Thursday, May 08, 2008

Equilibrium



So, I get enough good music here nowadays and never have time to play it all. I still won't have time to play it all, but plan to air a little bit more of it in my new mix series to start at the end of this month. I'll search through some of my archived gems in order to mix some up and there'll be a full-blown philosophy behind it too. I've always had a very deliberate approach to constructing mixes at home which is much different from when I play out. Maybe it's normal but I'm much more easily distracted at home in the lab.

Maybe it's a failing but I normally don't approach mixes totally spontaneously at home. There's a big element of planning and during the session at least a couple of mad scrambles to find tracks that were right under my nose and a few more of instant choices. I suppose that's as spontaneous as it gets. There's also always been a level of risk taking and leaping in the dark. Paradoxically this isn't as prevalent when I play out. I tend to play it safer and more mono dimensional. I also prefer a mix with peaks and troughs, not one that throbs at the same constant level all the way through, although those are very nice too. I try to operate within pyramidal parameters. Building up to a peak somewhere around the middle and then descending at the same rate.

The biggest problem though is finding the time alone to do one. Of course this isn't a consideration in a club or at a party but the distractions at home are more real and not as easy to brush off. It can be a stressful hour or so, not knowing what's going to come up next and an exhilarating one too. The activity assumes a life of it's own and you just get deeper into it only to sometimes be rewarded by disappointment as a distracted move pulls the beat out of sync, and the thing is it's not a big deal, nobody will notice it except you, but you will, and it'll do your head in until you've got it out of your system by either playing it and playing it back again in an attempt to convince yourself it doesn't really exist, doing the whole thing again or doing a completely new one.

Equilibrium will be kicking off before the end of May. Keep it locked.

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