5 - Transcriptions Fast Trance Mix

Many years ago I used to tape a couple of radio stations that played dance, techno and other stuff. One was 4ZZZ, a Brisbane alternative free radio station, whose program Crucial Cuts introduced me to many new mixes and great tracks. I fondly remember hearing ‘Insomnia’ by Faithless three years before it ‘hit the charts’ commercially here. And the other was Triple J, the youth radio arm of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia’s advertising-free broadcaster. Triple J still broadcasts its Mix-Up program every saturday night, featuring local and international DJs and artists mixing it up for three hours.

As soon as I had a computer worthy of the task I started transcribing those tapes into the digital domain. I removed noise, tweaked a few EQ settings and generally tried to get back as much as possible from the tapes. And, of course, I started compressing those songs into MP3 files. For one day I would have some device that would allow me to play all those songs whenever I wanted. Furthermore, a computer worthy of the task of transcribing those tapes could also mix together my favourite tracks and sections of mixes into one (hopefully) seamless mix of pure listening enjoyment. So I took the MP3 files back to wave files and mixed them together – although some of the tracks were already mixed by the DJs playing them and were left in their original order.

So, as the astute would have realised, this mix is not an example of sterling fidelity at all. These tracks have been through as much audio mangling as they can take and still sound like the original piece. Likewise, in more than a few cases I have no idea what the name or artist is for a track – that’s the problem with not having access to the playlists. So those people that can recognise the tracks marked ‘Unknown’ and tell me what they are will be doing me a great favour. People who criticise me for the quality of the audio can climb the Eiffel Tower using their teeth alone.

But, after all that, the music is still the thing we want to hear, and that music is what I present to you. This is the ‘Fast Trance’ mix: it spans the faster BPM range of the tracks I picked and it’s a mixture of what I call trance and techno. This mix starts at around 140BPM and makes its way up to 172BPM.

Update – late 2017, a friend of mine managed to identify the second track, which was one I’d really really wanted to find. Thank you Jamie Bainbridge for finding Tokyo by Assign!

Completed 1 Jan 2001

Styles

• Trance
• Techno

Files

• 05 - Transcriptions Fast Trance Mix.mp3 - 128 kbps - 74.9 MB

Total play length: 01:22:37

Track listing

I welcome any suggestions, criticisms and recommendations for new music to listen to. I will consider doing specific mixes for people, but this is only a hobby. Hope to hear from you.