Tunes:

1. Intro – Ralph Myerz
2. Juliuss – Bermuda Triangle
3. Innerthieves – Shadow of the beat
4. Dead eyes – Pixxel Tyger
5. Cthulhu’s night out – Ugress
6. Kalaallit nunaat daquiri – Shadow of the beat
7. Heatwave (summersong) feat. Caro – Ralph Myerz
8. It was a great year (movies with robots) – Ugress
9. The dancer – Ralph Myerz
10. Hatten Passer – Bjorn Torske
11. In transit – Bermuda Triangle
12. Kapteinens skjegg – Bjorn Torske
13. Kommisär kontemporär – Ugress
14. Kyoto 02 AM – Shadow of the beat
15. Evil jeans – Ugress
16. My darling feat. Christine Sandtorv – Ralph Myerz
17. Manhattan sapphire – Ugress
18. Fembussen hjem – Bjorn Torske
19. Follow up – Spokelsekladden
20. Amz 1974 – Ugress

Other than that there is The Dø and a track from Karin Dreijer’s solo project Fever Ray. For example. Oh and if you want to hear more of Viola, just go to their website http://www.violamusicclub.com/ as they’ve decided to give away everything they’ve ever done for free.

Tracks:

Leif Holmstrand – Cato
On my shoulder – The Dø
Intiaanidisko – TV-Resistori
Musta ruusu – Eleanoora Roosenholm
Knocked up (Lykke Li Vs Rodeo Remix) – Kings Of Leon
Suudelmitar – Ville Leinonen
Kodinrakennusohjeet – Eleanoora Rosenholm
Serkut rakastaa paremmin – TV-Resistori
Dog – El Perro del Mar
Lovelights – Viola
Pupu tupuna – Risto
Triangle walks – Fever Ray
At last – The Dø
Ada Bell (In A Montage) – Viola

Here’s a random collection of stuff, including some interesting Icelandic tunes by FM Belfast, Seabear and a brand new single from Emiliana Torrini. Plus that irresistible Mummers-track March of the dawn – not that they are from anywhere near Iceland, but the song most definitely has a strong affinity with Bjork so I thought it would fit in.

Tracks:

1. Per the walking russin – Petit Soleil
2. Guns – Ikons
3. Ice – eRika
4. Hot lips – Pacific
5. Synthia – FM Belfast
6. Busy doing nothing (an Optimo Espacio mix) – Love is all
7. Huvudet I sanden – Familjen
8. Remember Jemez Red – Tremolo Beer Gut
9. Hey little cloud – Petit Soleil
10. Hitten – Those Dancing Days
11. Big jumps – Emiliana Torrini
12. Music killed me (Adventure Kid remake) – I’m from Barcelona
13. Lips of the soldier – The Figurines
14. March of the dawn – The Mummers
15. Singing Arc – Seabear

The other band that deserves two tracks here is Finnish band 22 Pistepirkko, who have been going since 1980 but show no sign of giving up their sometimes odd mix of pop, rock, blues and electronica (not necessarily all at the same time).

Here is also a track from Mum’s forthcoming album Go Smear the Poison Ivy, and it sounds very promising indeed (this track can be downloaded for free if you sign up to their mailing list at http://mum.trinitystreetdirect1.com/mailinglist).

Full tracklisting:

1. Frankenstein – 22 Pistepirkko
2. The lion – Honey is Cool
3. Kuvala – Rinneradio
4. Anniemal – Annie
5. Drums & boys – Honey is Cool
6. Fomer hero – Heikki
7. Electricity (is not what it used to be) – Differnet
8. I knew – 22 Pistepirkko
9. Syndir gu̡s (recycled by Mum) РSigur Ros
10. Dancing behind my eyes – Mum
11. Stars – Cats on fire
12. I’m Indian – Timo Raisanen
13. Love seems to be on my mind – Suburban kids with biblical names
14. My name is Luka – Hassan

(Hassan, I should say, was a Swedish radio programme hosted, amongst others, by Henrik Schyffert who had a minor hit with Whale many years ago. It was rather funny.)

in this case, Mixmeister worked like a dream. there’s an itunes-like interface that helps organise and search through all songs. by the way, the songs are automatically bpm’ed and the key of the music located. as you drop songs onto the playlist, they’re automatically cued up to play on the timeline. the timeline will stretch and compress as you move songs around, so if you shorten the mix-in of a track, you don’t have to adjust all the future tracks to take into account the movement. ah, instantly hours are knocked off the time i’ve spent in the past with Acid trying to get the mix to lineup following an edit.

editing with mixmeister

the bpm counter and default measure markers worked like a charm for standard house music. i’ve yet to try and set these up manually for more complex rhythmic structures, although there are some cool tools to help with this, such as a metronome. there’s twiddly knobs for the volume and the 3 main eq channels, and any changes are reflected in the level indicators on the timeline. very handy for experimenting live, and going back and tidying up later.

saving your mix

once you’re done with your set (or at a suitable juncture to mix down, given that with digital mixing you can go on tweaking forever), you can burn to cd, create a wav or mp3 for web hosting, or save the playlist down so you can return to edit later.

overall, thumbs up!

all in all quite a package. the result here took about an hour to do. and that’s in the instance where i barely knew the music or software. i really was impressed to the degree Mixmeister have taken out the grudge of putting mixes together, allowing you more time to play around with fun stuff like track selection, eq mixing and playing with structures. i’ve also learnt that the fact 2 songs are in key only gives you a mild inclination that they may go together. you can’t do music by numbers. the only downpoint i found was that i couldn’t see an easy way to change the setting so that the master bpm doesn’t keep fluctuating to meet the bpm of the proceeding song.

Mixmeister Fusion sits somewhere between ableton and traktor, two products with a considerable reputation. to its credit, Fusion has managed to highlight shortcomings in both packages and show that there is ample room for the middle way. all this, and i haven’t even touched on the video editing capabilities. time to hit Youtube.

i had 600+ cd’s before i got my decks, all in the bigger 200 cd cases. trawling the whole lot around with me each time i played out didn’t seem reasonable. taking my favourite 20 cd’s of the moment seemed limiting. what i now do is keep all the cd’s (in some kind of order) in the larger cases and keep a smaller one (i think it holds 48 cd’s) as the case i use for going out - the equivalent of my record bag. i’ve been doing this for the last couple of months and so far it seems to be working fine. 

the other thing i find useful is to have some kind of bookmark so you can mark the place of the playing cd as you flick through the case. this helps me keep cd’s in whatever order i’d chosen, although i have to confess by the last hour of the night i’m generally jamming cd’s in any available spot (not a major problem as things have usually got a bit ‘freeform’ by this stage of the night anyway).