Textures

Part one of a new mini series! Yay!

Galvanize is a mini-series that I have begun to work on bringing together the elements of what people are calling deep house these days with the more technical elements of tech house. This intersection has become a cornerstone of the sound that I love to play out at the club these days. Parts 1 & 2 of this series came together quickly and there is close to 2.5 hours of music contained within. The other element to this set is the tempo which has been dialed back to 117 BPM. This slow chugging groove allows all the technical elements of each track to breath and new details can be gleaned that may be overlooked at faster tempos. 

Enjoy!

We all have them, those friends that just don't get it.  I've lived my adult life loving Techno in almost all its forms.  I have also lived with the knowledge that we have historically been a counter culture to the mainstream.  That was one of the reasons I got into this music to begin with.  Man do I ever hate Pop music.  That's not to say I don't have Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and "Bad" on vinyl, but the pop of the 80s is part of the reason I love Techno today.  How much inspiration have we all taken from that era?

One of the most common complaints I get whenever I DJ for a non-house-head crowd, or try to bring some techno or house music to the attention of a pop music fan is "This all sounds the same, there are no words I can sing to!"  Challenge Accepted!

I did a mix years ago now when I lived in Vancouver for my cousin who just couldn't wrap her head around Techno.  She was used to singing out her favorite songs on the radio and was just unfamiliar with taking in the sonic tapestry of an instrumental track, more specifically of a whole hour of them!

"Hey I get it, there is something visceral and ancestral about vocal music, it's where music started after all.", I said.  So I proceeded to create a Progressive House mix made up of all vocal tracks.  That was tough back in the days of Vinyl as I had to peel through a relatively modest collection by today's standards.

This months mix is the start of a new series that I have had the pleasure of compiling in order to try to introduce this music to another un-initiated.  My goal is to slowly ramp up to the non-verbal mixes that make this group of genres so compelling to me but to start with... A mix of all Vocal tracks!  And let me assure you, even I was surprised by how many I have been able to compile over the last decade of digital music.  Hence we have another Rob C series on our hands and hopefully some classic mixes for you all to enjoy in the years to come!

RC 

Part 2 of our opening set keeps getting a little bit more intense without going full out.  At the very end we play a couple of pretty banging tracks before mellowing out for the headliner. 

Enjoy!

What a great night this was!  Such a great crowd and we managed to put together what I consider a top notch opening set for Chymera.  There was a great vibe in the room that night and this set just seemed to sparkle as a result.  As it turns out I couldn't get the whole thing into one podcast so look for part two in the early days of July!

As always, Enjoy!

RobC

If you have been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you've certainly heard me use the words Tech House before.  However, you have probably never heard me call one of my sets a Tech House set.  Throughout my career making this podcast i've used many tech house tracks and blended them in with more traditional deep house or progressive.  In this month's installment, I have taken a live set that I did where I tried to stick to the more techno driven style that I currently think of as Tech House.  This set has some pretty banging moments but I think it came off rather well.  Especially given the fact that it was recorded live, yay for traktor's record function!

Enjoy!

RobC

I had been contemplating this mix for a long time waiting until I had a critical mass of the right kinds of tracks to put it together.  I have loved the sound of what I consider melodic techno for a while now.  Usually you will hear this kind of music at the beginning of a set by DJs like Hernan Cattaneo.  Rarely do you get a full set of this very melow but compelling sound.  I put this set together in the best place possible, the beach.  I would get up in the mornings and watch the sun rise over the ocean and work on this set with my morning coffee.  Sublime!

Hopefully you can find somewhere as calm and peaceful to enjoy listening to it.

RC

A note from Magnus about the mix:

The meeting of two minds can be a stimulating and productive endeavor, but having a mutual love of underground house and techno is no guarantee of a successful collaboration. Rob and I have wanted to do a mix like this for some time now, and finally, after a few months of jamming and curating, we’re ready to unleash this mix on our fellow house-heads. Drawing on our expansive collections of deep house and tech house, we’ve proudly crafted a testament to how we’d like to be able to warm up a room and set the tone for a fun-filled night of dancing and debauchery. Full of spacey, deep grooves and airy vibes that lure you towards a finale of banging, bass-driven rhythms, this mix takes its listeners from their first few tentative steps on a empty dance-floor to a floor packed with raised hands and wiggling booties. Rob and I hope you enjoy this mix as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

Mixed live using Traktor and an S2 controller.

1 Fourss - Journeyman (Slope remix)

2 Stellios Vassiloudis - Hunger

3 Kevin Yost - Right To Your Soul (Deep Spelle remix)

4 Booka Shade - Many Rivers

5 Harlem Knights & Rebound - I'm Gonna (Marco Grandi remix)

6 Dale Anderson & Anil Chawla - Leftorium (Philipp Ort remix)

7 Matthias Vogt - I Dreamed the Impossible (Wiretappeur remix)

8 Tvardovsky – Essention (Sound Process remix)

9 Helly Larson & Riccicomoto - Moving Dub (Deep Spelle remix)

10 Sebrof & Sterbai – Mosaik (PRT Stacho remix)

11 M.A.N.D.Y. & Booka Shade – Home (Monaque remix)

12 Stereo.type - Momento

13 Miss Disk - White Obsession (Zach DeVincent remix)

14 Oxia & Nicolas Masseyeff - You Know

15 John Selway – Countenance (Christian Smith & John Selway remix)

16 Peter Horrevorts - Stab

17 Pig & Dan - A Sudden Rush

18 Dousk - Jit Jit

This is a special episode for me, a milestone really.  2013 marked the 10th year since my very first release was published.  To commemorate the occaision I have put together the first podcast I have ever done that features a tracklist comprised entirely of tracks by yours truly.  Original tracks, remixes I have done as well as a couple of choice remixes that others have done of my original works.

At first I didn't really know if I would be able to pull off a full mix of my own stuff but as I started to dust off some of the old tracks things began to come together quickly.  Before I knew it I had over two hours of music on my hands.  Once I had the basic layout down, I began to do a number of edits and reworks to knit the individual tracks together better and give a better flow to the whole work.  What you are hopefully listening to now as you read this is the outcome of about 20 hours of meticulous editing, re-mastering and tweaking of these tracks to work together as a whole.  

My journey as a published artist began back in 2003 when I entered a remix competition held by Release Records out of Toronto.  The track to remix was by Medway and was titled "Trauma".  It featured a cool little spoken word sample by Ice Tea and some really cool stems to play around with.  Back in those days I was still very much walking the line between trance and progressive house and my mix is a wash of reverb tails and big crashy booms.  Somehow I managed to catch the ear of the folks at Release and they picked my mix among the hundreds that they received and released it on vinyl.

It seemed fitting that I should start this mix off with the track that started me off.  Over the course of the two hours of music in this mix, I travel in a lot of different directions from the more traditionally progressive to trance, tech house, deep house and even breaks.  Please enjoy this journey through time and sound and help me to celebrate 10 years of releasing music to the masses!

Tracklist:

1. Medway - Trauma (Rob Curtis Mix)

2. Medway & John Morgan - Toobin' (Rob Curtis Mix)

3. Rob Curtis - Backeia (Dale Anderson Mix)

4. Rob Curtis - Faded Too Deep

5. Rob Curtis - Dense Waffles

6. Rob Curtis - Quicksilver (Anisotropic Mix)

7. Marcelo Castelli - Montevideo (Rob C's Punta Del Este Mix)

8. Rob Curtis - Eclectic

9. Rob Curtis - Twilight 

10. Rob Curtis - Clandestine

11. Rob Curtis - Body in Motion

12. Wes Straub - Lost in Humidity (Rob Curtis Mix)

13. Rob Curtis & Jerome Robbins - Starkid's Theme

14. Rob Curtis - Hollowed Out

15. Rob Curtis - The Assessment

16. Rob Curtis - Backeia

Part 5 rounds out this mini series which I have been working on all year.  Five parts later and I have come back to a nice cross section of deep house, minimal tech house some housey progressive stuff and a bit of just good old fashioned good vibes music.  It has been a really incredible journey putting these mixes together this year and if there is one thing I have learned it is that there has never been a better time to consistently find great new music.  I am starting a few new projects in the new year so look for new mini-series, collaborations and even a few new original compositions if all goes well.  

I hope this last episode of the year finds you all well and warm, with good family, good friends and some great tunes!

Continuing to roll through more good music.  I'm constantly impressed with how much of it is out there these days.  Many of you out there have heard me remarking on all the good music I have been able to pick up this year and the trend doesn't seem to be ending.  I have hit a milestone in my efforts to find more good music to present to you all here, I have for the first time ever found more music than I can afford to buy in one go and have had to relegate a large portion to my hold bin for further scrutiny.  So while I hope that you enjoy this month's installment, know that there are many more new tracks waiting in the winds!  As always, Enjoy!