Here’s the reason for the lack of posts recently – I’ve been working on this mix right here with the homie DJ Caution and our Chinese auntie friends. We’re super proud of this one, and confident to say that no one has done anything quite like this before. It all started when we realized that the 1983 mid-tempo hip-hop track “World’s Famous” by Malcom McLaren, the same dude who did “Buffalo Gals,” sounds fucking ill slowed down to 88 beats per minute (bpm) from its original 107 bpm.
Then we went through about 200 more tracks trying to find ones that sounded just right when pitched way down. Lots of songs sounded like complete garbage, but some sounded amazing at slow speeds – sometimes even better than the original track. Italo disco, boogie, and mid-tempo hip hop worked best. These songs have heavy analogue synthesizer-bass that sounds warm and deep when pitched down to the extreme, unlike songs made with software plugins/emulators that sound awful under these conditions. If you slow down most modern “electro,” (the kind that people have in mind when they ask the DJ to play something “dirty”) you can hear the audio bits breaking apart like a spilled box of digital Cherrios. But not with the tracks on this mix.
“Built for rainy days and purple sunsets – the January 2012 Chinese New Year mix by Shanghai’s SUPER AYI CLEANING TEAM members DJ Caution and Heatwolves. A carefully selected bag of italo disco, house, and hip hop, slowed down 30% and cut with some dusty old VHS tapes from around the world. Slow, bass-heavy, smokey, and sexy.”
Tracklist after the jump – hope you enjoy! We’re doing mixes every month this year, this is only the beginning. Continue reading ‘new mixtape from the SUPER AYI CLEANING TEAM – LOVE U LONG TIME’
