podcast: electric relaxation monthly mix, episode 5

Oh, sometimes, I get a good feeling… A little feeling that I never, never, never had before…

Ready to rave? Here’s a belated Valentine’s Day gift from Electric Relaxation! After two months of trance-heavy DJ sets, I decided I wanted to return to the genre that got me into EDM in the first place: good, old-fashioned HOUSE MUSIC.

This month’s podcast packs 75 minutes of fist-pumping, heavy-hitting electro and house, courtesy of Avicii, Calvin Harris, Kaskade, Hardwell and more. I’ve included a lot of my favourite tracks from the past few months in here, many of which I heard while home over the christmas holidays. I’m particularly fond of the sleazy French house of “Resurrection” (remixed to perfection by Axwell) and the playful dance-floor swagger of “Tung,” both of which I heard for the first time in the early hours of January 1, 2012. There’s also a grand total of three Tiesto tracks in this month’s mix because, well, he’s just been killin’ it lately. If “Maximal Crazy” doesn’t have you going totally crazy, then nothing will.

You can download the mix here (password: osaka) and read the full track-list after the jump. Turn that volume way up loud and ENJOY!

podcast: electric relaxation monthly mix, episode 4

It might be cold outside, but it’s time to strap on your dancing shoes. This month’s mix is a pulsating, high-octane journey through some of my favourite dance tracks of the last 12 months — the soundtrack to thesis panic, graduation madness, summer-time travels and my new life teaching English in rural Japan.

If 2010 was the year I discovered electronic music, then 2011 was the year when it turned from a casual pastime into a true passion. Highlights include DJing at Tower Underground with my buddy DJ Mash (and setting off two fire alarms in the process), DJing the Electric Sheep Rave at Terrace Club in April, dancing all night long at Sonar Festival in Barcelona, stumbling across a silent rave on the banks of the River Spree in Berlin, biking through the Japanese countryside listening to countless hours of dance music podcasts, and exploring teeny-meeny basement clubs in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka over the past few months. We’ll see what 2012 brings!

In the meantime, this month’s DJ mix can be downloaded here (password: odorimashou) and the full track-list can be found after the jump. From the retro 90s vibe of “The Theme” to the aggressive tech-trance of “Classified” to the sparkly, sci-fi wonder of “Rebound,” there’s only one thing tying all these songs together: they’re best played very, very loud. Turn off the lights, turn on the strobe, turn up the bass and ENJOY!

guestlist: top trance tracks of 2011

By Peter Baltera aka DJ Stimp.E

Summer 2011 has long ended, but the memories I made from beginning to end all helped deepen and strengthen the love in my life, the love of friends, the love of family and the love of trance music. I will always remember this summer as something special. To me, this was a Summer of Love.

Adam asked me to write this guest blog a while ago, and I took it as an opportunity to pick out the tracks that defined my summer. [Major props to Adam! This is an awesome idea!] These were the songs that got me bopping, fueled my runs up the Schuykill River, made me grin from ear to ear like an idiot while riding the bus to work, and caused what has become known as the characteristic Peter shriek and dance floor freak-out at trance shows. Given that, many of the songs are distinctively my taste: plenty of vocals, plenty of melody and plenty of bounce.

Trance is one of the older and, by default, more varied and evolved genres of EDM. Classic trance stands by the “four-to-the-floor” time signature and has 32 beat phrases and a tempo between 125 and 145 BPM. It is distinguished from other types of EDM for being more melodic, although harder styles will usually employ harder beats than house (e.g. psytrance). Trance often uses more dynamics than other forms of EDM in the forms of buildups and breakdowns. A very common characteristic of trance is the mid-song break in which rhythm is faded out to allow the melody or vocals and atmospheric sounds to stand solo. Although the exact date of the genre’s birth is debated, it is traced back to Germany 1992. Today, there are tons of subgenres of trance: classic, uplifting, progressive, Goa, tribal, psytrance, acid, dark, hardstyle and, my favorite, shitty pop crossover </trancesnob>. N.b. My taste and these songs are best described as uplifting with the last few tracks headed towards progressive.

Download the 100-minute mix here and read in more detail about my top tracks of the festival season after the jump. I hope you enjoy!

podcast: electric relaxation monthly mix, episode 3

Christmas comes early on Electric Relaxation! This month’s podcast is a journey into perhaps my favourite genre of electronic dance music: the soothing, uplifting sounds of progressive house. In recent years, the genre has evolved from a minor sub-category into one of the dance music scene’s most well-known styles, thanks in large part to the stratospheric rise of DJs like Deadmau5, Kaskade and Avicii.

This mix is an attempt to get to grips with the wide array of sounds and textures that the genre now has to offer. We’ve got everything from Daft Punk-inspired electro-mayhem (the opening Guetta-Afrojack collab “Lunar”) to hypnotic beats with trance elements (Andrew Bayer and Boom Jinx’s epic “To the Six”) to slower, synth-heavy tracks (Deadmau5′s 2008 classic “Brazil” is probably the most traditional ‘progressive’ track in the set). I’ve also thrown in a few pop vocals here and there (Oasis, Adele, Calvin Harris) just to make sure the mix isn’t too inaccessible!

You can download the podcast here and read the full track-listing after the jump. Turn up the bass and enjoy!

podcast: electric relaxation monthly mix, episode 2

It’s a new month, and that means it’s time for a new mix! After last month’s trance-heavy set, I wanted to make something a little more accessible, so this mix is packed with chart-toppers, mostly from the last month or two. Remix-wise, I’ve also thrown in a little bit of every genre — some electro (case in point: Afrojack’s anthemic Leona Lewis remix), some house (Chuckie’s euphoric, piano-heavy remix of Rihanna’s “We Found Love”), some progressive (Thomas Gold’s epic rework of Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain”), and even a bit of dubstep right at the end. That said, I think my favourite track might be the very first: the DJs From Mars remix of “On the Floor” and “Destination Calabria” is truly a mash made in heaven.

You can download the mix here (password: okayama). Tracklist is after the jump. ENJOY!

setlist: tower underground dj set

So even though Bangers and Mash had over 20 gigs together, it turns out we only remembered to press the record button once. Luckily it was during one of our most memorable DJ sets, at Tower Underground in January of this year. I got sick from spray-paint fumes, far too many people were wearing far too few items of clothing, and then the fire alarm went off… Twice.

The full MP3 is over 2 hours long, but here I’ve cut it down to just the half-hour peak of the night. The mix captures pretty accurately the electro-fied pop sound that characterised our DJ sets together and includes several of our all-time favourite remixes, including the anthemic Wideboys remix of “Break Your Heart,” Kaskade’s relentless edit of “Womanizer” and the bone-crunching Vindata remix of “OMG.”

Download link is here (password: underground); tracklist is after the jump. ENJOY!

podcast: electric relaxation monthly mix, episode 1

First, an apology: I’m sorry that Electric Relaxation has been rather quiet as of late. Two months without posts! Kind of ironic for a blog about dance music — a genre that prides itself on being up-to-date — to fall so far behind… The reason I’ve been lax about posting recently is that I’ve just moved to Japan, and so have been busy settling in and adjusting to this very new life. But just because I’m living in Japan doesn’t mean I’ve stopped listening to music — quite the opposite in fact! Which brings me to my second point…

To make up for the lack of posts over the past few weeks, I’ve got a gift for you all; I’ve decided that every month for the next year, instead of writing pithy blurbs about the music I’ve been listening to, I’m going to put my efforts into crafting a DJ mix of my favourite tracks. Because, let’s be honest, who really wants to read about dance music? No one!

The first episode (which you can download here) is heavy on progressive house and trance, because that’s what I’ve been listening to over the past month, but I expect that over the course of the coming year the podcasts will evolve along with my musical tastes; so maybe next month will be dubstep, or maybe it will be electro, who knows? I’ll try to put an emphasis on tracks that have been released within the last 6 months, and craft the mix like a live DJ set. This month’s podcast starts off with some poppier, accessible tracks (Florence and the Machine!), picks up the pace with some more aggressive trance in the mid-section, and finishes up with something nice and euphoric, courtesy of Super8 and Tab. ENJOY! Tracklist after the jump!