It was early internet era (at least for the Finnish techno scene) as I found this record. DJ Coma is Tampere had his official website on legendary spacecafe.fi domain (R.I.P.) and had listed his TOP 10 tracks there. Of course there was no way of listening those tracks, the golden era of mp3s was still ahead, but I remember spotting his #1 track, Atlantis – Fiji.
It was a weekend or two later when I heard him playing the tune and recognized it by the vocal. It took me around two months to hunt down a vinyl copy of it (boy, have we gotten impatient during the internet era – what was the last tune you tried to find for two months?) and it’s still one of my personal gems in the vinyl collection. And it still has the late 90′s Tampere-vibe in it :)

Funny detail – 1-2 years earlier Paul Oakenfold was hammering a tune called “Kelly & Lee – Only You“, which samples the same tune as Atlantis track and was a big big Oakie-hit. I can’t find that on Discogs neither for sale anywhere – let me know if you find/have it – I would definitely be interesting in buying one copy.
Anyway, it would be nice to know if that Atlantis track was made on purpose using “that Oakie-sample” knowing it could be an instant hit…

Also – do not mix this up with later rip-off “Atlantis vs. Avatar – Fiji” or especially Lange remix, which did the same to Fiji as Tiesto did to Delerium’s Silence. *brrrr*
Below is a Youtube link to original version.

Any thoughts of this record? Share them in the comments. See also the previous posts in “Picks from the crate” series.

YouTube video.

Mauro Picotto – Hong Kong (2002)

In the beginning of the new millennium, when the BPMs were a lot higher, I hunted down this record. It’s a collection of Mauro Picotto’s previously unreleased tunes – called The Others (fans of Lost here, anyone? ;). Most of the tracks aren’t that special, but one of them stands out. Hong Kong is an energetic techno track, which grows and grows – and after an effect-driven breakdown it drops to proper industrial-distorted-90s-techno. The drop is ridiculously cool – this track was definitely done with tongue-in-cheek.
Those days, I used this numerous times as an encore track because of the good melodic intro & outro. Would be a worth of a spin still today, wouldn’t it?

Any thoughts of this record? Share them in the comments. See also the previous posts in “Picks from the crate” series.

Youtube video.

Joey Beltram – Arena

I clearly remember getting this record. It was my first purchase from Turku-based Mind Records, the package also included a sought-after Dave Clarke’s Red 1, but despite Red 1′s classic status this one really stood out.

I really don’t know how I ended up picking up just this tune among (more…)

Today’s crate pick is one of my earliest influences, a long player that still amazes me today, Sven Väth‘s second album The Harlequin – The Robot and the Ballet-Dancer. I can’t remember where I heard this for the first time, but I had a copied C-cassette for four years until I bought a CD copy in 1998 in Essen, Germany for 29.99DM.

Released on Eye-Q in 1994, you can’t help hearing both Sven’s interest in early German trance sound and producer Ralf Hildenbeutel’s influence on the recording process. The booklet has a rather funny computer generated pics of Sven (see below) as well as a weird quote by Erasmus, which can also be heard on the intro track of the record.

But what hit me most when I first heard the LP through was the ending. Ballet-series, a 16 minute journey from Ballet-Romance’s string sections to acid sounds of Ballet-Fusion and finally to chill-out rhythms of Ballet-Dancer must be the first truly epic trance track I’ve ever heard (check the video below). Personally I would say this LP is one of the milestones of German oldskool trance and when looking Sven today you see we’ve come a long, long way from those days :)

(more…)

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.