I haven't come across this one before. Massive thanks to Monty who posted this a couple of weeks ago on our Facebook page. Of course, the files were hosted on Megaupload, so now that's gone I've moved them over to the Archive's Mediafire account.
I didn't go to Prodigy 4; it was a shade before my time. But for me this is just the sort of tape that was passed around and copied by friend after friend after friend. What can I say, though. This would have been a cracking good set to see live.
Thanks for sharing, Monte!
Plug: Pee Wee is also performing an "early 90s rave" set at Green Beats, this Australia Day, alongside some cracking "current" DJs and live acts. No idea what "flavour" rave he'll play but I'm rather excited! Also of oldskool interest are Tactical Aspect, two junglists from a parallel universe where '93/'94 jungle never morphed into drum & bass. Well worth checking!
So next on my list of rips was meant to be Jasper's blindingly good Mercury Mixes, but I've been beaten to it by Spectrum on ITM. Cracking tapes these are, and well worth the download. When I listen back to trance like this, it really does make me wonder what happened.
Part 1 is especially good. It's taken from a time when trance really began to establish itself as not just a genre but a force within dance music. The raw trance from the early 90's is spit-polished with shiny, new production values but the template of what makes trance "trance" is still not quite set. As such you get a varied set, each track experimenting with the palette in its own little way.
You can tell trance has developed that little bit more by the time Part 2 rolls around. While following a similar path to Part 1, there are definitely parts that are identifiable as one of the many genres that splintered-off around the time - psy-, hard-, techy or whatever.
Field of Dreams 4. Quite possibly the peak of my raving career. Having missed the legendary FoD3 a year-and-a-bit beforehand, my posse and I were determined not to miss this one. And we were determined to make it a HUGE one. Extra shifts were taken at work, nights out for months beforehand cancelled to save as much money as possible. For a good eight weeks, the entire focus of life was preparing for this party. (Sadly, not for my HSC just a few weeks later.)
This Paul Holden tape, released a few weeks before the party, played a massive part in the pre-fOd gee-up, along with a staggering number of trinkets: stickers, keyrings, massive and elaborate flyers and posters... The ticket itself came in its own crisp white envelope filled with all sorts details about the fun you were going to have on the night, thick with the hippy-ish buzzwords of the day. ("Energy", "Experience", blah-di-blah. They all started with the same letter. Clever, huh?)
Paul Holden's mix indicates the direction of his (count'em) two mainroom sets that evening. UK-style bouncy happy-hard is the order of the day here, peppered with a little breakbeat. (Breakbeat? Just keep moving, junglists, this ain't your thing.) This tape also holds the dubious honour of introducing me to Dune's "Can't Stop Raving"....although, facing facts, I really quite enjoyed it at the time.
The night itself was a total blur. It was undoubtedly epic, but it just went by so fast, especially given the months of excitement leading up to it. My memories just don't seem to do it justice. The video above shows what was meant to be the peak of the night but the energy and scale of the evening is well and truly lost. The full video is online here and goes a little further towards revisiting the vibe.
To say I clearly remember Dynamix's set would be something akin to an outright lie. He played around 4 or 5am and my night was well and truly in the midst of 'blur' territory. Nevertheless, I eagerly picked up the tape to "relive" the experience the moment it was released. And it's a pretty darn fine example of hard-house-slash-hard-trance as it was at the time. There's a whole bunch of killer tracks here like "Rock tha House", "Higher State of Consciousness" and X-Cabs' "Neuro". It seems to sum up the kind of music that was playing around that point of the night and for the most part still has me happily bopping along today.
Got any more memories of the night you can use to help me fill in the blanks? Are there any more Field of Dreams 4 sets in existence? Leave a comment below....
This page exists, hopefully, to motivate me to digitise my collection of DJ tapes collected around the traps in Sydney between 1993 and 1999, and also to serve as a sharing point for friends and strangers alike who were part of those heady days.
The focus is on music that was big for me in the 90's. Earlier tapes will predominantly feature rave, hardcore and happy hardcore, morphing later into house, techno, trance and a little trip hop. Well, that's the plan. We'll see how we go, eh?
