Music for your Christmas spirit 2005. We start out with the best that I have, because ... well, it's Christmas, innit. Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble (also appearing on the 2004 holiday set) create such richness of spirit with just voice and sax, your chest opens and your heart expands (*) ....

This year you'll hear material from Kriztal Entertainment's Reindeer Room series (a 3 disc set now available from emusic.com) -- smart reimaginings of Christmas classics, including one from Citrona Recordings' own Durbin Elf.

The Christmas Remixed sets take classic holiday tracks by standard-bearers like Nancy Wilson, Lou Rawls, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and give back reworks from the likes of awayTEAM, Mulato Beat and Robbie Hardkiss, all spicily updated for you. In one notable 50s wack meets brokenbeat pairing, Alexkid and DJ Sleep tackle Eartha Kitt's Santa Baby. There's even a Hannukah moment from Craig Taubman. And old favorites like the Yuji Ohno Trio return as well.

But! Mahalia Jackson is the Queen and the 46bliss remix that closes out the set pays the utmost respect to the power of her voice ... stick around until the Queen sings: it's transforming

Feel free to leave your comments under the tree

(*) "If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break: its purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold ever more wonders." -- Andrew Harvey

This message has been edited. Last edited by: MadameFLY,

it's a mix, of natural beauty.
outstanding.
blew me away miss fly

blew me away

Not normally my type of music, but as it's THAT time of year (....again? already? Time sure accelerates as you get older ) I took a listen. Some comments ....

Beautiful atmospheric opener

This must have been a muvva to mix ... many different tempos, styles, etc but it flowed nicely. Seemed to be nice overlays there too, but tricky to tell as it was all so well mixed

Fave bit was the back-back "Let it Snow" variants - beautifully done

Thanx mme - I'll be back to listen to more

N.

HI Mme,

Loved the opening, and particularly the inclusion of Purple Snowflakes - Marvin's sooo cool!

Personally, I could've done without Greensleeves (think this is because I automatically expect to hear a monotone robot voice over the top saying "please hold, your call is important to us, you are in a queue of 596 callers" *shiver*).

Loved the rework of Santa Baby!

As regards the mixing - it's difficult to comment effectively on this, because your style is so unique - I couldn't work out whether the mixes were due to the re-working of the tune, or down to your own effectiveness with the use of overlays, and using standard mxing techniques (as opposed to straight beatmatching).

However, do not take that as a negative AT ALL!!

The flow was smooth and seamless, and is truly one of the first times I can say that a mix has taken me on a journey - the mood came up, went back down again, and the building into some of the "classic" Xmas tracks alaways bought a smile to my face

Very enjoyable, thank you!

R.

Thanks to all who've commented ... Christmas sets are tricky (am I the only one to post a Christmas set this year? Maybe downtempo just naturally lends itself to remixing / updating this material....) Usually we've heard these tunes 'to death' and, worse, associate them with elevator music But I think a few labels have worked hard to offer something listenable to modern ears and as my collection grows slightly each year, it keeps the incentive high to craft an enjoyable seasonal set....

The first track, from long-time ECM saxophonist Jan Garbarek, wasn't strictly a Xmas selection, but an experiment in combining the medieval art of liturgical music for voice with modern sax playing ... one of the disappointments of my life was to miss seeing this group perform at one of Washington DC's most beautiful (and acoustically proper) churches in 1994.

I have the same difficulty in figuring out what the DJs have added to tracks on a lot of the mixes I've listened to here ... once we get outside our proper (and relatively speaking, quite small) musical recognition area, we can really only comment on the effectiveness of the mix overall and not so much on technique ... and in this, we are like all of the guests that may visit and tune into the various stations ... If folks have done clever, tricky things during the mix, perhaps we should be posting screen shots in the Workshop thread to let our listeners in on the magic.

Just for the record, Instead of Snow employs no overlays, no loops or samples added by me ... however, the remixers did use a number of effects to update this material.

Hope everyone who celebrated it had a fine christmas ... this mix has been retired until next year ...

it's that time again!!

Mfly, great mix for a genre I normally can't stand. Smooth mixing, very catchy and it kept me listening, fantastic job.

I'm glad I caught it this year!

What a wonderful christmas mix with a lot of classics at the end.
Thanks for that, dear MadameFly.
But Mahalia Jackson´s silent night, holy night is unbeatable as the original!

Such a goose skin you get when you hear it!