It’s easy, in this daily avalanche of media, to hype something to the stars and proclaim it the greatest thing in the universe. People are paid to do it for a living regardless of the content they’re pushing but I will only feature items here that I truly think measure up.

As it’s the aforementioned 25th anniversary of Solid Steel, we’re pulling out a lot of the stops this year to bring the very best mixes to the show in the sea of free that is the web these days. We’ve had Coldcut meets The Orb, Kirk DeGiorgio embracing ambiance, classic albums by De La Soul and Public Enemy reconstructed by United States of Audio and DJ Moneyshot respectfully and that’s just the first half of the year.

So it’s a great moment when the creators of the show, Coldcut, step up with the first part of a new mix series – ‘2 Hours of Sanity’ – the first part being a mix ruminating on ‘Love’, and it’s up there with the best. This has been germinating for 3 years, I’ve heard it in various forms for at least the last year and it’s fantastic to finally have them share it with everyone. The word ‘masterclass’ has been bandied about a lot in the few days since this debuted and it’s used with good reason.

The art of the mix is about layering, combining songs, sounds and speech in new ways, in a coherent flow and creating something new from old and new. Many mixes are one song after another, beat-mixed into each other to form a perfect linear trip from A to B. It’s my opinion that the best mixes throw tempo, genre and linearity to the wind and travel from A to Z. You’ll know many of the tracks here if you’ve listened to the show over the years but you won’t have heard them like this before.

Not to forget show producer DK holding up the rear of the show with a solid (pun intended) selection and a rather tasty ‘Bollywood Steel’ mix from collaborator 2econd Class Citizen.

DK takes the first 40 minutes then Trevor Jackson cuts up the Tape Edit Kings of the 80’s.

In his own words; “This mix consists of electro/freestyle/miami bass classics & bonus beat edits by the likes of Chep Nunez, Omar Santana & The Latin Rascals, how they did what they did with just tape, a reel 2 reel & a razor blade still defies belief  and continues to inspire me as much as it did when I first heard their work in the mid 80’s
There is no tracklisting & won’t be because I come from a generation when Shazam. Discogs, eBay & Google didn’t exist, when I first heard something on the radio in a club or a mixtape it often took me many months of desperate searching to find out what it was, I’m more than happy to inflict this highly satisfying laborious experience upon you, you’ll appreciate it in the long run.”

The second hour has an interview with Thundercat and DK finishing up with a tribute to George Duke who died earlier this week.

This week we return to the Solid Steel birthday celebrations and share the cake with something else that turns 25 this year – Public Enemy‘s ‘It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back’ album.
To honour both occasions our very own DJ Moneyshot shows us once again why he’s the mixtape king with the career-best offering, ‘Solid Steel and the Hour of Chaos’.
Over 60 blistering minutes he takes in all the beats, breaks, samples and spoken word nuggets that made this seminal Bomb Squad production such an explosive release.
Amongst the vast stack of tracks in the mix, expect words of wisdom from Louis Farrakhan, exclusive interviews with Hank Shocklee, and all the soul, rock ‘n’ roll and early rap tracks that went into making up P.E’s (if not hip-hop’s) finest album.

After taking part in last year’s dissection of ‘Paul’s Boutique’ and US of Audio‘s trbute to ‘3 Feet High & Rising’ – can Moneyshot raise the bar? Of course he can. If you enjoy the mix, why not read his exhaustive feature on the album in the pages of this month’s Future Music magazine?
Power to the people and the broadest beats.

A very special mix went up yesterday on the Solid Steel Soundcloud, something we’ve been angling for for months now and finally the stars have aligned perfectly. On the eve on the release of Boards of Canada‘s new LP, Peter Serafinowicz, actor, comedian, musician and voice of Darth Maul himself, has provided us with a BOC-inspired mix including some of his own compositions as well. It’s a beautiful collection of tracks and a perfect accompaniment to the albums which is hitting UK letterboxes all over as I type.
Also not to forget DK opening the show with his usual style and grace and another lovely guest mix from First Word artist Yosi Horikawa on the eve of his album release.

“Now waaaaaiit a minute!” People are really pulling out the stops for the Solid Steel 25th year anniversary guest mixes at the moment. Last week Gilles Peterson not only made a Brit Funk mix but also a special video promo to go with it.

This week though, sees the return of United States of Audio aka Dave Trigg with what I’m already calling ‘Mix of the Year’. Riffing off the same idea as our ‘Paul’s Boutique’ reconstruction last year, he takes on De La Soul‘s  classic ‘3 Feet High & Rising’ LP. I’ll turn it over to Dave for the explanation:

“Several years in the making (well it’s an idea that’s been knocking around for a while anyway!), and including around 100 tracks, this is my personal tribute to De La Soul’s ‘3 Feet High and Rising’. Using original sample sources, album tracks, interviews and rarities, ‘How High’s The Water Mama’ tells the story of one of hip hop’s most influential albums.

When De La Soul’s debut album dropped in 1989 I was ten years old. Yet, by some stroke of amazing good fortune a cassette copy of ‘3 Feet High and Rising’ found its way into my hands thanks to my best mate’s older brother (though I’m pretty sure said brother had no idea of this fact!). The music was a revelation and had a significant influence in shaping my musical tastes – in fact I can’t think of any other album that has had such a profound effect on me as this one. Thus ‘3 Feet High and Rising’ holds a special place in my musical affections. Now, some twenty-five years after its original release, it’s time to pay my respect to Pos, Dove, Mase, and Prince Paul…”

The pace and flow of this mix is a masterclass in how to put songs together and the ease with which he balances the sonics of a huge number of vastly different genres can only have meant hours of mixdown time. The reconstruction of the ‘Cool Breeze On The Rocks’ section is worth the price of admission alone (with a great nod to Solid Steel too). It gives a fresh take on ‘3 Feet…’ and reminds you of how many great songs they recontexualised within it. It’s also a history lesson, with interview segments where the band talk about the making of the album, the hippy tag and the sample lawsuits.

This is the one to beat in 2013. Also, in a bizarre coincidence, the latest issue of Wax Poetics features De La talking about the making of the very same album.

DJ Scientist, label head of Equinox Records, pulls out all the stops for his 25 years of Solid Steel mix this week with a Solid Soviet Steel special.. Never someone to do things by halves he’s been working on this for months and there’s a lot of background info to go with it:

Solid Soviet Steel Radio (SSSR) is a special guest mix for Solid Steel by DJ Scientist that solely features music from the former Soviet Union. The dedicated record collector, disc jockey and label owner from Berlin managed to unearth and put together an extensive and fascinating selection of tracks from countries like the Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldavia, Russia and more.

More than that, to make it even more special, this first lesson in a series of other Soviet mixes by DJ Scientist is dedicated to tracks by so-called VIA bands. VIA is an abreviation for Vocal Instrumentalis Ansamblis or Vocal Instrumental Ensemble which was basically the synonym for pop groups in the Soviet communist states throughout the 70s. Many of these groups managed to create their own kind of sound, mixing western styles like Jazz, Funk and Rock with traditional music from their own countries. For example, very unique vocal harmonies can be heard in VIAs such as Iverya (Georgia) or Gaya (Azerbaijan).

All tracks have been recorded from original vinyl from the Soviet state label “Melodia” (Melody) and have been mixed and edited with Serato Scratch Live and Cubase. Some of the bands appearing in the mix cannot clearly be labeled as VIAs. Rero for example usually was an instrumental group and has been called “Variety Orchestra”. However, on the track “Come Outside” they play together with a vocal group. Technically speaking, the famous “Rude-Paparude” by Maria Kodrianu is not a straight VIA track too, as Kodrianu was a well known solo singer from Moldavia. However, here she is backed by one of the funkiest grooves, played by a VIA that was lead by A. Mordkowicha.

The artwork is taken from the cover of the Soviet youth magazine Krugozor issue 11/72.

The Solid Steel 25th anniversary continues and this week I’m in the first slot with a mix of /4 electronica both new and old. Modular experiments, deep house grooves, classic electro and a touch of acid. Ninja & Big Dada artists Falty DL and Dobie feature, oldies from Air, Eon and Hashim appear and a fantastic new track from Natural Self features near the end that I just can’t stop playing. His album, ‘Neon Hurts My Eyes’, drops next week on Tru Thoughts and it’s quite a departure being all-vocal led, most of it sung by the man himself including a great cover of Laurie Anderson‘s ‘O, Superman’.

In hour 2 we have The Light Surgeons with a very different mix taken in part from their new show ‘SuperEverything*’, a narrative about cross cultural identity. They tour in the UK in March and play a London show in April. The last half hour has a mix from Meat Beat Manifesto‘s Jack Dangers, showcasing his collection of electronic record made by children in schools, see some of the sleeves below and be prepared for something different.

Late last year DK and I were chatting on the phone about potential guests for Solid Steel’s 25th anniversary year in 2013. We were aiming high and had decided to ask any prospective guests for themed mixes or collections of tracks outside of their usual comfort zone. The idea of collaborations came up, maybe Fourtet and Caribou could team up or Aphex and Vibert? What and who would make people sit up and say, “holy shit, I HAVE to check that out?”. Suddenly the thought bubbled up, why don’t we get a rematch between Coldcut and the Orb? It’s no secret that their original New Year mash up from the end of 1991 is very high up on my list of greatest mixes ever and the thought of a new sound clash 21 years later was very appealing indeed.

We put it to Matt and Jon, who loved the idea, and promptly contacted Alex Paterson and Youth. Convening at the latter’s Butterfly studio on the anniversary of JFK‘s assassination the four of them, along with Coldcut studio accomplice Dor Wand, got down to it. The resulting session produced over 3 hours worth of material, Matt excitedly collaring me a few days later to rave about what a blast it had been.

He wanted an independent opinion on the results and I immediately volunteered to take on the edit job to sculpt it into the shape needed for a Solid Steel mix. Luckily they had recorded everything to multi-track and just before Xmas I sat down to construct a 2 hour show from the chinese puzzle in front of me. After sifting, editing, compressing and discarding over a 3 to 4 week period I finally had something to send the guys. Matt came over to the studio to run through some finishing touches with fresh ears and we now present 133 minutes of mind-melting madness.

In a time now saturated with mixes by everyone from the famous to the unknown to your mate’s mum it’s sometimes hard to grab people’s attention. This year we start off with something that we don’t normally do, we’re giving the entire show over to four artists to present one mix. To say that I’m pleased with the result is an understatement, not my contribution to the edit so much as what we now have because of a fanciful suggestion I made a few months ago. It’s a very different beast to their first excursion, how could it not be? 21 years is a long time and the whole mix is rooted in dub of all permutations, layer upon layer of sonics to pick apart including many unreleased tracks, versions or remixes by all participants. Lee Perry, Killing Joke, Sun Ra, William Burroughs, Teebs, Ry Cooder, Actress, Prince Jammy, Iggy Pop, Monty Python and Hank Williams are all in there plus probably a hundred more, some submerged, others strutting their stuff, you can have fun trying to guess who played what and who is who hiding behind a pseudonym. We haven’t included all the spoken word samples in the track listing because it would just get way too confusing but you’ll hear John F Kennedy, Hal 9000, William Burroughs and more swimming around in there.

We will continue celebrating a quarter of a century of ‘the broadest beats’ every week throughout the year with exclusive mixes from: Four Tet, J Rocc, Skream, Kirk DeGiorgio, Trevor Jackson, Chris Carter from Throbbing Gristle, Toddla T, Benji B, Photek, Andy Votel, Z-Trip, Tom Middleton, Richard Dorfmeister, Greg Wilson, DJ Kentaro, James Lavelle, Giles Peterson, Don Letts, Jack Dangers, Future Sound of London, Kid Koala, Luke Vibert, Laurent Garnier, Congo Natty, Gaslamp Killer, Andrew Weatherall, Francois Kevorkian, Fink, Ross Allen, Mixmaster Morris, Manasseh and the first guest to appear on Solid Steel back in 1988, Juan Atkins (and that’s not even all of them…).