To kick off the new year, and to try to whittle down the ever-lengthening list of mixes I hope to notch into my belt, I thought I'd try my hand at another artist profile selection, this time tackling the drumset with dancemaster Tango and, once baked, sprinkling a little sugar over the concoction with his ravetastic missus, DJ Fallout. To be honest, until the last year or so, I hadn't given him or his tunes much more notice than to think of him as he is probably most well known: a darkside hardcore producer who dwelt amongst the ranks of Ratty and threw down some storming sets in the early days of the scene. A slew of releases under his pajamas, he made his first appearance as a remixer on Formation #2, was the star of his own EP on Formation #4, and throughout the early to mid nineties steadily pumped out the wax on labels such as F-Project, Face, Legend, IQ, Creative Wax and Moving Shadow.
After conducting a thorough, long-overdue investigation of the Formation and Moving Shadow back catalogues, I noticed a name kept popping up that I was familiar with, but not enough to say I really knew his work - and what I was hearing of it, I liked, liked so much that even my fussiness could no longer allow me to overlook it. And so, nine months later, here we are, a representative sample of his lesser known jungle work, 45 minutes worth to be exact, much of it tucked away on compilations that don't cross your desk too often, or singles where it's all too easy to forget the name of the man who "remixed that tune." There's the occasional female vocal, a smidgeon of ragga, some stabs, stutter-steps and hip-hop samples, but for the most part, it's jungle pure and simple: clean, powerful bass, soaring pads, searing strings, and some of the rollingest breaks ever to inhabit the black crack.
Special thanks to DJ Nee of Enormous Mouse fame for the remake of the original, unreleased version of Revelations.
Tykal_-_Takes_Two_to_Tango
http://dnbshare.com/download/Tykal_-_Takes_Two_to_Tango.mp3.html
mirror: http://rapidshare.com/files/335778273/Tykal_-_Takes_Two_to_Tango.mp3
01 (00:00) Cloud Nine - Blissful Ignorance (Tango Remix) - Moving Shadow
02 (03:00) The Full SP - Raw Basics (Tango Remix) - Face
03 (06:48) On Remand - Controllin' (Tango Remix) - Underworld Vinyl
04 (08:53) DJ Gwange - Adrenalin (Tango Remix) - Legend
05 (12:18) Fallen Angels - Frequency (Tango Remix) - Creative Wax
06 (15:50) Tango - Revelations (DJ Nee's Remake) - Unreleased
07 (17:59) DJ Fallout - Love Me - Rough Tone
08 (19:49) Tango - Understanding - Moving Shadow
09 (22:34) Tango - War for '94 - IQ
10 (25:56) Tango - Project 1 (Remix) - Formation
11 (29:26) DJ Fallout - Ripper - Rough Tone
12 (31:04) The Committee - Final Conflict (Tango Remix) - Creative Wax
13 (34:48) Tango - Fever - Moving Shadow
14 (38:37) Drum & Bass - Low Down & Funky (Tango Remix) - Formation
15 (40:43) International Rude Boyz - Paragone (Tango VIP Mix) - Formation
PS: That his wife, in my opinion one of the top three female jungle DJs in the world, can hold her own both at the controls and in the lab, seems only natural to me, and needs no other explanation than to say: track down her Storm Warning release on Rough Tone, a couple of her 94/95 mixes floating around the web, and settle down for an evening of jungle the way Gaia intended. I venture you'll be hard pressed to find a better rude nipple to stick into your ear.
PPS: I hope this to be a prolific year and, at the end of it, to have cleared out most of the contents of my file entitled "mixes to make." Here's a list of what's in the works for those who'd like to take a sneak peek into the future: a series of label mixes featuring the jungle of Formation, Moving Shadow, Ibiza and Basement; some single artist mixes featuring Point Blank and Lennie De Ice; a couple "versus" mixes including B.L.I.M vs Loggi, and Simon Templa vs Law & Auder; a country series featuring oldskool from Sweden, Russia, France, The Netherlands, Germany and the USA; another atmospheric amen mix, another happy hardcore mix and another round or two of Jazzgle; Outer Dementias Part 2; a series of Funkgle mixes; a post 2K jungle mix (Equinox, ASC, Nebula etc); a Beyond Jungle mix (Squarepusher, Luke Vibert, Spring Heel Jack etc); and a couple other as yet unnamed selections.
