Kudos for managing to get through all these, including the many shite ones. How many days/weeks etc. did it take?!

jonattonyeah

  1. Switch
    Like Deep Dish, Switch should know better and gets docked accordingly. One of the better producers at the time who just completely loses this mix in the middle.

As you say he was really taking off as a producer then and I saw him play a couple of times in that era and enjoyed his sets, so I was curious to see you say this about his EM. I skimmed through it out of curiosity and by heck you’re right! What the heck was he thinking in that mid-section? Dull as dishwater.

jonattonyeah 35. Dave Clarke

I’m usually a defender of this arrogant weirdo but this is just a racket. His schizophrenic mixing style has worked in the past but this mix just falls flat.

Dude wtf? Sure it’s not as good as his 2000 EM, but I still rinsed this at the time. It’s a very good mix. Heck, it deserves top 5 just for that bit with UR - Transition alone.

jonattonyeah FAVORITE TRACK:
Mutiny - Dem Girls (Solid Groove Mix) [Underwater]

Lol, this brings back memories - this was one of my fav tracks to play at house parties (when I was more in to house music).

jonattonyeah The mixing is on point and my favorite track, from one of my go-to production teams around then, I’d never heard before. Proper chugger.

FAVORITE TRACK:
Peace Division - Take Me I’m Yours [Low Pressings]

You’ve posted a youtube link to the wrong version of the track btw. I don’t know what version Behrouz uses though, could be unreleased given that EP was titled ‘Unreleased Projects Remixed’.

Bizarrely enough, 6 months ago I searched for another, even better version of this track - which was a version I’d remembered hearing at the time somehow - and the only trace of it I found was in the youtube vid below. I asked the guy who uploaded the vid where he got the track from and he answered like an unhelpful twat:

jonattonyeah This mix gets docked for an awful, awful Sander K song. I was on public transportation and my mouth was agape. It’s so bad. Given how good the “4 Seasons” EP is, and the expectations following, I don’t really have any problem saying “The Right Time” is one of the worst songs ever produced given the supposed talent therein.

Dear god, it’s even worse than ‘The Fruit’! I didn’t think that was possible.

jonattonyeah 10 & 9 (played twice). Above & Beyond
jonattonyeah Docked for being Trance for people who like Prog and Prog for people who like Trance.
jonattonyeah FAVORITE TRACK:
It’s just trance and I can’t be fussed to go through it again.

Lol, the middle part about why you “docked” this mix is so true.

But on that note, “favorite track” should really be Probspot "Foreplay’, released on Hooj’s sister label Lost Language. It really embodies the description of the music you posted. It’s a really well produced, big tune; enough so that I even bought the vinyl and liked listening to it. However, it remains possibly the softest and cheesiest prog/trance track I’ve ever bought, and I could never fit it in to any mixes.

It deserves some major credit though for predating that big Deadmau5 / Kaskade etc. heavily-sidechained warm trance pads sound by a full 2 years. It’s really quite remarkable to the point where I wonder if it directly influenced deadmau5′ productions.

jonattonyeah 6. Paolo Mojo

Yes I enjoyed this mix at the time. Good choice of favourite track as well; another one I also had the vinyl of.

jonattonyeah 3. Desyn Masiello

This was great, I listened to it a lot. I’d have put it at 2 behind Dave Clarke. It was really fresh at the time and still sounds pretty unique. For that brief period Desyn was one of a very few DJs who made the more electro-ish direction dance music was heading in at that time actually sound good. “Favorite track” has to be this one though, what a tune! I must have heard it a few times at Bugged Out’s nights at The End:

jonattonyeah 1. James Zabiela

I’m actually with Smalls on this one - too busy. As with a lot (or perhaps the vast majority?) of Zabiela’s mixes it has the occasional excellent moment, but then somehow even more when it just seems to lose the plot a bit.

                        Mahoosive respect to Jonathan tbf. Talk about research.

                        Listened to a few of these that year and reading back the comments brought a lot of it back.

                        Mix of the year goes to Desyn for me personally

                        Desyn was good for a while so much so that I stayed in Heaven’s room 2 for the last three hours when Digweed was playing the main room. That and the fact the main room was too hot!

                        Loads of burds in the SOS room for Desyn too. More room to get your swag on too. Then heads down for Digweed a bit later.

                          jonattonyeah Might do 2000 next.

                          Spoiler alert:

                          If Dave Clarke’s from that year isn’t at no.1 then you’re wrong and need your head examined. Trufax.

                            zackster I cannot fully explain the ferocity with which I hate this song.

                            “We all live and die”

                            nerr, nerr ner

                                hugopal

                                Just having some fun, Hugo. I’ll reply to the rest when I’m home. It’s a very long process getting through these 110/112 whatever hours of music - much of it very bad - and multiple listens for some.

                                I stand by the top 10 or so. After that I have to group mixes together for my own sanity. If people have issues with it well go ahead and listen to these mixes on your own then. It’s not fun! Is number 40 or whatever better than 32? Sure. Maybe. But keeping them in like-minded groupings made sense to me.

                                The Dave Clarke mix is just a racket. And I consider myself a fan. By 2004 mixing and technique had gotten too good to tolerate cheap crossfader tricks and drunken record smashing. He plays good tracks. But the presentation was headache-inducing. Like a two-hour root canal.

                                EDIT oh and I might pass on 2000 as I think I already know what’ll be #1. No fun in that.

                                  zackster

                                  No opinion really (other than Howells’ Madonna mashup being terrible) but it was the song of the year without any doubt. I was taken aback by the diversity of DJ’s who played it. I would guess there were months there where it was played every night out, likely multiple times

                                      Millsy Went on a few SOS boat parties….. tremendous

                                        zackster

                                        If Sander played “The Right Time” I wouldn’t blame you for killing yourself let alone attending another prog party.

                                            hugopal “We all live and die”

                                            I always thought they were saying “we are little vampires”. @Smallman1 is the one who broke the news to me that I had it wrong.

                                              jonattonyeah he absolutely could have. It was an unbelievably bad night. I can’t believe how many bad tunes were played.

                                                Dan Is this the same Steve Lavers that remixed ‘Musak’!?!?!?! 🤯

                                                • Dan replied to this.

                                                    By the way, I seemed to play a lot of the essential mixes from this year at the time, agree with the top 4 but with Desyn at the top + probably Choo Choo Romero to round off the top 5.

                                                    Holy fuck this must have taken some time!

                                                    Agree with Hugo about Desyn. I chanced seeing him a year later and the sound coming out of him and Omid 16b around then was something new for sure.

                                                    I also loved Neil Quigley around 06/07 who wasn’t the same as Desyn but the difference in the sound paired with the way it just worked for people loving Prog/House reminded me of this and I wished I was exposed to more back then.

                                                    Two deep dish pizzas LOL

                                                    As for Masiello, I ranked the mix third. That’s very high praise. I put Black Strobe ahead because it sounds ahead of its time. I put Zabiela ahead because it did the most you could do with two hours.

                                                    Swap out any of the top three and I have no problem with it.

                                                    That said, having going though all of these, the top two stood out. Not boring. Not dated. This is a RANKING so I have to make some tough decisions.

                                                      jonattonyeah I’m not criticising your work Jonathan.

                                                      And personally I would definitely rank you top two North American poster, just above Loopstick but below Veja Horseface.

                                                        Fair play I would say it must taken some amount of time!

                                                        Listen to Pongwater, oh woe is me, I had to listen to 100-odd hours of essential mixes, when everyone on the fucking board listens to mixes all the time, probably whenever they’re at home, doing work, on the subway or whatever.

                                                        It’s not like he had to stick a needle in his japper every time Pete Tong did a voiceover.

                                                        Basically, even when doing something decent, Mongwater can’t do it without being a moany cunt: “look at the burden I had to bear for you”

                                                        SM001 Yep ….plus he did some work with Fluke’s frontman.

                                                            Dan Can we all have is autograph?

                                                            • Dan replied to this.

                                                                SM001 I’ll ask him next time I see him. He normally drinks in the Ship in Chelmsford. He was remixing Mick Jagger when he about 23 and his live set up played at Glastonbury. Talented bugger.

                                                                  Used to hammer this one by him.

                                                                  I’m late to this but has Jon gone through all this work just to let everyone know what his fave EM of 2004 is? Bloody hell, mate, why did you do this to yourself? A similar thread will be started by some plug in a few months again anyway or this one will descend into ‘Post your favourite EM’ in no time at all. Hugo debating him on the choices then as per fucking Christ, lol

                                                                  Anyway, I don’t remember the Zabiela one so I’ll check it I suppose.

                                                                    I sent Zabiela the Björk-remix he played on the essential mix. KLANG. Introvert pressed a small patch of 12 inches of the remix and gave me a copy to thank me. He got a lot of publicity out of it being on an essential mix. No idea what he’s doing these days, lost touch with him over the years.

                                                                    Part owns a Salon in Southampton Zabiela.

                                                                    Does hair, nails and beauty treatments.

                                                                      Smallman1 I like to think this is how Hernan, Zabiela and Diggers will all end up. Side by side stylists in an up market salon. Mincing and reminiscing. It’s destiny.

                                                                          Brilliant thread mate. Can see you put a lot of work into it. Think Desyn would have made it to the top for me followed by Zabiela as a close second place.

                                                                          It’s been mentioned here already, but I think Desyn and other similar DJs really contributed to the evolution of the sound lifting the scene out of its recession in the early 2000s. Obviously this is what tends to happen anyway the sounds change and you get different trends but I think without it, prog wouldn’t have been able to evolve as it did. Not the only factor of course but a big factor from my perspective.

                                                                          The other ones that I think of apart from Desyn, SOS etc are Luke Fair and Add2Basket, both were quite underrated in my opinion but just revitalised the sounds and took it in a different direction. The Rogue Show, that Luke and Add2Basket did was just incredible.

                                                                          Nice one mate. Hoping to see other EM reviews for different years.