Textures

This month we have a carefully crafted guest mix by a long-time friend and excellent DJ: Magnus Keith.  In my new style of keeping descriptions short, let the music speak for itself!

Nnnnnnnext!  More tracks, so much good tunage!  More to come but enjoy this for now :) Rob C

I'll keep this short and sweet...Long time, glad to be back, some great tunes to set things off again.  Enjoy!   Rob C

For many years I spent a lot of time and effort planning out my sets for the podcast.  Meticulously going over every mix to ensure they were emaculate.  Well i'm getting old and I just don't have time for that $h!t anymore.  :) Well actually, I've found over the past year or so that I really enjoy just setting up the decks, hitting record and seeing what happens.  I have dozens of recordings from various jams.  Sometimes its with other DJs who stop by and other times it's just me solo behind the decks.  I've started to go through the last few months worth of recordings and pull out the ones that really seem to gel.  This month we have part one of a two part recording I did back in April.  I've trimmed it down to two 1:15 minute sections, though the original was over 3 hours! I will continue to publish these impromptu mixes as I find them. Enjoy! RC

Prism!  I have had the great pleasure to work closely with this collective since their inception.  Over the past year they have carved their way into the Calgary music scene playing a multitude of shows that have captured the spirit of what is going on here in the electronic music community.  Seamlessly mixing the styles of 2 DJs can be challenging.  Add two more to the mix and now you've really got a difficult task ahead.  These gents pull it off with amazing poise.  Will Devlin, Theo Hansen, Magnus Keith and Rick Sharma have curated and crafted a set that you'll find yourself listening to over and over.  I know I have.  Enjoy this mix crafted exclusively for Textures. Tracklist: 01. YokoO - You Said I Would (Jonas Saalbach Remix) 02. Kollektiv Turmstrasse - Last Call (Original Mix) 03. Neville Watson - Warchild (Original Mix) 04. YokoO - Xani (Original Mix) 05. Maxi Degrassi - Grunge (Bunge & Kevor Remix) 06. All Is Well - Vabene (Original Mix) 07. Atapy, Bog - Strung (Original Mix) 08. Hasan Mogol - Pr

I put this mix together for my good friend Wes Straub's 100th radio show for which he took over Digitally Imported's progressive channel for a whopping 12 hours of music.  This mix is also special as it is one hour of all original production work from your's truly.  This spans a number of tracks that I have produced over the past year along with a few classics from my sordid past. Several of these tracks will be released later this year on NuevaDeep. Tracklisting: Medway - Trauma (Rob Curtis Mix) Rob Curtis - Eyes Bright with Wonder Rob Curtis - Bakcheia Rob Curtis - Proudly Made on Earth Rob Curtis - The Tesseract Collapsing Rob Curtis - Ratat-tatat-tat Rob Curtis - Your Robot Doesn't Live Here Rob Curtis - Overboard Rob Curtis - The Spaces Between Spaces

Following up Part 1 from last month here is Part 2 of the Impromptu mix laid down by Magnus and myself in January.  More gritty dark and moody themes with some compelling melodies to keep things from brooding too much. There will likely be more music from Magnus and myself in coming months as we seem to have hit a stride recently where some great mixes are coming out. Enjoy!

It's a rare pleasure when you can put a mix down like this off the cuff.  I feel that there are only a few individuals that I could engage in an effort like this and have it come off this clean.  I have several hours of this mix that I will be releasing over the course of the next couple months but for now enjoy this first hour of a very impromptu mix put together by Magnus and myself last week on a whim.  Thanks goes out to Magnus Keith for bringing his amazing style of mixing and razor sharp track selection! Enjoy all! RC

Part 3 of the Galvanize series goes a bit deeper and a bit faster tempo-wise.  So much good music to close our 2014!  Happy New Year all!   RC

Part 2 of last month's Galvanize debut.  Happy holidays all!

Part one of a new mini series! Yay!   Galvanize is a mini-series that I have begun to work on bringing together the elements of what people are calling deep house these days with the more technical elements of tech house. This intersection has become a cornerstone of the sound that I love to play out at the club these days. Parts 1 & 2 of this series came together quickly and there is close to 2.5 hours of music contained within. The other element to this set is the tempo which has been dialed back to 117 BPM. This slow chugging groove allows all the technical elements of each track to breath and new details can be gleaned that may be overlooked at faster tempos. Enjoy!

We all have them, those friends that just don't get it.  I've lived my adult life loving Techno in almost all its forms.  I have also lived with the knowledge that we have historically been a counter culture to the mainstream.  That was one of the reasons I got into this music to begin with.  Man do I ever hate Pop music.  That's not to say I don't have Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and "Bad" on vinyl, but the pop of the 80s is part of the reason I love Techno today.  How much inspiration have we all taken from that era? One of the most common complaints I get whenever I DJ for a non-house-head crowd, or try to bring some techno or house music to the attention of a pop music fan is "This all sounds the same, there are no words I can sing to!"  Challenge Accepted! I did a mix years ago now when I lived in Vancouver for my cousin who just couldn't wrap her head around Techno.  She was used to singing out her favorite songs on the radio and was just unfamiliar with taking in the sonic tapestry of an instrumental

Part 2 of our opening set keeps getting a little bit more intense without going full out.  At the very end we play a couple of pretty banging tracks before mellowing out for the headliner.  Enjoy!

What a great night this was!  Such a great crowd and we managed to put together what I consider a top notch opening set for Chymera.  There was a great vibe in the room that night and this set just seemed to sparkle as a result.  As it turns out I couldn't get the whole thing into one podcast so look for part two in the early days of July! As always, Enjoy! RobC

If you have been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you've certainly heard me use the words Tech House before.  However, you have probably never heard me call one of my sets a Tech House set.  Throughout my career making this podcast i've used many tech house tracks and blended them in with more traditional deep house or progressive.  In this month's installment, I have taken a live set that I did where I tried to stick to the more techno driven style that I currently think of as Tech House.  This set has some pretty banging moments but I think it came off rather well.  Especially given the fact that it was recorded live, yay for traktor's record function! Enjoy!   RobC

I had been contemplating this mix for a long time waiting until I had a critical mass of the right kinds of tracks to put it together.  I have loved the sound of what I consider melodic techno for a while now.  Usually you will hear this kind of music at the beginning of a set by DJs like Hernan Cattaneo.  Rarely do you get a full set of this very melow but compelling sound.  I put this set together in the best place possible, the beach.  I would get up in the mornings and watch the sun rise over the ocean and work on this set with my morning coffee.  Sublime! Hopefully you can find somewhere as calm and peaceful to enjoy listening to it.   RC

A note from Magnus about the mix: The meeting of two minds can be a stimulating and productive endeavor, but having a mutual love of underground house and techno is no guarantee of a successful collaboration. Rob and I have wanted to do a mix like this for some time now, and finally, after a few months of jamming and curating, we’re ready to unleash this mix on our fellow house-heads. Drawing on our expansive collections of deep house and tech house, we’ve proudly crafted a testament to how we’d like to be able to warm up a room and set the tone for a fun-filled night of dancing and debauchery. Full of spacey, deep grooves and airy vibes that lure you towards a finale of banging, bass-driven rhythms, this mix takes its listeners from their first few tentative steps on a empty dance-floor to a floor packed with raised hands and wiggling booties. Rob and I hope you enjoy this mix as much as we enjoyed putting it together.   Mixed live using Traktor and an S2 controller. 1 Fourss - Journeyman (Slope remix) 2 Ste

This is a special episode for me, a milestone really.  2013 marked the 10th year since my very first release was published.  To commemorate the occaision I have put together the first podcast I have ever done that features a tracklist comprised entirely of tracks by yours truly.  Original tracks, remixes I have done as well as a couple of choice remixes that others have done of my original works. At first I didn't really know if I would be able to pull off a full mix of my own stuff but as I started to dust off some of the old tracks things began to come together quickly.  Before I knew it I had over two hours of music on my hands.  Once I had the basic layout down, I began to do a number of edits and reworks to knit the individual tracks together better and give a better flow to the whole work.  What you are hopefully listening to now as you read this is the outcome of about 20 hours of meticulous editing, re-mastering and tweaking of these tracks to work together as a whole.   My journey as a published arti

Part 5 rounds out this mini series which I have been working on all year.  Five parts later and I have come back to a nice cross section of deep house, minimal tech house some housey progressive stuff and a bit of just good old fashioned good vibes music.  It has been a really incredible journey putting these mixes together this year and if there is one thing I have learned it is that there has never been a better time to consistently find great new music.  I am starting a few new projects in the new year so look for new mini-series, collaborations and even a few new original compositions if all goes well.   I hope this last episode of the year finds you all well and warm, with good family, good friends and some great tunes!

Continuing to roll through more good music.  I'm constantly impressed with how much of it is out there these days.  Many of you out there have heard me remarking on all the good music I have been able to pick up this year and the trend doesn't seem to be ending.  I have hit a milestone in my efforts to find more good music to present to you all here, I have for the first time ever found more music than I can afford to buy in one go and have had to relegate a large portion to my hold bin for further scrutiny.  So while I hope that you enjoy this month's installment, know that there are many more new tracks waiting in the winds!  As always, Enjoy!