Right click image or here and ‘save as’ to download ‘On The Edge’

Ever been to a hardhouse night, arrived at 11.30pm and been greeted by 160bpm hoover monsters, or nonsense hardstyle and thought ‘this is far too hard / fast for this time’? I have – as a DJ you get a real sinking feeling when you are due to be playing at 1am, you arrive at 12 to see an empty dancefloor, a busy bar and the DJ rinsing out their hardest tunes – you know that your first 30-45 minutes will be spent trying to repair the damage done and get the dancefloor grooving. The DJ that is on first has a very important role to play in the overall night – the warmup.

For me, the clue is in the name ‘warm’ing up. Nightclubs are not a sprint, they’re a marathon of around minimum 4 hours duration, sometimes 10 or 12 hours. Now I know that there is a hardcore of people who only want the hardest and fastest of music in the club, but if you want to take everyone with you then I believe you need to tease and cajole people away from the bar and on to the dancefloor. Most people who are arriving will have been in a bar or two in town, where the DJs will almost certainly have been playing some kind of house music – there’s not many bars that thrash out hardhouse at 9pm – and for everyone but the hardcore suddenly finding yourself assaulted by machine-gun beats and harsh synths can be fairly disorienting. It’s the job of the warmup DJ to provide a musical path that everyone can follow, which ultimately leads to the hard stuff but doesn’t scare anyone off along the way!

I used to enjoy playing warmup sets during the hardhouse heyday – it gave me a chance to play many different styles within a short space of time, throwing in some funky stuff, a bit of camp hardbag, a bit of bounce and one or two tracks that hinted at the craziness to come later, but not quite being ‘there’ – just on the edge. Hence the title of this mix, which is 60 minutes that goes from the camp to the bouncy via the chuggy and dark. There’s no big ‘payoff’ as with most of my hard mixes, but I think that even non hardhouse heads could get into it. Let me know what you think.

Right click here and ‘save as’ to download ‘On The Edge’

Tracks:

1. Raindrops – Mario Scalambrin feat. Satori
2. You Should Be Dancin’ (Karim Remix) – Bee Gees
3. Distant Stab – The Freak and Mac Zimms
4. Show Me Love (ShutYourFaceDub) – The Fruitloop
5. Have A Good Time – The Alien Thing
6. Let The Rhythm Flow (Club Mix) – Dancing Divaz
7. Rock Your Enemies (Sister Suck Remix) – Cadenza
8. Funky Monkey – Mark Kavanagh
9. Cagey Groove  – The KGB
10. House Music (In My Brain) – Mark NRG
11. Show Me Love – The Fruitloop
12. Coca & Havana – Gigi D’Agostino
13. Turn That Fucking Music Up  – The Knuckleheads
14. God The Devil (Brain Bashers Remix) – BK

Right click here and ‘save as’ to download ‘On The Edge’