Jon Rowett’s Soundblog

In lieu of getting my shit together and posting something more substantial, I just threw these five tunes together, they seemed to work nicely in my room lit only by blinking LEDs. Sort of dim, woozy techno. I dunno. Also the first mix I’ve posted that uses a CDJ along with my decks (more on that in another post…)

 

 Woozy Techno Mini-Mix [24:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Track list:

dj maxximus - neo (shackleton’s neo bln rmx)
shackleton - blood on my hands (villalobos remix)
scuba - from within (marcel dettmann remix)
actress - hazyville
the black dog - 0093 (berlin mix)

…just like I was threatening to. It’s derivative as fuck and has an unforgivable sample in the middle and I’m rather pleased with it, it having been twelve years since I last attempted this kind of shenanigans. Here it is:

 

 New Chances [5:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I had enormous fun doing it and learning / re-learning how it all works. Takes up a lot of time though - luckily me, the wife and the boy were all really ill with a bad cold over Easter so I had an entire bank holiday weekend stuck indoors to really get into it. I haven’t given myself a producer alias at this point since the whole business of doing so seems ridiculous and sordid, like choosing a porn name, so it’s just by “Jon Rowett”, in a Laurent Garnier / Dave Pearce / Timmy Mallett stylee. I need to blow my nose again now so see you later yeah.

1. Working on a new dubstep mix. Getting into the whole “write down a set list, iterate, practise” thing instead of just switching on the decks and hoping I come up with something good…I will post the mix soon as soon as I get “that” take.

2. Spending more time on production. There’s so much to relearn since I last did this sort of thing (with an Atari ST and a rotating assortment of random cheap hardware). Having an unlimited sound palette is, surprisingly, completely paralysing. My ideal digital audio workstation would just have three sliders, labelled “Ramadanman”, “Appleblim” and “El-B”, then I’d simply adjust the ratios of each according to my mood, run it through the included “Dubplates & Mastering” plugin and bounce the output to a WAV file. Press 200 white labels, job done!