50.1 - The Top Thirty

Having to choose is sometimes a very difficult thing.

A conversation between some friends of mine at work resulted in the question “What are your favourite tracks of all time?” I’d covered this in a blog post a number of months before this question was asked, but this was focussing more on electronic music, and what we really got a kick out of rather than what inspired us or meant something special.

Ben and Tim got their top ten together pretty quickly, and Ben in particular had some crackers that I hadn’t heard of before – which was the point of the exercise. But for me it was much more difficult – after narrowing it down to fifty, choosing the best out of those already memorable classics was like pulling teeth. Finally I settled on thirty – ten ‘classic trance’, ten ‘modern trance’ and ten ‘miscellaneous’ – drum and bass, psy trance, and classic electronic music.

Of course, the next thing to do was to put these together in a mix. And this too was difficult – like my Tracked It Down mix, I didn’t have as much free rein to choose tracks that would be in the same key. To make it worse, I went from 120BPM to 176BPM, and I while I could get away with BPM changes of around five BPM difference in previous mixes, 40BPM was going to be painfully obvious.

So I progressed on this labour of love, enjoying every minute of the challenge. And I discovered wonderful things, like the fact that the Fluke remix of “The First” blends perfectly with “Epicentre”, with no BPM changes at all, despite them being listed as over 40BPM different. Or that “Your Whole Life” blends perfectly with “Bulky Hero”, two huge favourites. It was a really great thing.

Completed 19 Oct 2009

Styles

Files

50 - The Top Thirty.mp3 - 160 kbps - 189.3 MB
50 - The Top Thirty.ogg - 160 kbps - 209.0 MB

Total play length: 02:59:55

Track listing

Track	Artist	Title	Remix	BPM	Length
1	Jean Michel Jarre	Oxygene 2		115.90	07:41
2	Pryda	Shadows		125.50	09:33
3	Airwave	Ubiquity		127.00	08:31
4	Boom Jinx	Come Play Perfect		130.00	10:20
5	JPL	Your Whole Life (Ljungqvist Always Lives Remix		130.00	07:31
6	Sonic Division	Bulky Hero		132.00	06:05
7	The Green Martian	Industry		135.00	05:17
8	Way Out West	Domination		135.90	08:38
9	Severed Heads	Dead Eyes Opened	Original Mix	132.20	06:30
10	Man With No Name	Vavoom!		136.00	07:10
11	Push	Tranzy State Of Mind 2002	Club Mix	138.00	07:30
12	Art of Trance	Madagascar	Ferry Corsten remix	137.00	05:55
13	Moxa	Dreamcatcher	Firestorm Remix	137.00	08:38
14	Exposure	Magic Impuls	Original Mix	138.00	09:47
15	Galen Behr vs. Hydroid	Shift Of The Ages		138.00	08:00
16	Quench	Dreams		136.00	06:08
17	Solar Factor	No Return	Original mix	137.00	07:21
18	Rah	Wave		139.00	09:03
19	John Askew	Chime		140.00	09:50
20	Itch-e & Scratch-e	Sweetness and Light	Sound & Suthers at the Controls	140.00	05:32
21	Sasha Da Link	Meteor (Natlife Somewhere In The Sky Remix)		140.00	10:21
22	Albert Vorne	A Leaden Day	M.I.K.E. Remix	140.00	07:34
23	Transwave	Vision Quest		141.90	05:42
24	White Overtone Wizard	Maya		147.00	09:09
25	Josh Abrahams	We Mess with Your Head		142.50	07:03
26	Sola Nova	A Visit To The Planetarium	Mannheim Mix	149.00	07:33
27	beXta	Rhythm Gun		172.20	05:41
28	Josh Abrahams	Addicted To Bass	Original Version	165.00	03:54
29	X-Dream	The 1st	Fluke Remix	179.90	07:08
30	Carbon Based Lifeforms	Epicentre	First Movement	106.40	05:57

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.