Welcome to the DJ Tomas Early Mix series, a digitized archive of early DJ mixes recorded between 1994 and 2000 and duplicated on cassette tapes.

In 1995 I was living in a studio apartment on South Cloverdale Street near West 6th St. in mid-town Los Angeles. I had two Techniques decks set up on milk crates, an archaic handed-down Numark mixer and a cassette deck. It was on this set up that I recorded my first formal mixtape, live in one take to cassette, tape hiss and all.

The original tape copy was brought to Smitty, a rave music tape duplicator based in San Fernando Valley, who I paid to press up around 200 copies.

At the time I was DJing with Jun from Umoja Hi-Fi at Nova Express (opened '93, closed '08) on Fairfax Blvd, a late-night coffee & pizza cafe. Our night was called Goa Dub, one of the first club nights to feature ambient, trip-hop, dub and downtempo music in an all-ages after-hours space (most weeks we DJed till 4 a.m.).

The music on this mix represents the tracks and moods of that time. I no longer have the complete track listing but some artists I recognize include Mad Professor, DJ Shadow, Manaseh, A Guy Called Gerald, Funki Porcini, Fila Brazillia, Edge Test, Sub-Surfing, Bandulu, Biosphere and others.

Part One: Liquid focuses on ambient electronic sounds, beat-less soundscapes and some dubby techno.

Part Two: Solid is downtempo and trip-hop beats.

Cover design by Guy from Funk Pistol, Hawaii.

Enjoy!