Dubspot Podcast 033: Endo (NYC) – Exclusive Mix

Dubspot instructor Mike Henderson a.k.a. Endo offers an exclusive podcast mix to kick off Labor Day weekend with some superb envelope-pushing tracks mixed with his special Harmonic Mixing method and spanning multiple genres with non stop musical flow.

For this podcast mix, I picked some of my most musical tracks that I think are pushing the envelope and mixed them with my special method of Harmonic Mixing using iTunes smart playlists to help me find songs in compatible keys and modulating keys quickly so there is a constant non stop musical flow and harmonic progressions throughout the mix. Throughout the entire mix you are usually hearing at least 2-3 tracks at the same time, blended harmonically and I’m using Traktor to remix them live. The order of the tracks were not planned in advance. I picked these songs out all live and on the fly using my harmonic mixing system to make sort of a Harmonic Medley of all of my favorite new and old tracks. Each track in the mix is special to me in its own way, which I’ll explain.

As far as the tracks in the mix go, I started the mix with a Maceo Plex of Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians.” For those of you who don’t know, Steve Reich was a musician who pioneered minimal music in the mid to late 1960′s. Music for 18 Musicians was one of his minimal compositions that was made with 18 musicians but uses a lot of doubling which minimal music was famous for. Maceo Plex did a great remix of this, so I thought it was only proper to open the mix with this. The second track by Argy and Bajka is one of my favorites and was a huge track for me when I was in Tulum and BPM Festival. After this I brought in an unreleased edit of Dennis Ferrer’s track Timbuktu which was also a track that was huge for me at BPM Festival and Tulum. After that, I went into Chaim’s “Orion Skies” on Supplement Facts which is one of my favorite labels. I Have some great memories with this song, especially at WMC in Miami this year.

With Orion Skies, I then modulated into one of my favorite tracks at the moment Jess Mills Pixelated People, which was one of my closing songs at Club Vertigo in Costa Rica and has very special memories to me and my New York crew of friends and Sasha crew. After Pixelated People I went into a new track on my favorite label Innervisions called Gotham by Ten Walls. This track has been huge in Ibiza and all over the world this summer, as was the track that followed, Tale of Us – Another Earth on Richie Hawtin’s Minus Label. To keep the musical theme, I went into a remix of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata FTC – Noom. This track was one of THE tracks of Burning Man last year, and was made big by Thugfuckers set at the Robot Heart Bus. After that I went into a little bootleg of the Doors – People Are Strange by Adana Twins. I actually remember when picking the songs for this section of the mix I did a search for “Twisted” , and this is what happened for the next few songs. We got Twisted!

Following the doors remix, I went into a deep twisted Ame Remix of Howling on Innervisions, one of my favorite tracks of 2013. I transitioned into the next chapter of the mix using a couple of versions of Guy Gerbers The Mirror Game. This is a lovely track and works great for transitioning since there are no vocals. I then went into the Sasha Remix of “Turn the Tide” which is on his new Album Involver. You can watch the interview Sasha did for Involver on the Dubspot Youtube. This and his other song “Battleships” were my two favorites on the Album and both of them made this mix! Following “Turn the Tide”, I went into “Mind Against – Oracle” which is another huge track right now on the Life and Death label which are making waves musically in dance music. This whole release was tops! Underneath Oracle you can hear a funny little vocal speech about relationships. From there, I went into “The Island”, which is on Sasha’s new label Last Night On earth. This track was on repeat for me in Ibiza and had a lot of special meaning to me and makes me think of Ibiza and Es Vedra. From the Island I took a hard left turn in my mix and went into a new track from one of my favorite electronica groups of all time, Shpongle. They just put out a new album and I had to sneak one of their songs in because they are really putting out some of the best electronic music on this planet. I kept the mix deep and trippy for a while, dropping in a Butch track on Desolat and Uner’s remix of Snowcone. After that I went into a vinyl only Maceo Plex bootleg of Depeche Mode.

To close out the mix I then went into one of my favorite tracks, Capricorn – 20 Hz which has a monster snare drum solo. For those who don’t know Snare Drum was my principle instrument at Berklee College of Music so I always love big snare drum solos! From there, I went into Bonobo – Circus and closed with a Phil Collins Remix of “In The Air Tonight.” I always like to close with tracks out of left field.

So as you can see each track has special meaning and the mix tells a story from beginning to end.

After recording a mix I do an extra step, which I call “mastering” my DJ Mix. In this process I make sometimes hundreds of markers in the mix where I’m doing transitions into new tracks and basically go through each song and make each song or section as loud as it can be without distorting, while keeping a consistent volume level between each track. I am very particular about the way my mixes sound so I don’t use Ableton or Logic to finalize my mix since I’ve found it changes the audio quality doing that extra step of processing. I also don’t use compressors or limiters since that also changes the sound of the mix. I keep the mix unprocessed for the most part except for boosting the gains. You can see in the picture below what the mix looks like with the markers, and then what the final product looks like after each track has been edited for gain. Notice how the tracks are all the same volume, but the dynamics are kept while also making the tracks as loud as they can be.

Tracklist:

/files/2013/08/Endo_Podcast-_2.jpg