This is my first post in “Picks from the crate” series. I’m picking up meaningful, old, rare, fresh and interesting CDs, mixtapes and vinyls from my record collection and ranting about them. Unlike in today’s digital music collection, I feel like there are 1000 stories in my record shelf, waiting to be told. Let this be the first one.

I bought this double mixCD while visiting some club event held in Tampere-Talo in 2001. I had just moved to Rovaniemi and thought a piece of my previous hometown in a form of two CDs wouldn’t do any harm. What I got, is pure awesomeness still today.

I guess everyone remembers Kim (or KimiK) as a house jock, but in the around the beginning of the new millennium many DJs in Tampere had sort of a identity crisis. Infekto tried a new alias “Rec”, many techno DJs went into hard house, trance DJs got bored and started playing “more interesting” progressive music (Stephanie K & Creamer, anyone? ;) and also KimiK went into new grounds – towards more melodic and trancey sound.

Nevertheless, this must be his best mixtape, including the most amazing progressive and trancey house tunes of the early 00’s. There’s Starecase, Hybrid, BT, Ashtrax, Cass&Slide, Maurice’s Feline, Stakker’s Humanoid, Max Graham’s Airtight etc etc… I guess anyone who lived through the 1999-2001 electronic music hype in Tampere shouldn’t miss this. Anyone else still having this in the shelf?

(A cool detail – in the inner sleeve there’s a note “Mixed live at the Kaleva Cathouse with Tamperefiilis(tm)” ;)

Check the full tracklist below.