Surviving The Golden Age.com, a great site and a long time supporter of ours, approached us about doing a mix and an interview for them a few months back. We chipped away at it over time and finally delivered it last week. We described the mix during the interview like this:
“We wanted to try to distill the arc of a night into a 30 minute mix using songs from different genres and eras. We often try to do more than just quietly mix one record into another so the mix also includes a lot of new blends and many of the transitions add extra layers, samples or call backs to the previous track. A number of times on this mix we literally create a dialogue of sorts between the two tracks we’re mixing, which is something we like to do whenever possible.”
Check the original post here
Download link available here
Tracklist:
Bill Withers/LCD Soundsystem “Dance Yrself Lovely (Its Overture Bootleg)”
Nubian Crackers “Clap 2 Da (Remix)”
Poolside “Do You Believe?”
The Weeknd “House Of Balloons (Nadastrom Edit)”
Ohio Players “Ecstasy (DJ Melo & Jon Kwest Remix)”
Timbaland featuring Keri Hilson “Miscommunicaton”
Chilly Gonzales “You Can Dance (Edwin Van Cleef Remix)”
Queen & David Bowie/Daft Punk “Voyage Under (Its Overture Bootleg)”
Mylo “Drop The Pressure”
Pleasurekraft “Tarantula”
2 In A Room “Wiggle It”
Treasure Fingers “Your Love”
Switch featuring Andrea Martin “I Still Love You (Original & Heavyfeet Remix)”
Heavy D/Afrojack “Take Over Love (Its Overture Bootleg)”
Jomanda/Sammy Bananas/Fedde Le Grand “Save Me (Its Overture Bootleg)”
The Rapture/Fake Blood “Medieval Love (Its Overture Bootleg)”
And here’s the interview in full:
What are some of your earliest musical influences?
RiVerse: My first musical obsession was Hall & Oates around the age of 4. Hip hop kind of ran my life all through my teens and still works as the foundation for everything I do.
Macabee: My first cassette was Alvin and the Chipmunks singing Michael Jackson‘s greatest hits. The Beatles were also a big early influence. After that, I started listening to a lot of hip hop and house.
How did you get into DJing?
RiVerse: Being into hip hop as both a fan and in a creative aspect, it naturally evolved into DJing. So it started with listening to everything I could get my hands on, then that turned into making pause tapes and eventually I ended up buying a cheap pair of turntables from the back of The Source. Around that time the independent hip hop scene was really blowing up as well and a lot of the music was being put out strictly on vinyl. So necessity played a role as well.
Macabee: I played guitar in an incredibly fun band in high school, which was forced to split once we all graduated and moved to the four corners of the earth. I quickly got into production on the MPC, and soon after that I started DJing, as a way to be a one man band and keep churning out music. In a way I was DJing since I was young though; making mixtapes on a dual-deck boombox using my huge collection of cassingles.
What equipment/programs do you use to create music?
RiVerse: We DJ with Serato. For production, we both started out on the MPC-2000XL but almost everything we do now is on Ableton Live.
In a place like NYC where there is an overabundance of DJs, how do you think Its Overture stands out?
RiVerse: It’s definitely a crowded marketplace but whenever we spin, our goal is always to play to the crowd while still essentially doing “us.”
Macabee: I think our meticulous track selection is one of the main ways we set ourselves apart from most other DJs. We definitely pride ourselves on relentlessly dropping jam after timeless jam and never wasting a moment with “filler”.
What are some of your favorite records to spin during DJ sets?
RiVerse: That’s a difficult one to answer because it depends largely on what type of crowd we’re playing to. Every genre/crowd offers us the opportunity to play some things we love, either because we know they’ll kill or because we love sneaking in things people might not know.
You created an exclusive mix for StGA, can you describe a little bit about the concept behind it and some of the song selections?
Macabee: We wanted to try to distill the arc of a night into a 30 minute mix using songs from different genres and eras. We often try to do more than just quietly mix one record into another so the mix also includes a lot of new blends and many of the transitions add extra layers, samples or call backs to the previous track. A number of times on this mix we literally create a dialogue of sorts between the two tracks we’re mixing, which is something we like to do whenever possible.
RiVerse: While not an all out “cut and paste” mix, we’ve always been drawn to a more manipulative style of DJing……when it’s done well, of course. As we both said earlier, hip hop informs much of our aesthetic and a lot of that comes out in our penchant for flipping samples, both in our tracks and mixes. So we always try to incorporate that into whatever we do whether it’s through blends, content-conscious mixes, etc because we feel like we don’t hear a lot of that style anymore. Because while the whole age of the “mash up” did some good things for bringing an all-bets-are-off approach to sampling, it also created a stigma because a lot of it was (and still is) done badly: out of key, off beat, incoherent, crunk-acapella-over-indy-jam-of-the-week kind of things. So we’re trying to bring it back to a place that’s more reputable. More Prince Paul than Girl Talk.
What is next for Its Overture?
We’re going to keep releasing remixes and blends/mash ups every couple of weeks and we’ve got another volume of our Classic Rap mix that we’re working on that we’re really excited about. We also have plans for a real all genre, all style, cut-and-paste mix that will hopefully do justice to what we think DJing and sample-heavy production can be.
Aside from that, we plan to keep putting things out that continue to establish our range. Our love for all types of music enable us to move between genres and styles pretty naturally so we want to continue to build on that. We’ve done reworks of everyone from Phish and Grateful Dead to Company Flow (as a Drum-N-Bass remix, no less) and Sister Nancy. Cut Copy and Modular Records gave us props for our edit of “Sun God”, a lot of old school hip hop blogs showed love for our Classic Rap mix and most of our club-friendly remixes and bootlegs continue to get us attention. So we’re proud of that range and want to keep trying to bring a universal standard of quality to everything we do.
It’s that time of year again, jingle bells, snow days, shoppers getting pepper sprayed for black Friday sales prices. Yes! It’s Christmas! My little gift to you is this collection of holiday songs I’ve been feeling lately. The mix hovers around the soul, funk, rock region, however, it does delve into some beatnik styles as well as some Ska. So listen up and enjoy. It is also available for a free download.
1. White Magic - ceo
2. Take You (Nadastrom Remix) - AC Slater
3. Dark Fantasy (Its Overture Remix) - Kanye West
4. Take Me Higher - Rogerseventytwo
5. Baby Get Higher (Chew Fu Remix) - Van Velzen
6. Spaceship (Nadastrom Remix) & (EDX Remix) - Benny Benassi feat. Kelis
7. Xtatic Truth (Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs Remix) - Crystal Fighters
8. Church - The 2 Bears
9. Revolving (Ramadanman Remix) - Spark
10. Never Forget (Cut Copy Lifelike Mix) - Fleetwood Mac
I DJed the 100th episode of Electronic Phonics, on 90.3 The Core. Here’s most of my set. For a full recording of that show, visit respectthesignal.us. Click the title for the tracklist.
Animaallll massive!!! Ready? Click the title for tracklist.
Tracklist (notice a pattern?)
Aphrodite – Ready Or Not (Jungle Remix)
Calvin Harris – Ready For The Weekend (High Contrast Remix)
Pharoahe Monch – Simon Says (Roni Size & DJ Die Remix)
Adam F – Brand New Funk
Calvin Harris – Flashback (Goldie Remix)
Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams (Noisia Bootleg Remix)
Ben Sage ft Savvy – Sleepless
Evol Intent – Middle Of The Night
DJ Fresh – Exhale (Inhale Remix)
James Brown – Sunny (Featurecast Regroove)
Subwave – Sun Will Shine (New Identity Dub)
Logistics – Kaleidoscope
John B – Red Sky
Foreign Beggars & Noisia – Contact (Apok-C Druma & Hop Edit)
Storm Crew – Step Off
Prodigy – Voodoo People (Pendulum Remix)
Listen up Dubsteppers! I’m in ur BASE! How low can you go? Click the title for the tracklist.
Tracklist…
james brown – it’s a man’s man’s man’s world (regrooved by parker)
nero – act like you know
kid cudi – day and night (danny scrilla dubstep remix)
pink floyd – comfortably numb (dz vs rastatronics remix)
proxy – raven (evol intent ravenstep vip)
adele – cold shoulder (rusko remix)
bokator – southside skank
bjork – nattura (switch remix)
mj cole – sincere (nero remix)
emalkay – when i look at you
infrabuse – the easter egg
chewie – frogger
noisia, foreign beggars – no holds barred
jahdan blakkamoore – the general (marcus visionary remix)
blaqstarr feat jhi ali – stuntastic (diplo)
dr. dre & snoop – the next episode (jay robinson clubstep mix)
It’s that time of year again, when wholesalers and retailers alike get to lickin their chops, just salivating over the holiday shopping. Me, I haven’t picked up my first gift yet and it’s Christmas eve. What I WAS doing however, was putting together some tunes that’ll put even the biggest Scrooge in the mood. Here’s my Merry Christmas mix for 2009, enjoy… MERRY CHRISTMAS
1. Silver Bells – Diana Ross & The Supremes 2. The Christmas Song – Byron Lee & The Dragonaires - 3. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town – The Jackson 5 4. Christmas Stylee – J Osbourne 5. Merry Merry Christmas – The Silvertones 6. I’ll Be Your Santa – Rufus Thomas 7. Christmas Is Love – James Brown 8. Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer – The Temptations 9. Merry Christmas Baby – Lou Rawls 10. Jingle Bells – Smokey Robinson & The Miracles 11. Gee Wiz It’s Christmas – Carla Thomas 12. The Children’s Christmas Song – Diana Ross & The Supremes 13. Christmas Bells – Byron Lee & The Dragonaires 14. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – The Jackson 5 15. Christmas Song – John Lennon
I spent an evening drinking beer and DJing anything that made me forget how hot it was. Some IDM and jungle classics mixed with a few hip-hop tracks, some Barry White. Click the title for full track list.
Tracklist…
Mylo vs Katie Enlow – Sunworshipper vs Wandering Star (World Famous Audio Hacker’s Inverted Mix)
4Hero – Planetaria (Hefner Remix)
Nitin Sawney – Breathing Light
Speardhead – Ganja Babe
Nas – 2nd Childhood (Cookin Soul)
Four Tet – Unspoken
4Hero – Star Chasers (Photek Remix)
Helena – Can’t Get You Out Of My Head
LTJ Bukem – Sunrain
Everything But The Girl – Single
Squarepusher – Drum N Bass 2000
Danger Mouse & Zero 7 – Somersault (Danger Mouse Remix featuring Doom)
Steve Spacek – Slave
Bonobo – The Plug
Serengeti & Polyphonic – My Patriotism
Prefuse 73 – Blacklist (featuring MF Doom & Aespo Rock)
Shpongle – When Shall I Be Free
Spearhead – Sod (Bassnector Remix)
Hexstatic – Ninja Tune (Enter The Augmenter) (The Process Mix)
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince – Summertime
Luke Vibert & BJ Cole – Fly Hawaii
Barry White – Let The Music Play
