Christmas. It has come and gone without a peep from me on the site here. The new mix is coming along, but definitely not anywhere near as quickly as I had hoped. And definitely not quick enough to have been posted here before Christmas. So to be honest, it may be a while before it gets finished and posted. I think we can all agree the holidays are hectic, and I’ve had an especially, um, challenging one.

Stay tuned, there will be much more good stuff to come, but probably not until the Champagne’s been popped and the streamers and confetti have all settled.

No worries, 2010 is shaping up to the be a strong year for me.

UPDATE ::

Aw, shucks. Guilt got the best of me. I can’t let the year come to a close without giving you a little gift of some sort.  I offer up a little mix created in June of 2008. It’s mostly electro-house, with some 80′s remixes to start, some Wolfgang Gartner thrown in the middle, and some of the popular club anthems of that moment to round out the finish.

Head on over to the Mixes page. It’s at the bottom.

It’s quick, it’s loud, it’s fun. Just like I hope the end of the year is for everyone!

Happy New Year!

I’ve posted another mix on the Mixes page. While the tracks used may be dusty, this mix is near and dear to me.

Why?

Because it’s the first time I ever took a mix that I had recorded live from the decks and went to town afterwards with a scalpel.

Some DJ purists will tell you it’s a sin to fudge with the results of a session on the decks. They’ll tell you to leave well enough alone and deal with the imperfections of a live mix. I bought into that for a loooong time. And then I really listened to the material that well-known, established, popular, well-selling and well-represented DJ’s were offering.

Polished. Concise. Clean. Pristine. Exciting.

Those words describe the critically acclaimed works of Richard “Humpty” Vission and DJ Dan and many others. Those words are the hallmarks of expertise, sensibility, and appeal.

I was a fool.

I originally recorded this mix straight from the decks and it clocked in at an obese and bloated 2 and a half hours. I went around the day after recording the original and handed people the first 80 raw minutes of the mix; unedited. The reception was underwhelmingly lackluster. Back to the drawing board.

After going through the process of teaching myself how to edit out portions of audio that were poorly developed, unnecessary, redundant, boring, sloppy, etc…I did what was necessary. I opened the source file up in Cool Edit, now known as Audition, and I hacked the ever-living crap out of it. It was painful at first…to lose, no, destroy parts of your baby. To hack out motionless sections of transitions that you had rehearsed for hours. To surgically remove unexciting breakdowns that went on for just a bit too long. To tidy up your mistakes. To…wait a minute. This shit sounds GOOD.

It’s clean. It’s polished, pristine, and concise. My GOD….it’s exciting!

I returned to the same people I had given the originals to. This time it was a different mix. It was a scant 63 minutes.

They loved it.

It was a breakthrough for me. It was everything I wanted my mixes to be, and not to be. Mortal sin? Hardly. I did myself a favor. I did my listeners a favor. Besides, who in the hell has 150 minutes of their life to dedicate to a musical jalopy anyway? I put the jalopy back in the garage and took the Z06 for a spin.

Listen up. Listen closely. See if you can hear what you’re missing. I can’t. And I continue to apply a little “Audition Love” to all my mixes.

To all the “purists”: Sue me.

I’m motivated as hell. It’s been over 6 months since I sat down a really pounded out an honest mix. I’ve been resting on the laurels of my work from this past summer.

I’m very happy with that mix. It’s a solid, fun, and appealing mix. It’s designed to be liked by a lot of people. I’m confident that it is. But I have a confession:

I’ve been lazy.

There, I said it. No more resting. No more coasting. No more hoping people like material that was cool 6 months ago.

You all deserve better.

So far…making appearances on the upcoming mix: MGMT by way of Sebastian Ingrosso, Fatboy Slim by way of Mixin Marc, Miami and Atlanta by way of Eric Prydz, Will.I.Am and Akon by way of David Guetta (pronounced Get-uh, not Gwet-uh…FYI), and all sorts of hand-clappin’, foot-poundin’, singin’-along-in-your-car goodness.

It’s in the works. And it’s strapped to missile called motivation.

And it’s going to be posted here for you. To download. For free.

Merry Christmas! =]

As promised, I will continue to add content to this site. The main focus here will always be music, both my own and the music I think is worth sharing with the world. I’ve added an additional handful of my own mixes from the archive to the mixes page.

Go to :: Mixes

That DJ Music Blog – House, Fidget, Techno, Minimal, Dirty and Filthy Electro » Hansolo in the Mix & Promo.

WICKED Mix from That-Dj.com. Do yourself a favor and download!

Visit the “Mixes” page for the first mix added to the blog. It’s a selection of the summer’s best electro-house tunes.