React Megamix
At fifteen years old my musical sensibilities began their fortunate diversification beyond club music, but I’ve always retained a soft spot for the brilliance of the React label, now sadly resting in peace. It’s easy to write off a lot of dance music as derivative shit — a tag that applies to most contemporary genres, really — but React music, to my impressionable younger self, represented purity through degradation; the nihilistic optimism of the mid-90s generation; perhaps the hangover of 80s political activism, when people realised getting fucked up was easier than being punk.
Maybe I’m wrong, since I wasn’t there to experience it. What I did get to experience after the scene’s passing (signified by recognition in such acclaimed movies as Trainspotting and Human Traffic) was the music. I won’t try to intellectualise that too much — it is simply excellent music. Lots of electronic labels carved their niche around that time: Warp et al. What React did was just to gather some of the finest dance musicians around and press brilliant records.
I recently had the entire React Test series delivered, partly because of my conviction that it’s still damned good music and partly out of nostalgia. I used to own the latter half (six discs out of eleven) as a lad, but they all disappeared. I suspect they may have ended up in a charity shop by mistake. Listening to them now, I believe I made a good decision; the earlier CDs contain an expected amount of gimmicky crap, but for the most part it’s damned fine dance music. You can’t really ask for more than that.
I should probably get to the point. The above three paragraphs could easily be copy-pasted from discussions with a friend ignorant of the entire period. He asked for a sampler of whatever the shit I was raving about. I decided to go one better, and produce a chronology tracing the progression of the React Test series, with some bonus Reactivate tracks thrown in because they didn’t deserve to be left out. Thus, I present:
The React Megamix
I haven’t spent a lot of time on this, and it is certainly not a labour of love. (Playing it back I realise the mix is a little low on a few tracks, and there are a few tracks that I think I could have omitted.) Rather, it is a slightly lazy compilation of tracks in order of their release date. However, I did take care to be very selective about what I used, to maintain the self-evident theme, with the aim of expressing the evolution of dance music between 1993 and 1999, through React at least. There are no real milestones, but the mood of the mix subtly transmogrifies throughout its two hours forty-two minutes length; energetic, playful, pilled-up naivety becomes more refined, more cynical; perhaps more aggressive. I must admit I do prefer the later tracks as listening pieces, but I do wonder if something became lost or mutated as the turn of the millenium approached. Again, I wouldn’t really know — but I selected the closing track as a counterbalance to this change that I have perceived, and because it’s a bastard good outro. Make of this what you will, though, as it’s possible I just think too much about this stuff.
The tracklist is as follows, and I deliberately omit play points because the idea is, you know, to listen to the whole thing. I mean I know it’s pretty long, but if you’re not willing to sit through it then it’s probably not for you anyway. But I digress.
- The Age Of Love — The Age Of Love (Watch Out For Stella Mix)
- Joey Beltram — Energy Flash
- Quench — Dreams
- Sourmash — Pilgrimage To Paradise (Barrel Beat Mix)
- Elevator — Shinny (Harmony Mix)
- Blu Peter — Magic
- Marmion — Shoneberg (Marmion Remix)
- Trope — Aphetamine
- Dream Plant — The Mighty Machine
- Seb — Rainbow Islands (Friends, Lovers & Family Mix)
- Blu Peter — The Pictures In Your Mind (Club Mix)
- S-J — Fever (Original Baby Doc Mix)
- Shimmon & Woolfson — Evil Queen
- Zouk presents Transcendental Experience — Vertigo
- Mrs Wood — Joanna (Sash! Remix)
- Pablo Gargano — Blow Your Mind
- The Hellfire Club — Bitch
- Madame Dubois — Roadrage
- Mrs Wood — 1,2,3,4
- Shimmon & Woolfson — A Way Of Life (Break Of Life Mix)
- Sharkey — Product Of Society (Smitten’s Once Bitten Mix)
- The Hellfire Club — Nightbreed
- Transa — Behind The Sun
- Cascade — Transend (Moonman’s Transcendental Flight Remix)
- Candi Staton — Young Hearts Run Free (Spacedust Mix)
Download (229Mb m4a)
Please right-click to download or do whatever you do to save stuff onto your hard drive, I don’t know how your computer works. Streaming directly from my site eats up my bandwidth and is just slow and awkward for you anyway, so really there’s no benefit for you. It’s a stupid, bizarre preference. Don’t do it.
If you enjoy this, do please get in touch. It’s nice to know once in a while that I’ve touched someone’s heart, or at least their groove. Thanks.
This is an edited reprint of the blog post that originally accompanied this release in October 2009. If you simply want to download the megamix you can click here to fast-track. All copyrights still belong to their respective owners etc.
