sonxs.net: tasty morsels of sound

Final-Freaking-Ly....

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:34:12 +0000

There are some things that you just cannot control. Among them is the amount of time it takes to relocate from country to country when dealing with multiple governments and agencies. Then there are things you can, like the purchasing of new music and the act of mixing said tunes together into some cohesive and coherent hour of banging goodness. As such, I am now 94% settled into the new place and have been able to complete a shiny new mix. This set was actually rather difficult to finish. Having been away from new music for such a long time, my music store adventuring resulted in a lot of excellent selections... However, it's impossible to put them all into one hour... even more impossible, is to mix "just the best ones"... So after starting 3-4 times from scratch, attempting to rework a few parts of one mix.. then completely reworking it from start to finish... and deciding it still wasn't up-to-snuff.. I kept tweaking, tweaking, and tweaking before finally rendering it out as complete-ish. I could probably keep tweaking it for several more weeks... but I don't think that's a good idea at this point. In some ways, this is a 50:50 mix. I think progressive has finally started to leave the rut that it entered several years ago. That and many progressive djs are moving into other waters because of it. Because of this, there's a lot of related genre activity with progressive tinges. In shopping for new tunes, I found myself picking through a lot of minimal, house, and prog trance stuff that didn't necessarily fit the stereotypes of those genres. Some does of course :) But a good chunk was an evolved version. I ended up mixing the first half of this set with the idea of just slowly building.. But with so much other good music, I couldn't help but eek a bit more forward for the second half. I tried not to think about genres too much since that tends to limit your mixing anyway, so these are just some tracks I've discovered and been enjoying as I mixed them. Some are a little more relaxed and others are a little more grooving. Hopefully, I've done the producers justice in my compilation. Mostly though, I hope that anyone who downloads it will enjoy it enough to listen a second time :) -dj ego Also, in case anyone is curious, the final track is a mashup between: Robimon - Idaho (Original Mix) BT - Loving You More (BT's Primordial Sound 12" Vocal Mix)

Go out and Vote!

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 01:44:42 +0000

UPDATE, Evening Nov 5th: Files should be working again, although I'm not sure for how long. Would people be willing to donate a little bit of money so that we can host using Amazon S3? -- EDIT, Nov. 5th: First off, Yes we Did! Second of all, we are experiencing server problems related to an administrative dispute at my university. I don't have time to setup alternative hosting for this week, much less the other podcasts, until this evening. I'll update once the problem is fixed. -- It's the big day: do we elect the oldest incoming president ever, backed up by a VP who can't even tell the difference between two radio jocks prank calling and President Nicolas Sarkozy, or do we elect someone with even-headed competence? I'll leave the choice to you, but I find it to be obvious. Now that I have offended half our audience... This weeks mix completely unintentionally summed up the status of the political race as we head into election day. I'm sure you can decode it from the tracknames and lyrics for yourself, so I wont do it here. I'll just emphasize the last track, Modeselektor - Vote Or Die. While it's not quite that dire a situation, it's an appropriate sentiment for today. Oh, and there is shameless propaganda spread throughout the mix. Should make appropriate background music for your victory party as the votes start to roll in! So, hopefully I'll still see you all in two weeks, when nothing much will have changed except my lack of shame every time I walk outside my apartment. Don't worry - it'll be back in six months if the direction of the country hasn't started to change. Cheers, DJ Transit

A little reunion

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 16:36:22 +0000

dj ego and myself were able to get together in the flesh this past weekend and, along with dj ego's better half (i.e, wife), had a great time gallivanting through Ticino (and drinking wine). We managed to spend a couple hours behind the decks, and the result is this week's podcast. Since dj ego is still waiting for his shipping container in Napoli, he came into the whole thing with a rather large disadvantage: no CDs, no records, and several months without standing behind a mixer. So we decided to lighten it up, and ended up tag-teaming every two tracks. The podcast starts about 30 minutes into the set, after we got our trainwreck out of the way, and continues to the end. As luck would have it, a number of tracks we haven't played before ended up in the mix. Two of these are worth highlighting: Vincenzo - The Fruit Fly (The Fruity Bug Edit) (the edit is Steve Bug), and Dan Mangan - Resorcerer. The second of these has been sitting around in my collection since the end of 2006 and somehow managed to be forgotten. Which is quite sad, because it's a real rocker. Thanks go to dj ego for pulling both of these out and throwing them down. Other stuff: Allison's comment on the last set inspired me to go look up the non-remixed version of Gustav's We Shall Overcome. Give it a chance. For your enjoyment:

Finally, in the spirit of the season, here's a link to DJ Z-Trip's Obama Mix. It might surprise a few of you that dj ego and myself are in full agreement on the Presidential election this year, and we hope you'll consider Z-Trip's endorsement (along with all the others that are actually worthy of consideration) before you vote. (For those of you not in know, the fact we both live in Italian speaking areas of the world is an incredible coincidence - we're both from the U.S.) Enjoy the mix! DJ Transit

Foundset

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 12:12:16 +0000

I've been slammed with work these last couple weeks, so I've reached into the bin of old recordings and recovered the set I wanted to post when I was in California. However, the source file is an only a moderately high-quality ogg, not a full quality wav. As such, there is no 320 kbps mp3 this week, and I'd suggest sticking with the ogg if you can, as the 192 kbps mp3 is just a transcode. Really only two songs in the set qualify for the title of "Tech-Pop," and they, in a way, are the stars of the set: Telepopmusik - Love Can Damage Your Health (Abicah Soul / Dennis Ferrer Remix) and Gustav - We Shall Overcome (Wighnomys Okkasion Re(h)and). I really love the second of these. How often do you find a well produced anarchist pop-ballad with intelligent lyrics? Not very. Consider it my statement on the upcoming U.S. Presidential election. This set has long been a favorite of mine, and I hope you all enjoy listening to it as much as I do. It's not perfect, but it does what my favorite sets do: tells a more complex story than a linear build. There are four distinct movements in this one: tracks 1-3, 3-5, 5-8, and 8-12. Two weeks from now we hope to have a surprise for you. Stay tunned for that. Cheers, DJ Transit Edit: Oops, there is indeed a little blip at the end of the set. I'm going to leave it there to avoid any further re-encoding. Edit II: Link to the OGG is fixed.

Back to the Roots

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:03:25 +0000

And progressive trance roots these are. We start slow and dark, with the title cut off an album I highly recommend to anyone interested in dark instrumental techno, Ebencrib - The Essence EP. Expect to hear more off this in the next weeks. We stay hunkered down low until we reach a cover of the old Orbital track, Chime. And from there it is off to the build, until we hit a moment of ambient tension with Madam - Penetration, an old (2001!) standby. Finally, we finish with another mix of His Boy Elroy - Step Into The Light, the same track we finished with in the last podcast. Not that you'll notice unless you listen to them back-to-back. This interpretation is completely different than Micah's, and takes us right back to the era when Hybrid was producing giant orchestral masterpieces. The Emissary And Starfire Remix gives Hybrid a good run for their money. Enjoy! DJ Transit

La dolce vita

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:05:03 +0000

Adesso entrambi dj ego e io abitare a citta dove la popolazione parlando Italiano. But since my Italian is rather poor, I'll leave it at that. Welcome dj ego to Napoli! This week we visit a couple different soundscapes, yet it all seems to hang together rather nicely. We start out nice and mellow for the first three tracks, before sliding into some minimal house. I've been meaning to get The Bribe on the show for months, but it's a devil of a track to pair up. From there we head into decidedly progressive territory. The mix from Quivver's Tick Tick to 2 Notes 'N' A Beat was an off the cuff selection - I was pleased to later see he had used the same transition on his recent album. There is far too much clipping in this set, although it's mostly very minor. I was cleaning my mixer and apparently turned the master volume a little bit clockwise. Oops. For most of the tracks the clipping is very minimal; I can't hear it except on one track. If you have a real subwoofer your experience may be less satisfactory; sorry if the bass sounds a little flubbish here and there. The less than stellar mixes are, of course, completely unrelated. :-) Feedback is appreciated, as always! Cheers, DJ Transit

Live from California

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:41:02 +0000

Well, this weeks set isn't live from California, but I barely am. Jet lag is a bitch. Two weeks ago I talked a little about the process I go through when putting a set together. Fairly often I'll put a number of hours in on a set and then end up finding it falling short of what I had imagined. Occasionally I'll go back and listen to such a set a few weeks later and think "Hmm, this wasn't so horrible." And so it is with this weeks posting. My initial impression when I first put this together was that it jumped around too much, and had a few less than great mixes. But going back and giving it a second listen, I'm more or less happy with it. And since I was unable to put something else together before leaving for a bit of vacation/long-distance work, it's this weeks mix. Track 12 is currently "unknown" as I don't have my original tracklist with me, and I can't for the life of me figure out what track it is. Oops. You have two weeks time in which to guess and post a comment with the correct information in order to show me up. :-) Cheers, Transit

Is it Monday?

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:13:33 +0000

Apparently so. Hard to believe two weeks have passed since the last post already. I swear time flows faster than it once did. All my posted sets are mixed with 2xCDJ-200s and an Ecler Nuo5, plus some post-recording diddling in Audacity. But before recording anything I normally first spend something like 2-7 hours upfront, doing track selection and playing with transition points. Then I'll typically mix through the whole set once or twice, give it a listen, and rearrange things if something serious is wrong. Usually one of the first two takes is ready to post, but if changes are made, yet more time goes into recording it again. Sometimes I'll go through part of that process and then start over. You can see why people are switching to all digital mixes for podcasts and on-line radio. The time efficiency can't be beat. This week we have a little over an hour of fine minimal techno for your listening pleasure. It's not the best set ever posted, but I only had time to do some minimal track selection and then mix through it once before recording. Therefore it's a bit more raw. I spent around two hours on track selection, did one test mix, made a few changes, and then put down the final set recording. The last two tracks were actually not planned at all - and you can tell, particularly on the mix from Pigon - May In Little Albio Street to Joris Voorn - The Deep Side Of The Moog. The tracks don't particularly belong together. Think of the mix as "live" if you will. :-) Enjoy, and feel free to use the comment system. I didn't code it so it would sit there lonely and unused! Cheers, Transit

Back Baby, Back!

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 06:16:17 +0000

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

Happy May Day

Sat, 03 May 2008 02:07:14 +0000

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.

Release Point 1.0

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:12:57 +0000

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!

The Beta Session

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:34:52 +0000

Welcome to the new podcast! After a long break from the radio show, we've decided that conflicting schedules and hectic routines demand a new format for the DJ Transit/dj ego experience: podcast. There's no schedule for now, and the software for the website still needs to be built up, but we couldn't delay the musical goodness that we've been storing up for months. Expect to see the site change radically with each update, but the music to keep kicking ass. The first features to appear should be RSS for your podcast browser and comments for your adoration. Also note that if you use IE 6.0 some of our images will not render correctly. Get a real browser like Firefox, or upgrade to IE 7.0 if you must. Without further ado, we are happy to present the first sonxs podcast!