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In high school, I sucked up to my AP econ teacher by name-dropping Sasha & Digweed and their Northern Exposure mixes. In college, I was typecast as an ecstasy dealer at Beyond in San Bernardino, and, long before the org was as much of an institution as Insomniac, once attended a mini-HARD fest at Club Nokia, now the Novo, where (separately) I also saw Miike Snow (had to leave the show early because I was nauseated by the combo of fake smoke & maybe undercooked Kraft microwavable mac ‘n cheese), Robyn (<3), and Mark Ronson in his Business Intl. era (one of those songs is still a custom ringtone on my phone, set for my high school friend Alex).
Basically, I happened to be in the right place (southern California) at the right time (early 2010’s) to witness electronic dance music’s* dizzying ascent to Big Pop Supremacy, but my interest in that kind of high BPM offering began many years ago. As a kid, I played a lot of Dance Dance Revolution, specifically Extreme 2, and hang on, I did a cursory search about the game to look up the soundtrack and a forum (!) walkthrough came up, with this opening salvo:
Damn. Um, anyway, I loved the songs I heard/played through DDRX2, those propulsive and primitively (effective) emo-otional odysseys that also reminded me of a lot of the ecstatic techno used in Gundam openings and AMVs (that’s “anime music videos”) at the time. In fact, my all-time favorite AMV creator** exclusively used trance tracks for their BGM. Which is to say, I’m overdue for a dance/trance-forward playlist***, and I finally got my shit together to make one happen, just in time for summer’s last gasp.
Miscellany:
I’m no longer on YouTube music (blame Colin) so all I’ve got to share is a Spotify embed, unless you too are on Pl*x for music…!
This playlist began in February, with the release of “Von dutch,” so…yeah.
This isn’t a workout playlist, but it isn’t not a workout playlist. I originally wanted to make a mix that was just jock jams but about 20 tracks into that plan, my ears begged me for a change of intensity. There are some “breaks” built in; I plan on listening to this while rowing, running, or doing other immersive cardio. It’s also great writing music, if you’re into that kind of thing :^)
The hardest transition to sequence was the outro of the mixed Challengers theme… All the mixed tracks were a pain to match. (I will probably keep tweaking them.) My favorite transition is “Shelter” → “Everything is romantic.” (The strings 🤝)
I don’t think I pulled music from any of their artists lmao but I featured a lot of acts from that era, so this is lowkey dedicated to ma chère Valerie <3
Lisa…do you like it?
Because of my music platform “of choice,” I’m having a harder time with impulsive music exploration. So: if you have a favorite Pop Remix—the kind of thing that’s normally tucked into a single release or bootlegged from a set—please let me know. (Sasha did some big ones back in the day, so that’s where I’m going to start digging.)
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Thanks for "listening." Stay tuned...!
🎶 xoxo Lio
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*this both does and doesn’t mean the genre you might ID as “EDM”
**as if
***obligatory reminder that the best thing I’ve ever written (excluding the book[s]) is this piece
****I changed all of my playlist “covers” to mimic the Brat cycle style 🤗
♬ﾟ࿐⋆｡♪₊˚. ݁₊ ⊹ *:･ﾟ. ݁