phoenix sessions 002

Everyone has their hangups and preferences when it comes to music. I’ve long accepted the fact that dance music is a fringe group, but one of the friendliest and internet savvy. And the flow and swings really make work, play, and driving much more interesting. So pretty much 90% of my waking day.

My hangup with dance music (or electronic music, whatever you want to call it) is Divas. I hate Divas. Really, I eschew lyrics in general, but a wailing house diva will really make my eardrums rebel. Yet every once in a while a soaring female vocal will catch me just the right way and I can’t stop listening.

This set features two of my absolute favourite female vocal performances from the past year. The first is Hybrid’s “I Know (Keenan & Anderson Remix)”, a truly breathtaking track. The second is Robyn’s “With Every Heartbeat”, a track which drifts tantalizingly close to diva cheese before punching through with an emotional chorus that is absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, it’s also a track that’s had a lot of airplay by DJs much more famous than I, so I mixed things up a bit by pulling the chunky minimalist Hugg & Pepp mix into the soaring (but mostly vocal free) Rory Phillips take.

The rest of the mix finds a solid progressive groove, with a bit more diversity and less driving dance tracks than my last few efforts. I hope you like it.

One of my all-time favourite mixsets is Sasha & Digweed’s first “Northern Exposure” double CD, an album that first truly introduced me to the art of the DJ set. Along with the brilliant track selection and song mixing, the duo included a graphic showing how each track overlapped. Maybe it was just showing off, but I was always impressed by how well they were able to layer diverse songs on top of each other, sometimes 3 at at time.

I thought it would be fun to do the same thing for this set, to illustrate graphically these sets are put together, showing loops and edits alongside mixed overlaps. I hope you like it as well.

phoenix sessions 002 infographic

Now, on with the tracklist:

  1. Magic Games Mastered – Jacuqes Renault
  2. Flicker (Cinematrik Remix) – Boom Jinx
  3. Leaving Planet Earth (Dousk Remix) – Talisman & Hudson
  4. I Know (Keenen & Anderson Remix) – Hybrid
  5. Hearts on Fire (Joakim Remix) – Cut Copy
  6. Bucovina feat. Shantel (Ian Oliver’s Clubovina Mix) – Ian Oliver
  7. Blew (Becker Remix) – Antix
  8. G Platz (Neil Quigley’s Pacemaker Dub) – Nick Muir
  9. A Field – Vector Lovers
  10. With Every Heartbeat (Hugg & Pepp Remix) – Robyn with Kleerup
  11. With Every Heartbeat (Rory Phillips Remix) – Robyn with Kleerup
  12. My Moon My Man (Boys Noize Classic) – Feist
  13. 2.20 Girl (Gutterstylz Dub Mix) – Suicide Sports Club
  14. Beautiful Life (Gui Boratto Remix) – Gui Boratto

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