R_co's archive of EDM mixes on Soundcloud: "It's good to share"

January 12, 2013 3:29 PM

There is a universe of recorded DJ mixes to sort through, enough to keep you entertained and dancing for years. Souncloud user R_co fills a pocket of this cosmos with thousands of mixes and some live shows to stream and download, spanning styles and decades, from Bob Marley and the Wailers live in 1975, to a Shep Pettibone Mastermix Danceparty from 1983, Mark Farina live in Los Angeles, 1996, or Masters at Work live in Miami at WMC, 2003, and Carl Craig in Ibiza, 2012.

If you're wondering who this prolific archiver of dance music is, "R_co" a.k.a. Rico Passerini said:

I'm not anyone special. I hope it's OK for you! The real "R_co" is just a regular guy with a passion for electronic music. I'm from the UK originally, however I moved to Berlin a year and a half ago for the music scene. I'm often mistaken for being some big shot in the music industry, but I'm not.
...
No, I'm not connected at all really. The more popular my page has become, the more I've been in contact with a few DJs and record labels, but nothing major really. To be honest, there is no real one place I get music from. I get mixes from all over the place: podcasts, radio shows, forums like Resident Advisor, plus I have a big archive of mixes that I've picked up over the years too. Recently though I've been lucky enough to get sent mixes personally from certain club nights and record labels like OFF Recordings, Berlin and Soma Records, plus I get a few mixes personally sent from a few DJs too.

Here's a random sampling from the thousands of mixes he has posted to Soundcloud, one per year for the years that are represented in the collection:

1974: Tom Moulton - The Sandpiper, Fire Island, New York, USA
1975: Bob Marley & The Wailers Live @ Lyceum Ballroom, London - July 18
1976: Bob Marley & The Wailers Live @ The Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis, USA - May 13

1980: Joy Division Live @ Effenaar, Eindhoven, Holland - January 18
1981: Frankie Knuckles Live @ The Warehouse, Chicago - August 28 (Side A / Side B)
1982: Larry Levan Live @ Paradise Garage, New York
1983: Frankie Knuckles Live @ Power Plant, Chicago
1984: Steve "Silk" Hurley - WBMX Radio, Chicago
1985: Jeff Mills Live @ Roxanne Wars
1986: Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk - WBMX 102.7 FM, Jack Party Hotmix, Chicago
1987 (or 1988): Ralphie 'Rockin' Rosario & Julian 'Jumpin' Perez - WBMX Radio, Chicago
1988: Graeme Park Live @ Kula Shaker, Haçienda, Manchester
1989: Sasha Live @ Hacienda, Manchester - December 13

1990: Laurent Garnier - Denamaxx, French Radio
1991: Andrew Weatherall Live @ Kaos, Leeds
1992: Luke Slater Live @ Passion - January
1993: Kerri Chandler & Danny Tenaglia Live @ Cube (Napoli)
1994: Kevin Saunderson Live @ Harmony - April 30
1995: Aphex Twin Live @ Orbit, Morley, Leeds
1996: Robert Hood Live @ Energy, Zurich - August
1997: Stacey Pullen Live @ Freedom, San Francisco
1998: Kraftwerk - World Tour Live In Buenos Aires, Argentina - October 12
1999: CJ Bolland Live @ Fuse, Brussel, Belgium - June 26

2000: Ricardo Villalobos Live @ Clubnight Spezial, Sound Of Frankfurt - July 1
2001: H-Foundation (Hipp-E & Halo) Live @ DEMF, Detroit
2002: Pepe Bradock Live @ Garito Cafe, Mallorca (ESP) - November 9
2003: 808 State Live @ Benicassim Festival, Spain - August
2004: FC Kahuna Live @ VOX - Apirl 11
2005: Akufen Live @ Fuse-in Detroit, Underground Stage - May 28
2006: Monolake - JJJ The Club FM - April 2
2007: Ron Trent Live @ Development, Manchester
2008: Onur Ozer Live @ Classic Club - November 15
2009: Luciano (Cadenza) Live @ The Warehouse Project, Manchester, UK - December 4

2010: Robag Wruhme Live @ Pratersauna - June 16
2011: Todd Terje Live @ Evening Standard, Toronto - July 16
2012: Âme Live @ CatClub, Wide Gallery, Brussels - May 5

Bonus mixes: sets from R_co's favorite DJs, as of 2010
* Nina Kraviz Live @ Rote Liebe, Cologne - February 27, 2010
* Sven Weisemann - Max FM - July 10, 2010
* Peter Van Hoesen Live @ Fuse (Brussel) - October 20, 2010
* Mike Huckaby Live @ Betalounge, Hamburg - November 8, 2010
* Tevo Howard - Rebirth (Proton Radio) - December 14, 2010

posted by filthy light thief (25 comments total)

You seriously do not want me ever to sleep again, and to just explode in a puff of dance-induced vapor. This is now obvious.
posted by hippybear at 3:38 PM on January 12 [1 favorite]

Oh my god, this. Between the Moulton & the Levan mixes my brain just exploded. It looks like there's also a bunch of David Mancuso in there. Wow.
posted by mintcake! at 3:42 PM on January 12

I found out about this guy in a comment on that post I made the other day on the birth of the 12" single. Thanks for the more comprehensive post! There's lots of good stuff here that I'm looking forward to exploring.
posted by .kobayashi. at 3:43 PM on January 12

Wow. Thank you.
posted by humboldt32 at 4:17 PM on January 12

Some more Nicolas Jaar too! After that mix posted last year, this is quite exciting.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:25 PM on January 12 [2 favorites]

dang! dang!!!

gracias!
posted by jammy at 4:31 PM on January 12

Man, for a site that just has a treasure trove of DJ mixes to consume, SoundCloud makes discovering new stuff really difficult. (In other words, keep posting this stuff!)
posted by schmod at 4:37 PM on January 12

R_co is the only guy I subscribe to on Soundcloud cos he's the only one I need!
posted by jcruelty at 5:08 PM on January 12

I found out about this guy in a comment on that post I made the other day on the birth of the 12" single. Thanks for the more comprehensive post! There's lots of good stuff here that I'm looking forward to exploring.

Yeah, I was reminded of R_co's collection from The Accidental Birth of the 12" Single post, and LMGM's comment specifically. I found the interview, and figured there was plenty to share.


Man, for a site that just has a treasure trove of DJ mixes to consume, SoundCloud makes discovering new stuff really difficult. (In other words, keep posting this stuff!)

People can tag their individual audio uploads with any tags they wish, but R_co doesn't. Soundcloud now has a "related audio" feature, which is .. something. You can also use search engines to dig deeper. For perusing R_co's extensive collection, use site:soundcloud.com/r_co search term.
posted by filthy light thief at 5:36 PM on January 12 [3 favorites]

Oh, HELL, yes!!! Thanks, filthy light thief!!!
posted by tantrumthecat at 6:09 PM on January 12

For perusing R_co's extensive collection, use site:soundcloud.com/r_co search term.

Bingo! Thanks!
posted by carter at 6:11 PM on January 12

another source of incredible live sets is the boiler room
And if you listen to just one set there, make sure it's this one:
posted by serif at 7:10 PM on January 12 [1 favorite]

(This is AWESOME).
posted by googly at 7:30 PM on January 12

Some more Nicolas Jaar too! After that mix posted last year, this is quite exciting.

Then you're in luck! The Soundcloud account for Jaar's label, Clown and Sunset posted the No BBC edit of his Essential Mix, which you can download. It's an M4A file, for what it's worth.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:33 PM on January 12 [1 favorite]

R_co is a one man deephousepage.com.
posted by mkb at 8:32 PM on January 12

Oh yeah, I was going to point to the deephousepage.com mixes, along with PureHouseMusic.net mixes, and LiquidDnB.com mixes, but I forgot. I can vouch for the Liquid DnB site, but the others look to have a nice collection of mixes to stream and download.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:41 PM on January 12 [3 favorites]

if any of y'all missed it, there was a post about mixesdb a while back.
posted by juv3nal at 9:36 PM on January 12

and apparently r_co was noted in the comments.
posted by juv3nal at 9:38 PM on January 12

I have a love/hate relationship with Soundcloud, because there is so much good stuff but not a single RSS/Atom feed in sight.

If you like Funky, Jackin, and Underground House Mixes I suggest BoogieTherapy's Facebook Feed, which you can follow in your RSS reader using this url without even having a FB account.
posted by KMB at 11:28 PM on January 12

Man, I forgot how jazzy and diva Mark Farina could be back in the day. There's a non-zero chance I was at that show. I used to see him and other LA/SF deep house DJs like Doc Martin in those years between about 92 to 98.
posted by loquacious at 12:09 AM on January 13

Oh, WBMX! That station was super popular with a lot of my schoolmates. Lots of unhappy people when it went away!
posted by SisterHavana at 1:02 AM on January 13

Joy Division was a DJ?
posted by jdfan at 3:05 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]

Yup, just like Kraftwerk and Bob Marley =)

It seems R_co expanded his horizons a bit.


if any of y'all missed it, there was a post about mixesdb a while back.

and apparently r_co was noted in the comments.

Thanks for linking back to that. One other downside to R_co's uploads is that he doesn't always find tracklists for the sets, relying more often than not on others to provide them in the comments.
posted by filthy light thief at 6:35 AM on January 13

Yay! Thanks, filthy light thief for taking the time to put this together. I adore R_co for uploading several amazing sets played at Toronto's legendary Industry nightclub (*sniff* nostalgia), but I never would've gotten around to doing this.

Also, a lot of R_co's old sets are pulled from the DeepHousePage, so check it out.

See also the Rave Archive, which has an excellent set of old recordings.
posted by LMGM at 9:22 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]

Oooh, thanks for Rave Archive. I keep hoping Golden Era Jungle comes back. It was exploited a few months back, and still hasn't come back. Their twitter feed gives me hope they'll be back, but if nothing else, they pointed out Deep Inside the Oldskool blog, which shares tapes.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:28 PM on January 13