Art: Said the Stars by Wenqing Yan
Text: Jannica Porcu
[00:00] Trentmøller - Nightwalker
[05:39] Tvardovsky - Warp (Navid Mehr 'Violet' Mix)
[12:16] Manu F, Daniel Gomez - Freyja
[19:05] 16 Bit Lolitas - Not the Only One
[24:18] Mehmet Akar, Murat Ustun - Koza
[31:15] Röyksopp - Sordid Affair (Maceo Plex Mix)
[37:39] HVOB - Azrael
[41:45] Cream (PL), Deep Fog - Kiki (Noraj Cue Remix)
[46:52] Quivver - Surin
[52:29] Daniel Dubb - Pound for Pound
[55:34] Fran Von Vie - Wake Me Up When Everything Has Changed
You know what? "Eighth" is a really wierd word to spell.
Actually, this one has been done since around the end of July. It's all Jann's fault I didn't put it out then.
This one has a bit of a different sound. I hope people like it. No Hybrid at all. None. It's actually kind of amazing. It's short, though. At 66 minutes exactly, it's the shortest one yet. That's a bit disappointing, but it's okay. It's okay because… well, because it has to be.
Still having some trouble with the mastering. Volume seems okay and reasonably consistent thanks to the plugin I started using (and could have been using all along — doh!) but I still can't quite get the mastering right. It sounds fine in my cheap headphones, but when I play it through the speakers or in my car, a lot of the interesting things going on in the bass don't quite come through. It's a little frustrating. I'm hoping it's just because of crappy speakers, but then I sort of expect that most people have something similar.
The title on this one has a bit of a story. A long, boring story that doesn't go anywhere, but ya know… Anyway, I usually don't have any particular title in mind while working. I might have a working title, but just as often, I don't. When I finally <strike>give up</strike> finish, I'll come up with some random idea, some seed. Maybe something I was thinking about while working on it, or some theme or tone I was trying for, or something that inspired it. Something along those kinds of lines. Then I start associating that idea with other ideas, and follow whatever connections I can come up with for a few steps so that the original idea is still there, but buried behind some less-obvious abstraction or association.
For this mix, I noticed that the website I typically buy from listed most of the tracks for this mix under some variation of "house". That's unusual. My picks are more usually in the trance, techno, breaks, or progressive genres. I think the character of the final cut reflects the unusual sources. It also makes me start to doubt the whole concept of genres, but that's a completely different tangent. Anyway, so I started with "house," thought of Doctor House, so how about something like The Doctor Is In? Well, that's okay, that could work. But that's kind of the expected state, isn't it? What if I flipped it, made it The Doctor Is Out instead? Okay, that's a little more interesting. There's just a hint of tension in it. Now we're getting somewhere. To take it one more step, I'm imagining something like an empty Tardis control room for cover art, or maybe a sort of collage of empty rooms where different kinds of doctors would typically be. Like, an empty exam room for a medical doctor, an empty office with a couch for a psychiatrist, an empty Tardis control room for The Doctor, an empty research lab for somebody in the sciences… you get the idea. That didn't completely suck, so for the last couple months, this mix was called The Doctor is Out.
Then Jann finds a picture she likes for the cover. I like it well enough, but I didn't think it fit with the title. She explains that she thinks the mix is more spacy and atmospheric than previous mixes, and thus a cover that's spacy and atmospheric. Okay, I buy that, but I can't help that it still doesn't quite fit with the title. Maybe the kid with the bike is looking out into space, looking for The Doctor, waiting for him to come back. Well, that's a bit more of a stretch. I'm not married to the title, though, so I start trying to come up with new title ideas, what else I could call it that also has those spacy an atmospheric qualities and, if I can manage it, still tows the "doctor" line so I can connect it back to "house". Then I remembered one of the earlier Matt Smith episodes of Doctor Who where The Doctor is trying to understand the significance of the number seven. He tries on several ideas to see what they make him think of and mentions that a cube has seven sides "if you count the inside". Well, if you count the inside, then why not count the outside? That makes eight.
So there it is, the Eighth Side of a cube: the outside. And it doubly works since this is the eighth mix. Boom. Mic drop. No, better go pick it up. It's just lying on the floor there, right in the middle of the room. It doesn't go there. I'll probably trip on it later. Or someone else will. It'll get broken. They're not cheap.
See? Long and... hey, where did everyone go? All two of you?