1. Wiley – If You’re Going Out I’m Going Out Too*
2. Little Boots – Stuck On Repeat
3. Portishead – Machine Gun
4. Midnight Juggernauts – Road To Recovery*
5. Hot Chip – One Pure Thought
6. Erykah Badu – Amerykahn Promise
7. The Presets – This Boy’s In Love
8. Scooter – The Question Is What Is The Question*
9. Santogold – LES Artistes (XXXChange Remix)
10. Barbara Morgenstern – Come To Berlin (Telefon Tel Aviv Remix)
11. Digitonal – Ana Kata
12. Annie – Songs Remind Me Of You*
13. Hercules & Love Affair – Time Will
14. Estelle ft. Kanye West – American Boy
15. Estelle – Wait A Minute (Just A Touch)
16. The-Dream – Ditch That*
17. Solange – T.O.N.Y.
18. Grace Jones – Williams Blood (Aeroplane Remix)
19. Goldfrapp – Happiness*
20. Nivea – I Might
21. Surkin – Next Of Kin*
22. Air France – June Evenings
23. Alphabeat – Fascination (Bimbo Jones Remix)
24. Midnight Juggernauts – Into The Galaxy*
25. Sebastian Tellier – Divine
26. Erykah Badu – The Healer
27. Santogold – Lights Out
28. Nas ft. Keri Hilson – Hero
29. Cut Copy – Out There On The Ice
30. Little Boots – Meddle
31. M83 – Couleurs
32. The Shortwave Set – No Social (Optimo Espacio Remix)
33. Beyonce – Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)
34. Kelley Polar – Entropy Reigns (In The Celestial City)
35. Das Pop – Fool For Love (Aeroplane Remix)
36. Hot Chip – Ready For The Floor
37. Annie – My Love Is Better
38. Britney Spears – Mannequin
39. Crystal Castles – Air War
40. Friendly Fires – Paris (Aeroplane Remix)
41. Surkin – White Knight Two
42. Booka Shade – Charlotte
43. Kanye West – Paranoid
44. Hercules & Love Affair – You Belong
45. Santogold – Creator*
46. Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored By Destiny*
47. Moby – Ooh Yeah (Kris Menace Remix)
48. Late Of The Pier – Focker
49. Eric Prydz – Pjanoo
50. Erykah Badu – Honey
51. Wiley – Wearing My Rolex
52. MGMT – Kids
53. Wookie ft. Ny – Falling Again
54. Sy Smith – Conflict
55. Air France – No Way Down
56. Hercules & Love Affair – Blind (Club Mix)
57. Whitest Boy Alive – Golden Cage (Fred Falke Remix)
58. Friendly Fires – Jump In The Pool
59. Kanye West – Love Lockdown
60. Goldfrapp – A&E (Hercules & Love Affair Remix)
61. Adele – Cold Shoulder (Rusko Remix)
62. Ladytron – Deep Blue
63. Alphabeat – Boyfriend
64. Simian Mobile Disco – Clock
65. Gang Gang Dance ft. Tinchy Stryder – Princes
66. Late Of The Pier – The Bears Are Coming
67. Apparat – Arcadia (Telefon Tel Aviv Remix)
68. Last Shadow Puppets – The Age Of The Understatement
69. Booka Shade – Control Me
70. Shed – Estrange
71. D Lissvik – Track 4
72. Jazmine Sullivan – Dream Big
73. Portishead – The Rip
74. Annie – Bad Times
75. Lone – Cali Drought
76. Ladyhawke – Magic
77. Cut Copy – Far Away
78. Grace Jones – Hurricane
79. Kid Cudi – Day And Night (Crookers Remix)
80. Skepta – Rolex Sweep
81. Sy Smith – Spies
82. Mattafix – Things Have Changed
83. Rubies ft. Feist – I Feel Electric (Tiedeye Remix)
84. School Of Seven Bells – Half Asleep
85. Sway ft. Stush – F Ur X
86. The Tough Alliance – Neo Violence (Laidback Luke Remix)
87. M83 – Kim And Jessie
88. Sebastian Tellier – Elle
89. N-Dubz – Don’t Get Nine
90. Michelle Williams – Hungover
91. Neon Neon – Dream Girls
92. Kelly Rowland – Work (Freemasons Remix)*
93. Keane – Spiralling
94. Jordin Sparks & Chris Brown – No Air
95. Juan Maclean – Happy House
96. J*Davey – Mr Mister
97. Goldfrapp – Clowns*
98. Blackout Crew – Put A Donk On It
99. Red Hot Entertainment – Junior Spesh
100. Janet Jackson – 2Nite

*first heard or first released in 2007

The first two parts of Ultramix 08 listenable and downloadable now from here. 6 more to come over the rest of the week…along with top 100 tracks of the year on this blog.

Put this together for a proposed 90 minute version (going for the same breakneck speed as yer Girl Talks) of the original Ultramix 90 set (which is gonna be reworked a little too some time in the near future), using a couple of iPod adverts because sexy visuals with the music sells it better. These ads always get me (relatively) excited and I really like them. They even seem to make the songs featured in them sound better. So I downloaded a couple from YouTube, worked out how to import FLVs into Premiere (which meant forking out a few quid for a plug-in licence) and re-edited the vids to fit the audio which was a preview clip I did for the mix nearly FOUR years ago now (scary). Look out for the 90:90 edition coming soon.

Following up on that Ciara vs Sasse mash-up, here it is in VIDEO form. I managed to find the original ‘Get Up’ clip and then edit it a little in Premiere so that the lip sync matches the slower speed of the acapella in the audio. Unfortunately this always seems to get desynchronised a little when uploaded to YouTube but it just about works still.

Hopefully the clip will be allowed to stay up. I haven’t bothered with YT after they suspended my old account while I was on holiday back in the Summer - never knew if this was more because of the promo edits such as the one above or because of footage of England goals I’d added for people to enjoy (probably the latter because some of those may have been commercially available). All very annoying. But hopefully I’ll get the other music vid edits done so far (inc. the Madonna/Biosphere/Autechre one from Ultramix 94) back on YT - in the meantime you can watch most if not all of them in the Flowplayer on the right >.

Oh and you may have noticed the new graphics on this site - a big improvement I think. Unfortunately I stupidly flattened the Photoshop file ft. all the different elements on different layers so will have to redo from scratch for further alterations.

First two were done earlier this year but all old components anyway. In each case I guess they represent a yearning for the minimal production ethos of so much recent R&B to shift to a broader, busier and richer sonic scope - or to take these formulaic yet relatively charismatic performances and map them onto deeper, darker, “dancier” territories. Because they touch on something SO good. In chronological order:

Cassie (’Me And U’ acapella) vs Etienne De Crecy (’Relax’)
I tried numerous acapellas over this sublime De Crecy track from his 2000 LP ‘Tempovision’ but Cassie’s works best. The connection between the two tracks is a deep melancholy but the difference is that Cassie’s smoulders into the night while Etienne’s blinds like sunshine. IMO he should definitely work with American contemporary soul singers.

Sasse (’Loosing Touch’) vs Ciara ft. Chamillionaire (’Get Up’ acapella)
Extract from recently completed part 11 of Ultramix 06. The wonderfully macabre mood of Sasse’s Italo revival track combined with Ciara’s slinky smooth vocal works better than you might expect.

Shakedown (’At Night’ acapella) vs 808 State (’Empire’)
Made the other day. Prior to the recent re-mastered issue of the great ‘Ex:El’ LP I’d been thinking about how well ‘Empire’, at least in essence, fits as a backing track for a late 80s Janet Jackson-esque pop song. Listen and you’ll get the idea - the ‘At Night’ vocal seemed to fit better than anything else I could find