DJ mixes.

I listen to a lot of dance music, and I've been a fan of mix-CDs for a long time. But I don't listen to as many online-available mixes as I might, or rather I didn't until recently. The logic is simple: the established media from which I largely make my living didn't/doesn't care about these things, for the most part. Not to mention that there are so damn many of them floating around I wouldn't know where to begin or end.

That began to change last year. Along with the single-track MP3s I picked up, I started downloading DJ mixes as well. The obvious turning point here was the Resident Advisor Podcast, which I began paying attention to early in '07 and then started looking around for older and out of print ones. Nothing like a collectible to usher you in, right? Especially an ongoing one. But it helped solidify an approach to MP3 mixes that I still basically follow: I'll happily try it out (or add it to my Word doc for later), but I never go out of my way to find a DJ set. I like them to be good accidents.

And because they're long and because I am honor-bound to play them through--and because it's January and the big thing I'm working on isn't about records, I have time to troll through things at my leisure--I've been listening to more mixes. RA.137 just finished, RA.138 now begun--137 sounded nice, no real bead on it, though. I've played the Joker Purple Wow Sound mix FACT put up (and Philip just mentioned) a few times, no serious bead on that one other than I like it and it's probably definitive for all that weirdo bass stuff I like. (Which is a bead, sure, but that's exactly as far as it goes: I'm talking about the vibe/hype surrounding it. That all feels factual to me. I'd just need to dig deeper into it to figure out the ways it's doing those things, to my ears and to the folks inside that circle.) I've been listening to Grandfather Paradox to review.

And of course, I'm behind: seven minutes into the hourlong Rene Breitbarth RA.138, playing it now out of necessity (though hey, techno sounds good right now). That's because I never got back to those SoulBounce playlists; I could probably guess which songs were the ones I need to hear and play them, but I do enjoy hearing this stuff in groups--I don't know a lot of it, so it helps to hear in sequence. I still have nOvaMatic's and Ro's left. (None of them are complete, by the way. As mentioned, I can't find my Jazmine Sullivan CD.)

I might as well lay out what else I'm behind on. I still have five of those Forced Exposure CDs to play, though the pile they occupied by their lonesome got shuffled around big-time over the past few days. Worse, I requested two more from their most recent promo mailing. An upshot: I realized today that I haven't bought a single CD yet this year. I wonder how long I can keep that up.