The Steezoid Broadcasts #6 - Endless summer

This is a mix dedicated to the summer we all wish would never end, with 20 neo-classic progressive house hits from the last couple of years, intended to make you want to dance through those warm summer nights until the sun rises on a cloud of happiness.



Tracklist is on the Soundcloud page, just click the link.

The Sound of Summer

It has been an incredible summer with tons of great musical adventures and loads of brilliant music. This is a recap of some of the events I have been attending during June and July and a selection of a few of the tracks that has made it into my personal summer soundtrack.

Swedish House Mafia @ Milton Keynes Bowl, UK

Once upon a time, three skilled DJ's from Stockholm, started playing together. Someone named them, as a joke I guess, the Swedish House Mafia, as they have Italian sounding names and of course began to rule the house scene. The name got stuck and soon they would rise to the biggest band in house music, playing hundreds of concerts around the globe for massive crowds at the largest festivals in the US and Europe, at Madison Square Garden in NYC, at their own festival Masquerade Motel at both Miami and Ibiza and lately, the 65.000 people strong Milton Keynes Bowl north of London.

SHM announced their last tour together this summer, finishing of with triple stadium shows in Stockholm in November, which sold out 3x100.000 tickets in 3x1 hour. So Milton Keynes was the final chance for me and my GoLive party companions to experience SHM at their last ever show in UK.

Milton Keynes Bowl was wet an muddy, as it had rained for days before the big day. It was a regular mudfest complete with wellies, extremely drunk ginger "broke-steppers", Liverpool Lads and Manchester Mamas. In comparison Miami raver chicks dress funny and cute, (many) British raver chicks just look slutty and unattractive. Where as the US kids are tripping on Molly and glow sticks, British youth are just getting drunk beyond recognition and throwing themselves in the mud. We opted for the VIP package, which was nice, as we didn't have to stand in the endless queues for drinks or toilet facilities, not to mention a great after party in the VIP area after the main event had closed.

Anyway, at Milton Keynes, SHM where supported by local Example, french wonder kid Madeon, rising star and Ingrosso protegé Alesso, superstar Calvin Harris and legendary Pete Tong from BBC Radio 1. Quite a strong lineup. I've collected a few tracks in relation to this below:

Calvin Harris & Example - We'll Be Coming Back (R3hab EDC NYC Remix)

Madeon - Icarus (Original Mix) 

Alesso feat. Matthew Koma - Years (Original Vocal Mix)

Even though they are breaking up, their name will still have some sense to it going forward, as the trio each have their own labels (Axwell has Axtone, Ingrosso has Refune and Angello has Size), promoting new producers and bands. You might recognize Alesso, Deniz Koyu, Dirty South, Otto Knows (Refune), Hard Rock Sofa, Thomas Gold, Ivan Gough & Feenixpawl, Michael Calfan (Axtone), AN21, Qulinez, Max Vangeli, Third Party, Tim Mason (Size Records). The trio will probably continue to spit our monster hits individually like they did with "In My Mind" and "Quasar" on Axtone, "Calling" and "Resurrection" on Refune, and "Troll" and "Feel" on Size, and keep on dominating the progressive charts for years to come.

Albin Myers @ Babel Malmoe, Sweden

Early June, I went to the club Babel in Malmoe, Sweden, to check out Stockholm house talent Albin Myers. I've said it before, and I'm happy to say it again, I LOVE THAT PLACE, it's the only place in the Oresund region with a very unique electro and progressive house profile (thanks to dedicated people like Pierre Zalas of the Matchstick Men). They are able to attract quite a few of my favorite EDM acts (like Tommy Trash). In comparison, Copenhagen nightlife is very dominated by deep and tech house, which is nice to chill out and lounge to once in a while, but for a truly insane and mind blowing dance party, I need electro or progressive house, and Babel delivers every time!

Albin Myers - The Beast (Original Mix)

Albin Myers - Hells Bells (Original Mix) 

Albin Myers - Bumbaclot (Original Mix) 

Dirtyloud @ Rust Copenhagen, Denmark

On a summer Thursday in July, when everybody had escaped the rain in Sourhern Europe, Brazilian Dirtyloud came to town and played a small but enthusiastic crowd at Rust. It was pure electro madness, switching back and forth from moombah and electro house to drum n' bass and dubstep. Beautiful!

  Dirtyloud - Needle feat. Sirreal (Original Mix
 
Porter Robinson feat. Amba Shepherd - Vandalism (Dirtyloud Remix)

Ride the "wup wup wave"

Nowadays, it's seems that every mainstream artist need to have a dubstep remix to keep (or rather cling on to) some coolness and connect to the "underground". Most of them are, in my humble opinion, sad and calculating attempts in the sub-genre and even more depressingly, attempts to leach on the growing popularity of dubstep, that inevitably is going to be the nemesis of the genre within a couple of years.

Skrillex for one has been very active remixing (and cashing in on) popular mainstream artist like Lady Gaga (Alejandro and Bad Romance), Black Eyed Peas (Rock That Body) and even Avicii (Levels, OK result though). Most of his remixes just get's "Skrilled up" and this brosteppy glitchy sound is easily recognizable and very popular at the moment with the younglings. The best remix he has done though, that has real musical value, has to be Cinema by Benny Benassi ft. Gary Go (no 2. on my 2011 top 5 dubstep chart).

Female pop stars like Adele (Rolling In the Deep) and Robyn (Call Your Girlfriend) has been dubstepped (Robyn by one of my favorites; Feed Me), along with Blue Foundation (Eyes On Fire) who was remixed by Zeds Dead. All fair attempts by respectable EDM/dubstep artists, but for me, they lack something.

Eos, an ambitious 15 y.o. kid (!?) from LA is going straight for the big league "dubstepping" mega hits like Maroon 5 (Moves Like Jagger), Rihanna (We Found Love), David Guetta (Titanium) and Jennifer Lopez (On the Floor), getting millions of Youtube hits. The list is endless, just check out dubstep-remix.com, a blog dedicated to dubstep remixes only, and you will find proof of that. Hell, you can even make your own dubstep remix with the.wubmachine.com.

But it's not all about just riding the "wup wup wave" or milking the lucrative dubstep cash cow, there's actually some good tracks amongst the endless list of measly dubstep remixes. While most of the crossover remixes lack artistic value, the most successful ones seems to be remixes of songs from other electronic genres. These seem to survive the transition from one electronic sub-genre to the other. Some good examples of these, that actually surpasses the original, would be:

Calvin Harris - Feel So Close (Nero Remix)

Afrojack - Take Over Control ft Eva Simons (Adam F Remix)

Benny Bennassi - Cinema (Skrillex Remix)

La Roux - In For The Kill (Skream Remix)