Tracklist
Liner Notes
Benedetta Caretta's "Now We Are Free" opens at 0:45 — the Gladiator theme — played twice in two versions, cinematic and almost funereal. Then piano music at 8:30. Raidho's downtempo at 9:30. The mix doesn't reach anything resembling dancefloor energy until 15:00, when Kelis's "Milkshake" in an Alex Wann Remix finally appears. Even then, "Milkshake" plays three times across a five-minute stretch, as though the DJ is circling a landing strip, unable to commit to touching down.
One hundred and twelve minutes. Fifty-five tracks. The duration returns to near-marathon length — the longest since Mix 15, eight mixes ago. But where Mix 15's length served expansive purpose, this feels contemplative, almost reluctant to end. The tracks are spaced further apart, the gaps wider, the silences more prominent. The opening quarter carries the lowest energy of any single section across all forty-six mixes by a significant margin. The mix gets slightly louder as it goes, rising through a closing-strong arc, but even its loudest moment is quieter than every single quarter of every mix that came before it. The baseline has shifted, and it will never fully return.
Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up" in Eric Kupper's vocal mix at 56:00 brings soul music's greatest optimist into a session that desperately needs him. "Move on up! Towards your destination!" — the relentless positivity reads differently in a mix that has shed almost half its energy. It's either ironic or aspirational, and the DJ probably doesn't know which. Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds" in a Cirque Du Soleil reimagining at 1:03:00 follows, then Fred again.. & Obongjayar's "adore u" and Robbie Williams' "Feel" in an Afro house remix. Three eras, three continents, three emotional registers, placed end to end with no regard for conventional DJ logic.
Styx's "Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)" at 1:13:30 is the deepest rock cut in the archive — a 1977 prog-rock ballad no algorithm would ever suggest for a house mix. Its title reads as unintentional commentary: fooling yourself, the angry young man. In the context of a mix undergoing a profound and possibly unconscious transformation, the words carry weight the DJ may not have intended.
The closing section returns to more familiar ground — Bombay Traffic at 1:36:15, Alex Dolby & Santos' "Raw Road" at 1:36:45, Tom Santa's "Rainfall (Praise You)" at 1:39:00 — before ending with T.I.'s "Whatever You Like" at 1:44:45 and Sebastian Paul's "Lust Drunk" at 1:48:15. The rap-to-electronic close is a first for the archive, and its nonchalance suggests the DJ isn't troubled by the shift they've undergone. They may not even be fully aware of it yet. The data shows a seismic change. The DJ just kept mixing.
Simon Fava's "Magalenha" at 1:25:00 and Marcos Barrios at 1:29:30 maintain the Latin and tribal house threads. Wave Wave & Damien N-Drix's "Trumpz" at 1:22:30 provides one of the mix's few moments of genuine rhythmic intensity. But these are islands in a sea of restraint. The overall texture is softer, wider, more atmospheric than anything the archive has produced.
Something happened between August and September 2023. The music got quieter. The energy dropped. The atmospheric selections increased. The dancefloor receded. Whether this reflects a change in life circumstances, a change in musical taste, or simply the natural evolution of someone who has been mixing for five years, the archive doesn't say. What it says is that from this point forward, the mixes will be different. Not lesser — different. Not broken — transformed. The quiet era has begun, and it will last until the very end.