About Philip Sherburne:

With over a decade of bylines to his name, Philip Sherburne is a critic and columnist for Pitchfork and The Wire as well as the Electronic/Dance editor of Rhapsody.com; he also appears frequently in Resident Advisor and on eMusic.com. His deeply informed, always opinionated writing has appeared in a slew of other publications, among them the New York Times, SPIN, Slate, Frieze, XLR8R, Wired, Spain’s Trax, and Germany’s Groove and De:Bug.

Too restless to remain on the receiving end of the speakers, Philip is also known as a moonlighting DJ, with appearances at clubs all over the planet.

To round everything out, in the past few years Philip has increasingly turned his attentions towards production, returning to music-making some 15 years after his teenage experiments with synthesizers and a four-track. Connecting the dots between house, techno, home-listening electronica and dubstep, he has recorded and remixed for Lan Muzic, Musique Risquée, and Respoal Red.

About this mix:

Mayday Mix

This mix was recorded in one take, using vinyl and Traktor Scratch, after several days of practice mixes and aborted attempts. This is the first mix I have made with it, and in most ways it differs very little from any of my other mixes, at least in terms of methodology. I used the software’s looping function on the first track, in order to isolate an instrumental passage—I love the vocals, but they didn’t work here—but otherwise it’s mixed traditionally, by hand, with two turntables and an external mixer. The only effects used are the filters on the Allen & Heath. Sixteen tracks are played from vinyl and eight from MP3. (I mention all this not to distract or detract from the music itself but rather to acknowledge that DJing is changing, and a little transparency around the process might help illuminate matters.)

The tracklist came together in fits and starts over the span of several weeks. There’s no explicit theme; rather, the set arose out of the attempt to fix a certain kind of sound in place, one that had been flitting around my head for some time. I’m hesitant to put a name to it, although inevitably you’ll notice a number of names from the dubstep spectrum, as well as passages whose heavy 4/4 focus and resonant wash will suggest dub techno. Rather than playing to genre, though, I was more interested in teasing out lines that I heard crisscrossing through different tracks—certain rhythms, tones and moods that seemed to be passed from one record to the next. I also wanted to find a way to play music that wouldn’t normally find a home in a club context—hence the opening 15 minutes of cotton balls, scouring pads and clear, lysergic drops.

Most of the records are recent, released in the past six months or so. But a few slightly older tracks appear—Digital Mystikz’ 2006 "Ancient Memories" comes from a distinctly different season in dubstep, while El-B and J Da Flex’s "The Spooks," released under their Ghost alias on the eponymous label, goes all the way back to 2001’s halcyon days of darkside garage. And the opening track, or rather a looped excerpt from it, has been a favorite of mine since I first heard it 19 years ago.

Philip Sherburne
April 30, 2009
www.philipsherburne.com

Podcast feed : http://homepage.mac.com/dropper/t2x/timecast.xml

Podomatic : http://time-to-express.podOmatic.com/entry/2009-05-13T06_17_55-07_00

Direct download : http://fairtilizer.com/track/timecast02-philipsherburne

Track list:

His Name Is Alive: As We Could Ever (4AD)
Lukid: Raise High the Roof Beam (Werk)
Robert Henke: Quad Planar (Imbalance Computer Music)
Dorian Concept: Mesh Beam Splitter (Kindred Spirits)
Wasteland: Enticer (Transparent)
Anstam: Brom B (Anstam)
Andy Stott: Drippin (Modern Love)
Untold: I Can’t Stop this Feeling (Hessle)
Scuba: Klinik (Hotflush)
Ramadanman: Good Feelin (2nd Drop)
Digital Mystikz: Ancient Memories (DMZ)
Scuba: Tense (Hotshore)
Ramadanman: Offal (Soul Jazz)
Mala: Left Leg Out (DMZ)
Jan Driver: Rat Alert Dub (Made to Play)
Untold: Bones (Hemlock)
Ghost: The Spooks (Ghost)
Untold: Dante (Hotflush)
Synkro: My Own World (Mindset)
Echologist feat. The Space Ape: The Mercy Beat (Philip Sherburne’s Triple Bypass Dub) (Resopal Red)
Peverelist: Gather (Punch Drunk)
Simian Mobile Disco: Hustler (Shackleton Remix) (Wichita)
Scuba: Hard Boiled (SCB Edit) (Hotflush)
Andrea: Gunshot (Stripped) (Daphne)