Ciao, ciao, loyal listeners. Indeed, neither dj ego or myself have died! Lucky us. Unfortunately, dj ego is unable to produce sets currently, as he's in the process of moving across the sea once more, this time from Japan to my dear neighbor country, Italy. This is, needless to say, exciting, and should make getting together and chilling ten times easier, and 100 times cheaper.

But for now you're stuck with my lame ass, and my ass has been busy. No longer! Summer is fully upon us, the season for outdoor parties is in full swing, and it's time for some rocking. This week we bring you two brand spanking new sets. The first was recorded this June, and was very much designed to bring in the new summer. We start off with a warm spring day, as the Diynamic Music crew find open skies and make Small Talk. Soon the paper arrives, and the headlines announce a party coming soon. A crew of friends and other fellas gathers, and soon is delivered into a whirling dervish of Welsh Morphology. The spookiness builds in The Distance, and the friends are forced to part ways soon as a dance floor revolution looms. Thankfully, all ends well, and Jamie McHough successfully puts a stop to any serious shenanigans, with the friends reuniting at Club 69 before grabbing some Chinese food and reading their Fortune Cookie.

Phew! I promise not to write any more bad short stories! The second set is "old" in Internet time, and many of the tracks it is composed of are older still. Whereas the first set very much tries to present some of the great new tracks coming out for the summer, the second set was an attempt to put a story together. While every (good) set is a story in it's own right, most are merely tales of building energy and sweat. The first set falls squarely into this category: it's coherent, but wonders a bit too much, gaining energy, but not a lot of depth. The second set tries to move past this style, and tell a secondary emotional story as well. The energy is there, but it's not linear, and the moods shift much more fluidly.

But enough bullshit. The second set starts with glitch breaks and a good dose of techno. Then Pig & Dan - Banksy really switches us up, and we land squarely in the land of progressive breaks, circa 2000, listening to the a new remix from Hybrid, their best in years. Free karma to anyone who spots the Vinyl record in this set!

Cheers!
DJ Transit

 

I forget what exactly happens in the States on May Day, but in Europe it's reserved for a day of strikes and protest. Not that it's the exclusive day for such resistance, but you can bet that every May 1st the syndicates will rear their heads once more. Sadly, the sounds that emanate from the marches often come across as dying gasps for breath.

Luckily, this weeks mixes sound nothing of the sort. Whether you see trade unions as the scum of the earth, or people demanding their fair say, I can confidently guarantee you'll enjoy this weeks mixes.

Up first is 50 minutes of minimal goodness, with healthy dabs of melody as always. Of particular note are both the Ramon Tapia tracks. These are minimal floor stompers: start with a great percussive intro, throw in a minimal melody (two notes in the case of Mini Me), and then casually build into a break, upon which you unleash the real full melody to the delight of the ears. This, to me, is what good minimal house is all about. The last 20 minutes go off on a little tangent, as I'm prone to do, and we take a brief journey into house with a capital H, before finishing with some rough mash-up action.

The second set this week has ego wading through 15 or so minutes of deep and dark house before entering the land of techy-thumpy-trance-laced goodness, never to return - like the 15 minute drive through the forest to find the party, and then dancing until morning. Highlights of the set include ego's own melodic mash of "Gate Two" and "Forwards", bringing in a record from 2004 back into the spotlight. Also, just for some mid-set contrast, Sami Saari's "Sweet" gives you that extra oomph of funk to help stoke the fire for the end of the mix. About as in-your-face as it comes, Dousk's remix of "Schnorkel" takes the set all the way to ego's own edit of several remixes of Rachel Starr's beautiful "To Forever". While the mix could just keep on trucking, the edit combines the energetic and soothing sounds from several remixes to cap off the experience and drop things back down to a sane level.

 

Ooops!: the OGG for this week is broken. -- FIXED.

After two months of waiting, DJ Transit finally scrapped together enough time to finish off the site. You'll notice that both the podcast links are now live - please test them in your favorite podcast player! iTunes appears to be happy with the MP3 podcast, but we'd love to get feedback about the OGG option as well.

Also note that it's now possible to leave heaps of praise for the various mixes! Click on the comment links to add a new comment or view the current comments. We're going to try and control spam via some simple captchas: can you correctly read the tracklist and cut and paste an answer to a question?

So, without further ado, the second two sets of the new podcast. In set one, DJ Transit lays down some techy goodness until he can't resist any longer and jumps into some progressive. Lots of tracks in there that have been gathering dust for too long without play. In particular, Petter - Robotfood is an amazing minimal-techno track that I had somehow missed until recently. And although not nearly as old, I've been wanting to get Deadmau5 - Jaded on the show forever.

Following up, dj ego delivers the progressive house goodness, continuing the theme of the last podcast's Hybrid remix bash with, well, two more remixes: Hybrid - Keep It In The Family (Tomboys Quirky Piano Intro Version) and Hybrid - Finished Symphony (Deadmau5 Remix). The dark groovy affair builds through them, ending with ego's own short taste of Moby's Go to cap things off.

Enjoy!

Oh, and extra bonus points to whoever guesses the lovely lady doing our tag announcements in this weeks show!