Spirits in the Snow House

A good DJ mix or podcast is a special thing. I've been making mixtapes and mixes for over twenty years so I'm no stranger to the things that are going to make a mix a bit more memorable than a simple collection of tracks.
In my role as podcast producer for Little White Earbuds I get to hear some amazing mixes, though to be honest, with the amount of music I try and listen to during the week - what with new promos and my own discoveries I come across there is usually very little time to listen to things that aren't somehow part of my work. Last week I came across a mix by Transounds and was instantly patting myself on the back for taking the time to listen to their latest mix, because it contained everything that - for me, makes a mix more than memorable, but something that you want to keep coming back to again and again.

For a start the scope of this mix, Spirits in the Snow House, is ambitious and pulled off with aplomb. It incorporates a bunch of tracks I know and artists I am familiar with, and then a bunch more I had never heard from artists I was unaware of. And that is part of what I have always loved about a good mix, the fact that it will introduce you to new artists. Anyways I could bang on about it some more, or you could just check it out and see for yourself.
If you want to hear more from Transounds, you can check out their monthly podcast for London Fields Radio http://www.londonfieldsradio.com/shows/transounds/

Beyond Dubstep

Unless you've had you ears tucked away under the settee next to a stack of Noel Coward long players or exclusively tuned in to the confines of Radio 4 for the past ten years, then chances are you've heard of dubstep. Its popularity has been steadily rising for many years with its roots able to be traced back to everything bass-wise that has come before it; be it the dub heavy sound system culture that itself emigrated from Jamaica, the future forward strains of drum & bass that impacted on the entire world, the champagne and cocaine excesses of garage and 2 step, or the gritty urban reality of grime.

Shackleton 3 EPs

Even at Sam Shackleton's most kinetic moments of dub-based munitions deployment, there has existed a fervent experimentalism in everything he has undertaken. Whether it has been the laissez faire approach to making his productions palpable club successes or a casual disregard for the very structures of what may deem a track to be called dubstep, it has been obvious from the first that inherent in Shackleton is to forge his own unique path through his music. Shackleton has been instrumental in turning on many techno heads to the charms of dubstep via some of the hybrid, cross genre pollinations on his Skull Disco imprint, but what sealed it was Ricardo's two part epic remix of “Blood On My Hands”.