for. The "not really knowing the names very well" was exacerbated by the fact that the fonts used on vinyl printing were not always the most legible in dimly lit circumstances, and would wear off from mixing, so the words weren't the easiest way to identify which record was which.

Having played CDs (and now, with the newer CDJs, just SD cards or USB sticks full of music.. but I keep those organized in a mirror to my CD books for the reason above!) for a while now, I'm a lot more likely to be able to name something off the top of my head. But I also keep the cover art printed out next to each CD (in a mosaic that iTunes helpfully creates automatically when printing track lists), because the non-textual elements are important to my memory.
posted by flaterik at 10:44 AM on December 1, 2011

I feel bad about it because really, I'm just playing other people's music and they deserve the credit

Thank you, so many DJs neglect that simple fact. :)
posted by Theta States at 12:41 PM on December 1, 2011

Yeah, DJing is an almost unrelated set of skills and effort from producing. You can't discount the time and effort that goes into it.. otherwise there wouldn't be so many terrible DJs! But without the producers we'd have shit-all to do up there. Then again, without DJs, the producers wouldn't be doing much either. Many people have noted that most producers are not good DJs, and vice versa. It's symbiotic! But there's a lot of DJs who have bought into the super-star shite, so you don't see respect being paid as much as it should be.

Of course I prefer the older, ravier style of the fairly anonymous DJ who's not "up" there, but just has a table with some gear, with the focus being on the music and, if anything, the sound system, rather than the superstar DJ BS. So what do I know...
posted by flaterik at 6:53 PM on December 1, 2011

Many producers aren't good DJs, but as it has gotten easier and easier to DJ via technology, it becomes easier and easier for producers to assemble their performances as DJ sets and you are hearing less stories these days about the absolutely embarassing sets of wonderful produces making an ass of themselves as DJs.

It's not equally symbiotic, us DJs are more the tiny fish that follow sharks around and clean food bits from around their gills. :)

And yes, it used to be more about the situation back in the rave days. Now that sets flood online, how is anyone supposed to find your mix when 1000 new DJ mixes are uploaded daily?
I used to get some decent online exposure back 7-10 years ago when there were far less sets online. Now that everyone is online, I feel like I am playing to a dark black chasm of emptiness. (example: I put up this mix which I feel is an incredibly strong chill mix. A friend linked me to this SBTRKT mix that got thousands of listens, but is poorly mixed/assembled. They are a great producer, and people will listen because their name is attached, despite the quality.)
In response to that, I am moving back towards the "build a live soundsystem for me and my friends" kind of approach.
posted by Theta States at 6:24 AM on December 2, 2011

Well, I already have a six cabinet sound system, so I have that covered ;) But now that I don't live in a warehouse it's venues that are the problem, not equipment. (well, that and the fact that there's a limited number of times per year I can handle being the first one there and the last one to leave, each way with 1100 pounds of gear).

Both mixes online and chances to play live are frustratingly unrelated to talent or music. For me having mixes online is useful not for the people that might FIND them - because you're right about the flood of available content - but being able to point them to people either after they hear me live, or while I'm trying to get them to book me.

I downloading your linked mix, and it'll likely get a listen tonight. Thanks!
posted by flaterik at 5:35 PM on December 2, 2011

OK, uploaded a bunch of mixes to mixcloud so they can be streamed easier online...
Also uploaded my latest mix.
posted by Theta States at 6:14 AM on December 5, 2011

I am returning again to say THANK YOU SO MUCH for informing me of The Magician. I've been listening to his tracks and mixes for days now.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:33 PM on December 6, 2011

Remembered this thread and thought I'd pop in here with a cheeky link. Here's a mix I've just finished of new disco/house/bits and pieces. Tracklist to go up shortly...
posted by Captain Najork at 11:36 PM on December 7, 2011