Saturday, December 31, 2011

Anne Savage & Max Graham: "House, Drum, & Bass"

I posted a link to this mix a while ago, but had to take it down eventually when I switched ISP's and wasn't able to store quite as many mixes on my server. But I was tidying up some music drives this afternoon and found this mix again, so I just uploaded it to MixRiot and I thought I'd reincarnate this blog posting. It's probably my favorite DJ mix of the past decade, so it seems fitting to post it on a New Year's Eve.

I talked to Max Graham about this mix a while ago, and he said that he and Anne made it as a promo mix, back in the Atomic Nightclub (Ottawa) days. Therefore, I'm guessing that they made it between 1996 and 1998, not too long before I started listening to it. All it was called was "House, Drum & Bass," and that's exactly what type of music it was.

As I said, this mix is one of my favorite mixes of all time. It had a huge influence on me as a DJ, even though I technically started DJ'ing about twelve or thirteen years before it was made. At the time I first heard it, I was DJ'ing at the university bar occasionally, playing mainstream dance tracks (think of the Much Dance series), but this mix helped broaden my appreciation of different electronica genres.  

  



Although Max Graham lived in England and Spain and the US while growing up, he ended up in Ottawa as a mainstream DJ in one club, and then after switching focus, he worked with some partners to open his own club (Atomic) in around 1996. His history as a DJ and producer is quite interesting. I had to buy some of his early productions such as Airtight, Shoreline, and Falling Together a couple times, because I essentially wore out the vinyl on my original copies. His sound was usually a trancy sort of progressive house, and was a big influence on my DJ'ing around 2000-2004 (as you can tell when looking at track listings of a lot of my early demos). I guess a lot of people know him because of his remix of "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" (below), which was very well done, although I prefer his trancier style.





Here's an old photo I found with myself, Max Graham, and Kevin Snedker, from maybe around 2002:





Anne Savage is a DJ from the UK who established herself solidly with a number of heavy hitters in the early 1990's, playing regular residencies with people like Sasha, Laurent Garnier, and Tony De Vit. She's been involved with Ministry of Sound Radio, BBC1, and MTV Europe, and she's played cities and festivals all over the world. Her discography lists some of her work, either alone or in collaborations, although unlike Max, she focuses more on DJ'ing than on production work. She usually plays a pretty hard house style. Here's a link to Anne's website:


http://www.djannesavage.com





I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:



If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:



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