Finding Quality Mixes
Two years later, I find myself still addicted to that one Dixon mix.
Minimal techno by itself gets really boring to me after awhile and house usually tends to play it "too safe" for my ears... but put them together and it's magic (and this is what Dixon does best).
Finding a quality mix is no easy feat. The best way to accomplish this is when a friend singles out a mix to you by saying it's "sick," "the bomb, "the shit," etc. That makes it easy (granted you actually respect the other person's music taste). But in this era of mega lists of mixes hosted online for download, this scenario is becoming more and more rare.
Sure, I could grab every mix I come across (which is what I used to do), but mixes are long... it would take several lifetimes for me to give all of the ones I encounter a listen. I wish posters of these lists would call out the ones that are actually great... maybe even devote a sentence or two as to why they think the mix is worth a listen (don't even get me started on how poor the ID3 tags are on most of these mixes... not to mention the horrible file names).
I use an "audition" folder where new stuff gets stored and I've become ruthless about what gets to make a permanent home on my hard disk. Your mix or album may have a good track or two on it, but if I'm not blown away, you're getting dragged to the trash.
With the relatively newfound convenience of unlimited storage space online, the problem isn't a lack of music... it's more about utilizing your friends as filters to actually get to the best stuff. This holds true for all media, whether it be books, films, blog posts, etc... it's just that mixes are particularly costly when it comes to time and local disk space.
This is also why I hope mom n' pop book and music stores never go away. There is no surrogate that can take the place of an expert musicologist cutting through the mediocrity and shining a light on the gems.
So fine readers, I ask you... what mix(es) do you think have stood the test of time?
Minimal techno by itself gets really boring to me after awhile and house usually tends to play it "too safe" for my ears... but put them together and it's magic (and this is what Dixon does best).
Finding a quality mix is no easy feat. The best way to accomplish this is when a friend singles out a mix to you by saying it's "sick," "the bomb, "the shit," etc. That makes it easy (granted you actually respect the other person's music taste). But in this era of mega lists of mixes hosted online for download, this scenario is becoming more and more rare.
Sure, I could grab every mix I come across (which is what I used to do), but mixes are long... it would take several lifetimes for me to give all of the ones I encounter a listen. I wish posters of these lists would call out the ones that are actually great... maybe even devote a sentence or two as to why they think the mix is worth a listen (don't even get me started on how poor the ID3 tags are on most of these mixes... not to mention the horrible file names).
I use an "audition" folder where new stuff gets stored and I've become ruthless about what gets to make a permanent home on my hard disk. Your mix or album may have a good track or two on it, but if I'm not blown away, you're getting dragged to the trash.
With the relatively newfound convenience of unlimited storage space online, the problem isn't a lack of music... it's more about utilizing your friends as filters to actually get to the best stuff. This holds true for all media, whether it be books, films, blog posts, etc... it's just that mixes are particularly costly when it comes to time and local disk space.
This is also why I hope mom n' pop book and music stores never go away. There is no surrogate that can take the place of an expert musicologist cutting through the mediocrity and shining a light on the gems.
So fine readers, I ask you... what mix(es) do you think have stood the test of time?