The Oracle of Apollo Snippets from the life of Apollo Lee

Five Mixes in Five Days

Over at Digeum, I’ve decided to close out the year with a set of five mixes in five days. Are you ready for some grooves? Right on! Here we go.

1. Monday – Digeum Mix Session 05M – “Orbit Around the Moon” – 1:18:39 @ 128 bpm – 78 minutes of tech house grooves, including the likes of Sunshine Jones, Pascal FEOS, Dennis Ferrer, Manuel Tur & dplay, and Touane.
2. Tuesday – Digeum Mix Session 05N – “Two-Stepping Tuesday” – 1:19:26 @ 130 bpm – Reaching into the Two-step/garage archives for 80 minutes of bouncing fun, with artists like MJ Cole, Kristine Blond, Sneaker Pimps, Club Asylum, and Teena Marie (RIP).
3. Wednesday – Digeum Mix Session 05O – “Three Sixty-Three” – 2:17:38 @ 128 bpm – Another beautiful long tech house mix, 26 tracks strong, with new-to-me cuts and old familiar tunes. Booka Shade, Dubtribe Sound System, Inland Knights, Style of Eye, Julien Jabre, and more.
4. Thursday – Digeum Mix Session 05P – “Countdown Eve” – 1:18:51 @ 125 bpm – Loaded with vocal deep house tracks, mainly familiar favorites, this was tremendously fun to mix. It’s even more fun to sing along to this in the car. Featuring Lisa Shaw, Blue Six, Chuck Love, Kaskade, and Kings of Tomorrow.
5. Friday – Digeum Mix Session 05Q – “Last Day Disco” – 1:18:36 @ 128 bpm – Disco-influenced funky house gems to get your blood up in a frenzy for New Year’s Eve. Music from Martin Solveig, Moloko, Mario Fabriani, Fish Go Deep, and Dubtribe Sound System. Unh!

I hope you enjoy some of these mixes. Doing five mixes in five days isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but it is really fun. Bonus: I burned three of these mixes to CD for the car.

No, I still haven’t installed a new stereo in my 2008 Pontiac, which has an aux button on the stock deck, but no 1/8″ jack. That’s on my list for 2011.

Digeum Mix Session 04T

It felt like a good day to dig into the two-step garage tracks again. Some of these bouncing syncopated abstract tracks really hit the spot on occasion and it’s been a couple of months since my last garage mix.

This one is twenty-six tracks. That’s just over two hours. Some of these tunes are old dusties from the mid-90s that I dug off obscure compilations from the UK. Others are recent additions to my library, discovered by surprise from eMusic. There’s a lot of soul, some beautiful vocals, and some funky basslines here. Mmm. It feels nice.

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 04, Session Tango — Stepping Onward. Mixed by Apollo Lee in Sunnyvale, California, USA, on Sunday, July 11, 2010. Running time: 2:03:11.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.

Digeum Mix Session 04S

Today’s mix, full of vocal tracks, featured a bunch of flanger play (again). I had a lot of fun putting this together. I wanted to play a set of fun songs that clocked in just under the CD burn limit.

I hope this collection of deep house grooves gets your head nodding.

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 04, Session Sierra — Fireworks Friday. Mixed by Apollo Lee in Sunnyvale, California, USA, on Friday, July 02, 2010. Running time: 1:19:48.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.

Digeum Mix Session 04R

I’ve been listening to a lot of tech house and electro lately, so I wanted to reach back into the soulful deep house treasure chest. This one came out nice and mellow with lots of vocal grooves that just make me smile.

In a couple of spots, I got a little carried away with flangers and other effects processors. But, it was all in good fun. I have a great time spinning these mixes.

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 04, Session Romeo — Solstice Eve Stepping. Mixed by Apollo Lee in Sunnyvale, California, USA, on Sunday, June 20, 2010. Running time: 1:16:57.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.

Barbell and Bumpers

This afternoon, Eric and I got together to move his barbell and 260 pounds of rubber bumpers to my garage. They were stored in the garage of a relative, among a bunch of other stored items. He wasn’t able to use them sequestered in there. My garage is newly empty and freshly cleaned out by the people tearing up my house.

All the equipment fit in my car. The plates vary in weight from ten pounds to forty-five. Everything’s brand new. So, we set up in my garage gym and got down to business with the first workout.

The workout of the day today was five rounds of five rep sets of the deadlift. I figured it would behoove me to start light to make sure I had the form right. I started out at 135, finished the fifth set at 205, and tried one at 235. Eric, on the other hand, started where I left off and finished with all the plates on the bar (305).

So, it looks like I can do barbell work in my garage. Now, all I need is a bench and a set of squat stands. Thumbs up for new gear.

Thanks, Eric!

Digeum Mix Session 04Q

I upgraded to Traktor Pro the other day. After a couple of fumbled attempts to get started this evening, I stopped trying to mix without sync and tried to get the hang of this new software.

Fortunately, I picked out a small group of tech house and electro tracks that should be pretty easy to mix. There were a few dicey spots that are barely noticeable in the final mix, but the double effects processors are fun to play with. I eventually kicked into my groove. This was fun. I’ll get more confident with Traktor Pro soon.

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 04, Session Quebec — Bumpgrade. Mixed by Apollo Lee in Sunnyvale, California, USA, on Tuesday, June 08, 2010. Running time: 2:11:03.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.

Upgrading to Traktor Pro

This month, Native Instruments is running a deal by which I could upgrade Traktor from version 3 to the new Traktor Pro for half price. This made my upgrade less than $45.

Tonight, I took it for a little test spin and noticed immediately how drastically different many of the controls are. For one, my usual looping controls are all out of whack. There are multiple effects processors, which is nifty, but the new controls will take some getting used to. The tempo clock measures to two decimal places now, so I’ll have rely more heavily on sync than I did in recent mixes.

The upgrade was fairly painless. I was happy with Traktor 3, but if I ever finally upgrade OS X to Snow Leopard (which I bought a couple of months ago and haven’t installed yet), I need Pro. I guess we’ll see how the next mix goes.

Digeum Mix Session 04P

Jay Def works up another lip-curling tech house mix, full of filthy basslines and tough beats. This three-hour mix has that underground warehouse party feel, when a new DJ takes over at 2 and inches us closer to dawn. Hell yes, Jay. Nicely done!

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 04, Session Pap — Blip Beat BBQ. Mixed by Jay Def in Meridian, Idaho, USA, on Sunday, May 30, 2010. Running time: 2:52:08.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.

Digeum Mix Session 04O

Today felt like an opportunity to make a friend smile. So, I pulled together some of my favorite vocal house tracks, filled out with artists like Dubtribe Sound System, Jay Tripwire, Lisa Shaw, and Samantha James. This one’s for Amanda, my smiling friend who is always excited about everything.

Keep dancing, Amanda. I hope you like this music.

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 04, Session Oscar — Dancing with Amanda. Mixed by Apollo Lee in Sunnyvale, California, USA, on Sunday, May 23, 2010. Running time: 1:16:14.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.

Digeum Mix Session 04N

Jay Def takes no prisoners in this fist-pumping set of tech house gems. For just over two hours, he delivers twerky synths, gritty basses, and beats that makes you go “UNH.”

Each track is carefully chosen. Some of them are stomping, and some of them are goofy and hilarious. One of them spins into an Irish fiddle tune. This big variety keeps a fun groove going until the very last track.

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 04, Session November — Hit It, Brobot. Mixed by Jay Def in Meridian, Idaho, USA, on Friday, May 21, 2010. Running time: 2:08:40.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.