Before DFA was really a thing, James asked Marcus Shit Robot to record some of his favorite techno tracks for Juan MacLean, who was still finding his way out of the nineties indie morass. In lieu of a compilation or traditional mix tape, Marcus woke up one morning, turned on the MiniDisc (!) recorder, and just started mixing records in his Ludlow St. living room. What was meant to be a casual and ruff mix for friends of course became a formative early DFA text for those that had it.

“Cold Skool 4 Juan” was burned to two CD-Rs from the original MiniDisc. Juan’s was lost some time later, but we managed to find the other hiding in plain sight in a Case Logic booklet amongst a bunch of other important things. (It was a time.)

On the eve of another special James and Marcus B2B set at Good Room, what better time than now to run this back.

Shit Robot - Cold Skool For Juan

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Coral bass strings

Etiopisk hallucination

Buy vinyl + digital: lnk.to/stickydisc

Eric Broucek was the ur-engineer of the most fertile era of DFA Studios, from about 2003 to 2008 (no one knows anything precisely about that time, as it’s all lost in the fog of chaos). His hand was on all of the remixes, LPs, dance 12s. He was there in that over-designed gear dungeon almost every day, recording, mixing, struggling to not roll his eyes at Tim and me. And somewhere in that fog, he quietly dropped limited runs of three 12-inch delayed reaction bombs on his own label Stickydisc Recordings—two under the name Babytalk, and one as Watussi with another DFA regular, Morgan Wiley.

Back in the day, Eric did not want his music released on DFA. He wanted to forge his own identity, which he did, sending out music that wandered from the DFA path with its uniquely wonky, upended and understated power. His music is so unlike everything else of that era, so profoundly singular, that it still sounds completely out of time.

A few years back, I started DJing the tracks again, and saw how the world was still surprised by what Eric had made, and the idea of this compilation was born.

So, in the end, Eric, we totally got to release your records anyway. We heart you, man.

-James Murphy

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Babytalk - Keep On Move (Original Mix)

Babytalk - Enough

Space Is The Bass - the LORD
Lost Bliss - Chris & Cosey
Region Of Fleeing Civilians - Craig Leon
Ratnemmok - Amor Fati edit
New Age - Chrome
Tease - Berserk In A Hayfield
Five Faces - Linear Movement
Deprimido - Grado 33
Nuclear Sí - Aviador Dro
À Qui Sont Ces Fleurs? - Galatée
Romantic Me - Polyrock
Hello/Goodbye - Modern Art
Ghost Trains - Chris Carter
Synapse - Linea Aspera

"This mix comes from my sets warming up for LCD Soundsystem. When on tour I might do four to eight shows in a run and I like to try to make each show different and not play the same set every night. Sometimes I play to the crowd, sometimes I play for myself but often times the band will have the audio piped into the dressing rooms and this set comes from specifically playing to them. I’ve played a few different versions of this set, but anytime I played a synth/coldwave set I always got a great response from the band so I wanted to record something to remember before I moved on." -Marcus

Robot Wave Mix

Buy vinyl + digital: lnk.to/lcdhome

It wasn’t really hiding, just sitting quietly online. But Tom Sharkett’s edit of “Home” was too good to ignore. Originally a bootleg we first heard played on Flo Dill’s Breakfast Show on NTS, it wormed its way into our hearts and never left. So we made it official. Sometimes the internet actually makes your life better.

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Home (Tom Sharkett Edit)

Visiting Dust Bunnies

Everyone's favorite tito & tita. 

Nikki Paqueo: drums & vox
Chino Jose: bass & vox


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