Chief of the undercover cross over jam, the humble downtempo don and Rhapsodise head honcho @daniel_pisano adds his own slice of paradise to the series, with a dance focussed blend of beachside 90s breezers dusted off and smuggled from their mysterious cyber caves. Cruise control >> on! 

Q. Hey Daniel, what inspiration did you draw upon when putting this mix together? Is there a sound, feeling, or time/place in dance music history that connects all the different elements in one way or another?

A. The mix is inspired by my love of 90s dance music. As with most of my mixes, the records used are exclusively from this era, or at least draw inspirations from it. The sounds I like from this era tend to have a similar feel to them - breakbeaty, progressive and always with a touch of balearic energy. I haven’t recorded a dance-floor mix for a couple of years so it was fun putting this together with some of my favourite records and CDs I’ve collected since then.

Q. Are there any records in the mix that are especially close to your heart, or new or old favourites that you’ve been keeping up your sleeve for the right moment?

A. The first track I used in the mix is from a remix CD by Australian electronic music project ‘Kiva’. I went blind on their self-titled album last year and soon realised how good all of their other CDs were. I think I had naturally been drawn to look for music from the UK, Europe and the US and around this time I started researching a lot more into local artists. My appreciation for home grown electronic music definitely started to shift, which you could see in mixes and uploads to my YT channel.

Q. We’re big fans of your Rhapsodise YT channel over here, with some extraordinary finds being uploaded frequently over there by your good self! Tell us a bit more about that project and how you go about curating it, and what characteristics might you be looking for when deciding what tunes to share?

A. Thanks so much for the kind words :) The project was inspired by the other channels in the community that upload amazing finds. Internationally I was always blown away by No Frills, Customs, oddSample, Modern Art and local friends such as Mike Who, Daniel Lupica and Mirren. In terms of curation, I really just upload things that I enjoy that haven’t yet hit YouTube. Most of these uploads form part of mixes that I put together so the uploads I find are generally similar in style to the mix I’m preparing at the time. I’ve recently moved to London, so hopefully there’s some new uploads in the coming months!

MDC.288 Daniel Pisano

NYC Darlings #3 (Continuous Mix)

Nicely nestled amongst Sammy Dee, Moopie & Magda Bytnerowicz, I was asked to replace Grandmaster Zip (Perlon) for the party hosted by Lifeworld & Spincycle. I warmed up for Sammy Dee, and this is what that sounded like.

Live @ the party

The breezy sound of the Canadian Riviera, from Mood Hut's Pender Street Steppers.  
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/pender-street-steppers/episodes/pender-street-steppers-29th-april-2025

Pender Street Steppers 290425

30 mins of this set is missing due to a recording mishap. remember to check out the whole playlist. to relive the entire night full of amazing music 
https://on.soundcloud.com/i6Nw96DsY34oSgtK9

Pender Street Steppers - Weirdos Bush Rave Vol 3

| LIVE FROM HIGH NOTE | w/ Myles Mac & DJ Possum

Apiento, a.k.a Paul Byrne runs the invaluable Test Pressing blog and releases music on World Building, World Unknown and more. His show has that esoteric techno thing and whatever suits the mood…
 
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/test-pressing/episodes/test-pressing-31st-may-2025

Test Pressing 310525

https://soundcloud.com/hans-nieswandt
https://soundcloud.com/finn_johannsen
https://soundcloud.com/palomabar

2025-06-21 Live At Power House (Hans Nieswandt, Finn Johannsen)

Forbidden Fruit X Pick Up The Phone

JD Twitch is a true musical magpie. Over his long and storied career the Scot has been responsible for seminal Glasgow party Optimo alongside Jonnie Wilkes, has put out post punk compilations, done trance mixes, run various different labels (from Autonomous Africa to Optimo Music) and is a famously skilled and eclectic DJ who has headlined all over the world. He has done a fabric CD and a compilation for R&S, produces with Dave Clark as Optimo (Espacio) as well as solo under a wide range of aliases. As such he is a veritable mine of musical knowledge and a real pillar of the underground scene. For his Dekmantel podcast he has delivered us something, as you would expect, rather special.

“It's a mix of all Dutch dance tracks from the very early 90s,” he says. “It features a handful of well known classics but lots of forgotten gems and these were all records I played incessantly in very sweaty raves at that time, so a few of the records are a little scratchy, dusty, worn down. I wanted to do this mix as I was mad about Dutch records back then and I think Holland produced so much amazing music during this period and had a very distinctive, unique sound and perhaps a lot of people today don't know it was one of the pioneering nations of house and techno. The club I did back then, Pure, brought over a lot of dutch artists to play in the early 90s - Dimitri (many, many times), Eddie de de Clercq, Marcello, Random XS, Terrace, Miss Djax, Unit Moebius, Orlando Voorn, Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia and Acid Junkies to name a few.  Lastly, I think the records from back then still sound great today!” Tune in and you will surely agree. 

Dekmantel Podcast 038 - JD Twitch (Optimo)

** Part 1 now available from here - http://soundcloud.com/alexchase/ohm-dedication-series-2-jd **

For my ears, Adrian Sherwood is the most sonically innovative producer the UK has ever given birth to. If you don't know anything about Mr. Sherwood or his ON U Sound label, either do a bit of Googling, have a listen to this mix or read this interview I was fortunate enough to conduct a couple of months ago (when he was in Glasgow) that is on the Racket Racket website - http://racketracket.co.uk/music/jd-twitch-meets-adrian-sherwood/

This mix covers music from the years 1979 - 88 and focuses on Adrian Sherwood's dubwise productions, most of which were released on his ON U Sound label (a great overview of the label can be found here - http://www.skysaw.org/onu/)

The mix is DUB in the widest (and wildest) sense of that word and veers from beautiful, heart-melting songs to cavernously deep, hard bass pulsations to the odd bit of brain melting sonic radicalism. To this day I don't think any other producer has pushed the envelope so hard which is partly down to a general lack of balls on the part of other producers and partly due to the fact that these productions were all recorded to tape and mixed on a desk with 100% outboard gear, so that pushing the tape way beyond its intended limits forms a large part of the character of the sound. His totally deranged dub techniques are perhaps a little more prevalent on part 1 (see below) of this podcast while this part is in the main more of a continuous heart throb with odd moments of sonic destruction, offering a masterclass in dub mixing techniques many of which Adrian Sherwood pioneered.

In my late teens and early 20s, Adrian Sherwood's work impacted on me more than anything I had previously heard and made me think about sonic possibilities in a completely new way. I would buy any record he had been involved with unheard and got into a lot of other artists purely because he had been involved with making their records. Indeed, my nom de plume "Twitch" came from a record he produced and our Optimo slogan "We Love Your Ears" came from the sleeve of a record he remixed. I hadn't listened to a lot of these records for many, many years and fell in love with them all over again while putting this together. It was a complete labour of love to do and a revelation to hear how fresh and wild this music still sounds.

The tracks are mostly mixed together but this podcast really isn't about my mixing at all - it's all about the 25 sonic missives included on it (several of the tracks are different versions of the same rhythm edited together). All the tracks were taken from vinyl so any unintended sonic imperfections are a result of the source records having been played countless times in the past.

This is part 2 of this podcast. Part 1 which focuses on his more electronic wild side (Tackhead, Fats Comet, Keith LeBlanc etc.) is now available here - http://soundcloud.com/alexchase/ohm-dedication-series-2-jd
Should you so desire, the 2 podcasts can be synced together to provide one continuous mix of around 3 and a half hours.

As usual we aren't making a track listing available for the podcast, simply because we feel that knowing the contents often precludes actually listening to it. But, if you want to know what anything is, feel free to get in touch and I will let you know. The mix is a 320kbps mp3 (230mb) and is 101 minutes long.

NYC Darlings #3 (Continuous Mix)

Pal Joey

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