Laura Pedersen, aka DJ Lahbug, has been rocking dancefloors in some of the Bay Area’s best clubs for the past three years with some killer prog and trance sounds. She’s throwing down some serious love here for The Beatery with a set inspired first by emotion, but also, she confesses, by a tantalizing bottle of perrier jouet rose champagne that was taunting her during a recent gig in Vegas…
This mix is a mix-tape length (~45 min) collection of trance that makes me happy; uplifting, spiritual, sentimental yet bangy trance. So often as trance djs, we get caught in the 140bpm bubble (my car even says “I <3 140bpm" haha) and everything is just bang-bang-bang for your entire set, and we omit the emotion that makes a set connect with people. So, hopefully this set reaches somebody on a more emotional level. I think my favorite track is Never Fade Away, followed by Every Other Way at a close second. Jes's voice just kills me!
Whoa. Just moments ago I was yet a mere guest DJ and now I have been initiated into the hallowed halls and clandestine logins of the secret order of the Beatery.
And man, am I stoked to be here!
I’m honored that Cor, Jay, and Matt have welcomed me in to be part of the family!
I’ll be giving some major love to the realms of progressive, trance, and my secret dark lover drum n bass, so stay tuned…
I was planning for my first post as a resident editor to be super bangin, but then I got all spacey…^_^
I spent last weekend in bliss, dancing and DJing under the stars.
Out near Willits, in the middle of the forest, there’s no light pollution (except for the trippy lasers on the dancefloor!), so the whole of the night starscape is your playground — surrounded by swirling rhythms and flashing lights on the ground, then you look up and the vault of the heavens expands in every direction.
Then when your body tires, nothing beats laying down on the grass, looking upwards, and letting the vastness consume you.
This mix was made just after returning, and is born out of that feeling — of staring at the nocturnal sky in awe.
Alright ladies and gents, ready for another trip in the Waaaaay Back Machine? This week I’m reaching into our digital shoe box* of classic mix tapes and pulling out another F-8 classic, “The Electric Temple” AKA “Mars’s Red Tape”. I’m not sure if this is my favorite overall Mars tape, but it definitely has my favorite side.
* Is there really any better way to keep your tapes than in a shoe box? Literally every tape we’ve digitized here has come out of someone’s shoe box: Cor’s, mine, Ben’s… we were all saddened to here that Alex emptied his shoe box of tapes into the garbage before we had a chance to get at them…
Side A has it’s jams: “Trance Emotions” is a nice starting song when you’re mixing unapologetic trance; the last two tracks are sweeping classics (one of which, the second to last, I still refuse to get rid of on vinyl); and then there’s the track three appearance of what we called “The Egyptian Song”, later discovered to actually be named “Snake Charmer” by Carpe Diem*, which was always caused pandemonium amongst my group of friends when played live, in a car, on a boom box… really playing this song at any time at any volume back in the day would make one of us pee our pants.**
* I’ll feature this tomorrow as our “Bonus Beat”, stay tuned in.
** Yup, that’s all one sentence. I amaze myself.
But it’s side B that’s really the classic. Mars starts us off with some “Infinity” by Guru Josh and just never looks back. Trance hit after trance hit for 40 straight minutes! We got “Out of the Blue”; there’s whatever the song is called that comes in after at about 18:35 that still to this day moves me; then the “Bun BE-dum… bun BI BE BE-dum” song, which should not to be confused with the “BE bun, be-bi-dun-be BE bun…”* track that comes in around 31:10; the violin track; and the list just goes on and on. If I want to hear classic SF melodic/cybertrance from the late 90’s (AKA classic German melodic/cybertrance from a few years earlier) I’m headed straight for side two “The Electric Temple”.
So get your glow sticks out, dust of your ultra baggy pants, candy bracelets and neon tops ’cause we’re about to go a’ravin!
* You know what’s even more ridiculous than trying to sing a trance song for someone? Yeah, trying to type one out.
*You know what’s crazy? This seems to be the last official web stronghold of “Cybertrance Communication”. The “Frequency 8″ record label website won’t load and the “F-8 Gear” site that used to have all their mixes available on CD has been taken over by creepy, smiling stock photo girls. Man, now that I can’t get one I really want an F-8 tee shirt! And remember kids: love the music, not the drugs.
His name really sums it up: “Legendary International Superstar DJ Tiësto”. Ohh wait, that’s not actually his name?? Well it should be. I don’t think anyone in this contest has as much fame, played for as many people, has as much international recognition, has won as many awards, or has pulled down as much dough as Tiësto. Dude even has his own shoes! But this isn’t an international popularity contest, and I actually think his mega-fame hurts him our circles (I know I’ve come to tune him out entirely due to over-exposure, over-hype and overuse of divas). But the question still remains: can Tiësto BUMP, or is he just an over-hyped, diva-loving, low quality cheese-trance peddler? Find out after the jump!
Mwahahahaha! Halloween is finally upon us, and to celebrate we present you with the second in our series of spooky retro mixes: a super-rare versus set Jay and I recorded for a Halloween party way back in… damn, when was this? Judging from the tracks I’d say this was in 2000, but it’s hard to know for sure; I barely remember recording this one. Big thanks to Dustin for getting this to me, as he had what appears to be the only copy of this long-forgotten CD. Even Jay and I haven’t heard this in years.
Listening back now, Jay’s set definitely sounds a lot more Halloween-y than mine, I love the dramatic cello-driven trance tracks and the Psycho theme in there. His set has better flow and mixing as well… You know, on second thought, don’t listen to my set. Maybe I forgot this CD on purpose. Ah hell, it’s too late now, it’s out there, for better or worse. Trick or treat, you decide.
