- The first CD release for Sydney based label Floating Point Music, is a collection of old-skool funk, electro and deep tech house amongst other styles. Mixed live by Mad Racket's own Simon Caldwell, Simon shows that he is more than capable of mixing eclectic styles than electro which he is mainly known for.
Nat Adderley's Fun In the Church kicks things off with a little african percussion, jazzy pianos and horns while Nat comes off sounding like James Brown on the good foot.
World Of Hurt lend their beat driven trip hop to the mix with snippets of Beta Is Better A2 & B1 with the latter on a more laidback jazzy vibe featuring a wicked double bass line and splashed with techy stabs throughout.
Turntablist crew The Space Travellers represent for the mix with the slo-mo electro Black Hole which appears in it's instrumental form. For those who follow the Bay Area's turntablist style will be familiar with the sci-fi bleeps, bloops and samples sprinkled throughout the track. Yet the track still maintains an old-skool meets nu-skool b-boy feel.
Bob by Mr Shakir's Beat Store combines a familiar bassline with melodic keys, a little bit of scratching and if I'm not mistaken, Caldwell's taken two copies of this and pulled off a little juggle.
Mako and David Brown bring together the sounds of Sydney on Sydney Interlude where the urban sounds of Sydney (crosswalk beeps, buses and cars) come together with David Brown on the saxophone. From here the mix moves onto faster tempos starting off with Amp Fiddler's Superficial - jazzy house with vocals on a funky soul tip.
Mixed Business moves into electro with Mako's mix of the Little Beasties Digitize Me - deep techy electro beats with vocodered female vocal samples. Mako appears again with Bass Kleph on their tech house/breaks hybrid Like, Abort Juan.
Clyde and Capitol A throw in some hip house to the mix with Serve It Up and the vibe is continued on Marlow's Exposed injecting a little Chicago house flavour to the mix before Simon Caldwell ends the mix off with Edwin Starr's I Just Wanna Do My Thing - a slice old skool funk which is guaranteed to get any dancefloor moving.
For someone who is usually billed as an electro DJ, Simon Caldwell mix for Mixed Business sees him traversing through a broad spectrum of music from 70's funk, early and current electro, deep tech house, breakbeat and a little turntablism in between. Good to see variety thrown in mixes nowadays as a CD full of batty house would be absolutely boring.