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Mixed in London, July 2012

(91:29, 210 MB, 320 KBPS MP3)

Large cover

Cue file

Zip pack (split into separate tracks)

Style: Mid 90’s European acid/hard trance

Direct link to the mix: http://sonicrampage.org/mixes/et4/Pearsall-Eurotrash4.mp3

Tracklisting:

01. Bypass Unit – Cruiser (Tripomatic)

02. Unreal 3 – Replicants (Formaldehyd)

03. Oliver Kirwa – Kernkraft (Time Unlimited)

04. The Art Of Trance – Cambodia (Trope Remix) (Labworks)

05. Baby Doc – Eurotic (R-Damski Remix) (DMD)

06. Aquaplex – Spirit (Universal Prime Breaks)

07. The Pressure – Babylon (Thai)

08. Chris Liberator & D.A.V.E. The Drummer – Beats Rockin’ (Noom)

09. Rainforest – Mania (Rainforest)

10. DJ Randy – Overmodulate (Prolekult)

11. Influx – Braineater (Sapho)

12. Spect-R – This Is Acid (Monokultur)

13. Synthetic Progress – Acid Future (Harthouse)

14. Insider & Stephenson – Ckassadandra (Bonzai)

15. DJ Crack – The Century Of E (Full-E)

16. Basic Gravity – Rajah (Superstition)

17. Organic Tea – Citric Acid (Dos Or Die)

18. The Montini Experience – Restriction (Nitric)

19. Astral Projection – Mahadeva (Smart)

20. L’Auberge – Neriah (Friends)

21. After Sunset – Seduction (Plastic Loop)

22. Nuclear Hyde – Running Man (Noom)

23. Hunter Club Analyse – Braindamage (Tunnel)

24. Legacy – All Out Of Bubble Gum (Reef)

25. Moonrise – Evolution 4-Ward (EDM)

26. Pozor – Lost Generation (Tesseract)

27. Headshop – Universe (Asylum Mix) (Dance Ecstasy 2001)

28. Hunter Club Analyse – The First Call (Tunnel)

29. Instant Zen – Astral Community (Astral Mix) (Noom)

Enjoy this mix? Please consider making a donation to help support Sonicrampage

Note: No Soundcloud version of this mix, as I’ve received an automatic copyright notification blocking me from uploading it to Soundcloud. It would be nice if the system told me whose copyright I was infringing with these nearly twenty year old tracks! So I’ve uploaded it to Official.fm instead:

Cover: Tower Blocks, Warsaw, Poland

Firstly, I would like to thank everyone who has donated – you guys are amazing!

Secondly, I am extremely proud to present this, the fourth edition of my Eurotrash series of mixes. Even better, this mix has been chosen by my Facebook fans – can’t argue with popular demand!

As ever, this mix is an exploration of the classic sounds of mid-90’s European hard/acid trance, possibly my favorite single style of music, as I discussed in my Heartcore essay:

It is hard to put into words what this music means to me, how important these greatest tunes from the golden era of mid-90?s European hardtrance actually are … It’s hard for me to separate this music from my memories, since I first got into this music back in the mid-90?s, when I was only a teenager.

As ever with my Eurotrash mixes, this one starts (relatively) slow, at a pulsating 145 bpm, and then builds over an extended 90 minutes of gradually ratcheting tension to a euphorically rushing 170 bpm, in a process described best in my Rampage Audio 6 essay:

When I do a hard dance mix I always try to follow a couple of key principles in order to make it entertaining. The first principle that I try to adhere to when I make a hard dance mix is that I am creating a whole product, a sonic narrative, something to be listened to from beginning to end. Therefore it has to be more than just a string of tracks; something other than here are my favourite records of the moment”. Each track has to make sense in connection to both the previous and following tracks, and there needs to be a clear pathway from the beginning to the end of the mix. Moving from slower -> faster is a very efficient, and compelling, way to do this … Recording a mix is not the same thing as playing in a public setting. When you play out at a club/party/rave you are performing for the crowd. You may step up with an idea of what you want to play, but you can’t really stick to it, because you have to observe the crowd and see what is working and be able to adjust as you go along. You aren’t playing for yourself, so you can’t be too egotistical about what you are playing. If people aren’t enjoying what you are playing, you might as well switch it up (or you can just say fuck it, I suppose). When you record a mix you are not beholden to a crowd, you are not having to make sure that people are having fun, you can just follow your heart. Whenever I record a mix I generally get a bunch of records out, put them in an order that I think makes sense, and then have a go at it. Sometimes it works immediately, but more usually after the first go there are things that can be changed and improved upon, so I re-order the records and then go again … The third principle is somewhat at odds with the previous one, because the third thing that I always try to remember is that I want my mixes to have the excitement of a live mix. Often when you hear commercially-released mixes they sound so clinical, usually because they have been mixed on a computer, whereas mixes recorded live at clubs/raves have a certain raw energy to them. This is why I don’t mind about little mistakes with beat-matching, because as long as they are only brief and lasting a short time period they just add a certain quirk to the proceedings. It is also why I also little cuts, tricks, spinbacks, and so on on the mixes, and why I chop and change between the tracks so quickly. So many commercially-released mixes are just compilations of segues from one track to the next right at the end of the tunes in question, and it’s boring. This is obviously a matter of taste, since I have had people complain that my mixes have too much chopping and changing and that I mix out of tracks too quickly, but I get a bit bored with mixes where every track sticks around for 6-7 minutes. You might as well just listen to the tracks on their own!

I am particularly proud of the way that I have really dug into my crates with this mix, in order to come up with a selection of tunes both classic and obscure that hang together to form an entire sonic tapestry over the full hour and a half.

Since I don’t (for once) have much else to say about this particular mix, I would like to indulge my love of photography a bit, with a selection of photos that I have taken in Poland over the last few years, in Warsaw, Gdansk, Chelm, and Kazimierz Dolny. In all honesty it’s a bit of a random selection, showing the usual touristy stuff, architecture, people, animals, street scenes, food, and a few odds and ends. Because that’s how I roll (well, sometimes).

Why Poland, you may ask?

Well, my wonderful wife Iwona is Polish, and this August marks five years since we first started dating. In all honesty I would say that meeting her was the most important event in my adult life, because so much changed after that. Wanting to impress her and wanting her to be proud of me has really driven me – if I hadn’t met her, I really doubt that I would be a father (and I love being a father) or that I would be as successful in my career as I have been – and I am certain that I would be nowhere near as happy as I am today. Hand on heart she is the best thing to ever happen to me, and I can’t imagine life without her.

Ifonka, kocham cie!

Because I love her, I have come to love her homeland, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who has never been. Seriously … go!

(Btw, if you’re a Polish promoter, I’d love to play for you! Kurwa mac, I would love to play in Poland!)

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