The curse of missing tapes

Anyone got this tape set floating about?  I have the cover but the tapes are long lost.  Would love to rip and post....

Two sides of Nik Fish

So my tape player is most definitely on the blink, which makes ripping kind of difficult.  Luckily, I have a few goodies on CD and other media from which to post while I get on top of the situation.  If anyone happens to be handy with that sort of thing, please feel free to get in touch...

This 1997 "mixed cd in twp parts" (oh, how I love Rave spelling!) from Nik Fish is perhaps one of his lesser known mixes.  Divided into two tape-like 'sides' it gives us a trance mix and a hard house mix, providing a real window into what was happening at the moment where - save for some notable exceptions - the big parties completed their move out of the warehouses and into the clubs. 

Download Nik Fish - Underwater Mixes Part I
Download Nik Fish - Underwater Mixes Part II

fOd4 - EPIC

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.

Download Paul Holden's fOd4 gee-up Side A
Download Paul Holden's fOd4 gee-up Side B


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.

Download Dynamix's fOd4 set here

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....