Clocking in at over four and a half hours, this epic mix collects Massive Attack’s vast collection of work into a flowing journey of elegiac, melancholy soul and deep, dubbed-out funk. Spanning their career from 1991 to 2004’s “Danny the Dog OST” album, as well as a number of the essential Mad Professor remixes from “No Protection,” this is a definitive document on the seminal Bristol, UK group.
Arranged by DJ Finny, who did a perfect job of blending and arranging this mix in a way that always puts the music first, and also bridges the darker, more ambient interludes with classics like “Karmacoma” and “Teardrop.” Listen and download below, and check out the gigantic track list after the jump.
I grabbed this mix from Diplo’s Mad Decent blog yesterday and am really feeling it. Here’s their description:
We live in a cynical world, and we work in a business of tough competitors, so what’s in a wobble? You don’t have to be a smart man to know what love is. <3STEP completes you and is programmed for pleasure. It’s music for starry nights and candle light…slow wine and grind time. Dirty South Joe and Flufftronix are your captains for this maiden voyage into the heart of the boom’s cosmic bosom. It’s amazing, the love inside. You take it with you.
Dubstep producer and DJ Starkey provides a short spoken forward explaining the roots of this sound and how “luvstep” takes it in a new direction. Check out their website for the full tracklist, bookings, artwork, etc or just listen & download it now:
DJ Dopeshoes is a member of the Hometown Blends crew and a selector with an excellent taste in hiphop, funk, breaks, and soul. Sole Food: Cold Bologna, Mayonnaise, & Bread features a lot of her personal favorites in both old school, and recent hip hop as well as funk and soul. In her own words “This is a largely retrospective mixtape for afternoons, bbqs, and whenever the hell else you feel like it.” I will definitely be rocking it at my next BBQ, and so should you.
I remember the first time I heard “two-step” a.k.a. UK Garage. Having recently arrived in London in 1998 to go to school at Westminster, I followed the scent of ganja in my dorm floor and made some new friends. The stereo in their small, smoky dorm room was tuned to a pirate radio station and it was playing a new kind of dance music that I hadn’t heard before. I asked what it was and one of the guys replied, “garridge.”
At the time, I thought they meant “garage” as in disco and house made famous by New York’s Paradise Garage. They were quick to correct me: no, this was a completely different kind of music, the next evolutionary step from mid-90’s Speed Garage, and the predecessor to the Dubstep and Grime genres that rose to prominence in the early 2000’s. Two-step’s popularity only lasted a few short years, and inspired both strong loyalty from its fans and scathing hate from those who preferred harder bass lines and rougher, more aggressive sounds.
Nowadays it can be pretty hard to find a good, let alone definitive mix of this music. This mix captures all the top singles from the Locked On label, a sub-label of Pure Groove and home to some of the most famous two-step artists and singles. If you’re searching for a great two-step mix to reminisce on, this is it. Originally packaged with Muzik Magazine’s November 2000 issue, this is a flawless mix showcasing the distinctive clipped rhythms and sugar-sweet R&B vocals of two-step, which retain their funky soulful vibe a decade later.
Here’s the second mix I unearthed in my dusty backups, a mixtape I made with my friend Zakee on a summer afternoon in 1998. “Pimp Fiction” is a mash of good stuff, from 60’s and 70’s soul, blues, funk and disco gems to 90’s acid jazz, triphop, and rap. It’s reassuring to hear such tight selection and I’m glad to be able to add it to this archive.
More old-school goodness from Mr. Dope. In the words of DJ Ayres:
This Breakbeats CD is a reissued classic in the Bronx tradition of doubling hard funk, disco & early rap breaks with precision. The production is impeccable, and manages a lot of multitracking to keep it interesting, without sacrificing a live feel. But that’s just one level of appreciation; it’s a digging tape too. Everything is on here, from obvious “my first breakbeat” records (James Brown, Headhunters, Meters) to that james flames rare shit that djs like Language and Roctakon cream their panties over. And apparently he’s only rocking original copies, scratching the shit out of $200+ 12″ singles. 37 tracks total, with a couple of extended live remixes at the end and a lot of composition throughout (39 records are listed on the back, but I would guess he used more like 70-80 joints total). I know we hype a lot of music up in our reviews, but honestly, this is a desert island pick.
Kenny Dope, one half of New York City’s legendary Masters At Work team, released this mix back in 2004 as part of a series of fantastic disco and 80’s mixes. This mix is required listening for fans of the old-school! Here’s a few excerpts from an excellent review I found by Michael Gill at Stylus Magazine:
As disco went back underground at the beginning of the ‘80s, it went through a bit of a stylistic makeover. Boogie, a slower take on disco with a thicker back beat, became popular in clubs, and disco labels like Salsoul, West End, and Prelude continued to flourish with a mass of underground hits. These labels reduced the diva and the orchestral quotient of disco, and added in an array of synthesizers as well as a stronger soul/R&B vibe to their tracks. The effect was that a lot of post-disco dance music had a breezy, gliding quality to it instead of feeling bombastic and excessive. A gliding quality that is similar to, you guessed it, roller skating.
All of this leads to Roller Boogie ‘80s, the first in a series of limited edition mixes by Kenny Dope, who is one-half of the production team Masters At Work. If you are a fan of underground disco, you’ll probably recognize a lot of the tracks here, as many are still staples for DJs today. Kenny is not digging too deep into his crates here, and the result is almost akin to a greatest hits selection of laid-back disco in the early ‘80s.
The big hits include Taana Gardner’s million-selling single “Heartbeat,” Junior’s throaty R&B smash “Mama Used To Say,” and Slave’s smooth funk jam “Watching You” (which later was appropriated by Snoop Dogg for “Gin & Juice.”) Just about every other track is a perennial underground classic that has been included on numerous disco compilations throughout the years, like the irresistible “I Like What You Are Doing To Me” by Young & Co., the jubilant “Walking Into Sunshine” by Central Line, and the still devastating soul-funk of “Just A Touch of Love” by Slave.
