CLUB NIX 169: I Thought I Knew This Record

More than twenty years ago, I made a record called Shine. I thought I knew every second of it. Then Frankyeffe remixed it, and suddenly I wasn't listening to an old Mark Norman record anymore. I was listening to something I genuinely wanted to play in CLUB NIX. That's a strange feeling — and a very good one.

Hearing Your Own Music Differently

When you've lived with a record for that long, it becomes almost impossible to hear it objectively. You know every sound, every change and every little production decision. Or at least you think you do.

A good remixer changes that. Frankyeffe didn't simply give Shine a new kick drum and a bigger bassline. He heard something else in the original and pulled it into his own world. Somewhere along the way, he made me hear my own record differently too.

That's probably the biggest compliment I can give a remix.

The Fun of Digging

The rest of CLUB NIX 169 is very much about what I'm discovering right now. The mix features music from Adriatique, Cassian, Korolova, Vintage Culture, TH;EN, Goodboys, HUGEL and several producers who were completely new to me when I started putting this episode together.

That's still one of my favourite things about DJing. You start looking for one track and, two hours later, you've ended up somewhere you never expected to be. A name you've never seen before, a label you don't know, or a record with hardly any attention that turns out to be better than half the things you've heard everywhere else.

That's the fun of digging.

And it's also why I don't really care whether a record came out last Friday or twenty years ago. New doesn't automatically mean interesting, and old doesn't automatically mean nostalgia. A record either works or it doesn't.

The Record Has to Earn Its Place

That idea runs through this edition of CLUB NIX. It moves between Melodic House, Progressive House and deeper electronic music, from warmer grooves into records with a little more pressure and emotion.

There are established names in there, but just as importantly there are artists I barely knew before making the mix.

CLUB NIX was never supposed to be a greatest-hits show. The names don't get a record into the mix. The record does.

Towards the end, Frankyeffe's remix of Shine appears. Hearing it in the context of all that new music was probably the moment it clicked for me. It didn't feel like I was dropping an old Mark Norman track into the set for sentimental reasons.

It simply belonged there.

And when Adriatique & Rhye – Coming Home follows it to close the mix, the past and the present suddenly don't feel very far apart at all.

Maybe great records don't really belong to a year.

Maybe they just need someone to hear them differently.

Tracklist

1. H3RMES – Lumen

2. DJ FreeSpirit, Ciminir & Randoree – Check Dis

3. Baset & Bittermind – Feel Good

4. Vintage Culture & DEPARTAMENTO – Toxic

5. TH;EN – Blackout

6. Vintage Culture & DEPARTAMENTO – Copycat

7. FENDJOU – No Seatbelt

8. ANDRE (IT) & Humans Musik – Taking Everything

9. Sentin & jasper.vav – Voodoo Doll

10. Ultra Naté, HUGEL & Miel Angel – Movin' To The Sun

11. Goodboys & Korolova – The Present

12. Cassian & AR/CO – Come To Life

13. Rown & JOA – No Sleep

14. Frankyeffe & Mark Norman – Shine (Frankyeffe Remix)

15. Adriatique & Rhye – Coming Home

    
    

For the dancers. For the diggers. Nothing else.