downtempo, dj mix AbstractRadio
abstractradio session forty nine - july 2022

A BRIEF WORD FROM THE MANAGEMENT..

For the sake of clarity, here's a brief breakdown of the AbRad Session process:
As we hear tunes, we file them away for upcoming sessions [if they're deemed worthy, of course].
While some tunes are brand-spanking new, others we've heard countless times before, but they've recently managed to catch our ear once again.
To avoid undue complication, there's loads of different boxes, covering a host of different genres... "House", "Funk", "Nosebleed", "Chill", "Weird shit" etc etc.
Everything usually has its place [though there's a fair amount of cross-over].

One such box is simply called: "Well, that's really rather good."
From a huge range of musical genres, from almost any era, this little box gets all the "good stuff", and just the "good stuff".
You can't miss it - it's fluorescent day-glo pink, and sits pride of place in the studio, lodged between the marble bust of Tony Humphries and the gold-plated Roland TR-808.
As we're quite discerning, it takes a fair while to fill this particular box with enough tracks to build a mix - at least couple of years, often longer.
Once "full", we hand it over to our plucky elves, and they scuttle off with it down into the vaults beneath AbRad Towers, set with the tricky task of turning a ragamuffin selection of disparate tunes into a viable, transcendent musical "journey".
They must use all the tunes in the box.
They must not use any other tunes! [this makes things tricky, but from Session One these have been the AbRad rules.]

Clearly, these are not "live" mixes.
[NB: AbstractRadio has yet to post a "live" mix online... if you would like to hear us live ... well, that's an entirely different matter altogether - get in touch?]
In a "live" environment, DJs should invariably be playing from a large selection of tunes, allowing them to constantly adapt to the needs and mood of the crowd [well, that's part of what we hope to do], whereas for these AbRad sessions our dedicated elves are not granted such flexibility, and must laboriously piece together a composite whole that is intended to be greater than its pre-defined and consequently somewhat restrictive parts.

So, in actuality, these sessions are the diametric opposite of "live" mixes - they are highly contrived studio mixes, where there is a very stringent and often annoyingly incongruous playlist.

We've been led to believe that this is actually no easy feat to accomplish - the elves whinge that tracks "don't fit", and often need remixing, which takes time, effort and inspiration, and sometimes, when a mix is "nearly done", they then feel an overwhelming compulsion to start again from scratch, as [they insist] one track "still isn't quite working".
Sadly, they have only a limited understanding of the concept of "deadlines".
And yes, it can be most frustrating.

But, you know, it's worth it...

Love and hummingbirds,

x

The AbRad team

ps - many thanks to the fabulous @lathamjane for Blue Sky

File under: soul, disco, funk, jazz, hip-hop, dub, blues, latin, lounge, breakbeat, house, rap, trip-hop, chill, ambient techno, gospel, wtf