archive

The mixes here are from my partly inherited and partly curated mix CD compilations. The majority were put together and released in the late 90's and early 2000's.

The CD mix series has become a key theme in my music education and I'm still amazed to be finding more and more that I didn't know about. That period seemed to be a golden era for music and artwork alike.

It started with finding my parent's CD collection in a dusty old drawer one summer on my return from university. That felt like discovering a time capsule and since then I never really looked to finding music in any other format, despite the occasional vinyl release.

The early Cafe Del Mar series mixed by Jose Padilla introduced a side of dance music I never knew existed and opened a new world of what it seemed possible to achieve in music. Such early releases came out on the React label, which I later discovered were behind the Real Ibiza series, which turned about to be even more earthy and obscure than Cafe Del Mar.

The next one to rock my world was the first in the Renaissance series, mixed by the legends Sasha and Digweed. My mum told me it was that copy she would listen to along the M62 down to Manchester before nights at The Hacienda.

The inside cover read these magical words, which I later discovered were partially taken from The Ode, from O'Shaughnessy's collection Music and Moonlight. As well as the music makers quote, the first stanza also introduced the phrase 'movers and shakers' to the English language:

"We are the music makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams;

World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world for ever, it seems"

So that takes us from ambient and downtempo to progressive and hard house, but this sharing of my archive contains almost everything in-between. It's not a comprehensive archive and only contains a sample of my mixed collection, but it captures the sounds that optimise the s0undpad style.

It primarily contains the works that have been most influential in my journey and I mostly want other people to hear and be inspired by. So, I hope they may provide you with as much joy and happy memories as they have done for me over the years.

Moving forward, my intention is to emulate and sample these sounds in my own productions by bringing them into a new context for the contemporary audience.