I’d imagine the clubbing year of 2000 holds a place for all of us, so after a lot of listening and tracklist reviews I’ve ranked every essential mix from that year. You can try and argue, but you’ll be completely incorrect.

TOP TOP STUDIO MIXES

  1. Sasha - 27/2
  2. Laurent Garnier - 30/1
  3. Parks & Wilson - 9/4
  4. Tyrant - 12/11
  5. Steve Lawler - 16/7
  6. Josh Wink - 10/9
  7. Mr C - 2/1
  8. Carl Cox - 20/2
  9. Leftfield - 16/4
  10. Stewart Rowell - 14/5

GOOD LIVE SHARED MIXES

  1. Gatecrasher (Sasha, Seb Fontaine) - 18/6
  2. Love Parade (Tong, Maas, Morales) - 9/7
  3. Glastonbury (Fatboy Slim, Justin Robertson) - 25/6

TECHNO

  1. Slam - 19/11
  2. Mauro Picotto - 3/12
  3. Trevor Rockcliffe - 19/3
  4. Christian Smith - 5/11
  5. Dave Clarke - 16/1
  6. Dave Clarke - 29/10

PETE TONG &

  1. Pete Tong & Chris Fortier - 8/10*
  2. Pete Tong & Timo Maas - 22/10
  3. Pete Tong & Carl Cox - 5/3
  4. Pete Tong & Carl Cox - 13/8
  5. Pete Tong & Alex Anderson - 10/12*

MEH LIVE SHARED MIXES

  1. Homelands (S&D, Tong, Van Dyk) - 28/5
  2. Amnesia & Space (Rampling, Tong, Garnier, Fatboy Slim, Actual Fatboy) - 6/8*
  3. Creamfields (Tong, Oakenfold, Said Fatty) - 27/8
  4. NYE (bunch of nonsense, also including Fatty) - 31/12*

HOUSE

  1. Erick Morillo & Harry Choo Choo Romero - 24/12
  2. Roger Sanchez - 30/4
  3. Rhythm Masters - 15/10

TRANCE

  1. Scott Bond - 9/1
  2. Paul Van Dyk - 23/4
  3. Paul Oakenfold - 21/5
  4. Paul Van Dyk - 17/5
  5. Paul Oakenfold - 13/2
  6. Guy Ornadel - 23/1
  7. John 00 Fleming - 26/11

MASTURBATORY

  1. David Holmes - 24/9
  2. William Orbit - 6/2

FORGETTABLE

  1. Frankie Knuckles - 17/5
  2. Rocky - 4/6
  3. Jazzy M & Nick Holloway - 2/4
  4. Luke Neville - 30/7
  5. Cut & Paste - 11/6
  6. DJ Sneak - 26/3
  7. Norman Jay - 20/8
  8. Danny Rampling - 3/9
  9. Sharp Boys & Alan Thompson - 2/7
  10. MJ Cole - 12/3
  11. Judge Jules - 7/5
  12. Lisa Lashes - ⅒
  13. Nightmare Team - 23/7

*Trisco “Muzak” gets an airing

    zackster

    I know you’re a Mauro Picotto stan…gotta say, his EMix here is pretty damn good. Fast as all hell, but no pots and pans to be found. Considered it for top 10.

        jonattonyeah it’s amongst my favorites. That was a great time for techno. Everything was made on the Yamaha SU700, now impractical to own, but always been a white whale piece of gear for me. Anyways back to the mix… his mixing is on point and the trance bit some time around the half way mark really hits the spot.

          Have you actually bothered to listen to all of these?

          Kudos for the Trisco alert, top stuff.

          Seem to remember that Rocky one being decent, but maybe I had lower standards then.

          Immense work JTY.

          Would be deserving of some kind of award if not for the iffy date format

          Does Masturbatory mean it’s good or bad? The David Holmes was superb imo

          jonattonyeah MEH LIVE SHARED MIXES

          Personally, I have never liked these Essential Mixes where you get 2-3 djs, sometimes only for 45 minutes. Totally pointless, annoying, Tongy almost always muscles in somewhere with a shite set of his own (my opinion has always been great radio dj, shite club dj).

          I much prefer the studio mixes.

            JTY should be downvoted for using the stupid American dating system.

            Only cardinal date format makes sense, anyone who can program knows that.

            Dates amended. Never crossed my mind TBH.

            And, yes I listened to most of them. Some I couldn’t find so relied on the tracklist. Some I did some skipping through as I cannot handle Sasha I mean Danny Rampling going full handbag for two hours.

            Masturbatory = Self-indulgent. Like, oh hey I’m on the biggest house/techno dance music show on the planet…time to break out the bossanova records!

            And if you think the groupings are a bit odd, I found the difference between number 14 and number 28 to be pretty marginal. So thought putting them in general categories and ranking within made more sense.

            Trying to figure out if I should do 2001 or 1999 next.

            jonattonyeah Something even better could be a listening club. Each day you post up an Essential Mix and tracklisting from back in the day (a decent variety of house, techno, trance, POWERPROG ™, breaks etc). Everyone who wants to join in listens to it and gives their comments on how boss it is.

              Given how restrained and mature we are, as well as so willing to listen to other points of view, that should work a treat…

                Curated by Jonattan. Heavyweight modding by Homegrove.

                -si- fuck off with your shit opinions. obligatory safety wink.

                • -si- replied to this.

                    -si- haha there’s no way it takes me 3 comments to explain again to ed why it’s a terrible mix.

                      Smallman1 i love that you don’t know what a good mix sounds like, but i’m the one having a reg.

                        Let’s launch our own version of Tim’s twitter listening party 😂

                        jonattonyeah Just listened to it on my afternoon bike ride. That took me back. I used to listen to it on my mini disc player. Picotto is such an odd guy. He never really played in techno line ups, and he quickly turned his back on the style all together, which really makes me question how much he ever knew about the whole thing. I remember there being a story about him unplugging everything from the mixer before handing over to Carl Cox at some festival, which lead to things getting heated. No idea if it true. Mauro always had a very unique techno sound. Somewhere between detroit and schranz techno.

                            zackster I have him firmly down as a hard house dj, with pretentions to something more, which he never achieved.

                                Amps that was exactly my thought. and after my 007 experience this week, i’m not going back to listen to it.

                                  Amps He played in those lineups, but I wouldn’t call him hard house. He’s done techno trance and cringe euro house stuff to the best of my knowledge. The only time I ever saw him he played a lot of trance, and not his tech-trance style either. Like big room Tiesto shit. It was extremely disappointing and I have no idea why he did it. His Mega Nite party was huge in Ibiza at the time, and that was very much a techno night.

                                  • Amps replied to this.

                                      I did think it was interesting that Tong opened up by calling him “The Michael Jackson of Dance Music”. VERY sus.

                                      • Amps replied to this.

                                        zackster Yeah, I like a dj like Garnier who can basically play anything and make it make sense, like you would know where he was coming from, but Picotto just didn’t seem to have a place some how. As mentioned I saw him play several hours of what was basically hard techno with no break downs of any sort, like monotonous hypnotic techno, but, I dunno, it was just odd. Think everyone in the place was expecting the Lizard and Komodo etc. They didn’t get it.

                                          Will never forget the first time I heard the Lizard played out. It was fucking mindblowing.

                                            zackster Does he have proper credibility with the hardcore techno fraternity?

                                                Amps not that I am aware of. Can’t think of anyone that played his tunes, other then him. There were rumors of him being a massive racist.

                                                    alistair yeah, regardless of what people think of him, the dude made some hits. He played Back to Cali when I saw him, and the place went bananas.

                                                      zackster massive racist.

                                                      Fuckin lollers, that’ll really dent the global career.

                                                          Amps who knowns if it’s true, but I have to admit it feels right.

                                                          Also, his scene is coming back to me now. He played with people like Marco V, Joy Kitikonti, Fergie, ex… very weird mix that did kinda skirt techno trance and hard house come to think of it.

                                                          • Amps replied to this.

                                                              zackster Fergie,

                                                              Say no more, De Vit hard house fan boy, who cottoned on to techno, dragged a scene with him and then… just disappeared. Dunno anything about him, but he seemed to be a fair decent DJ and radio presenter, no idea why he isn’t still DJing techno to people.