My recent effort to make as bangin’ of a 50 minute mix as possible. “A Night Out” contains samples from over 70 different tracks remixed, mashed up, and presented to you at such an insane pace that you never have time to get tired of one thing. Constantly changing genres, styles, and tempo, this mix is a perfect one to fill the dance floor at any event or just to listen to if you’re in the mood for some excellent dance music. I worked on this mix throughout the first few months of 2008.

download mp3 – download lossless
full track list

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Yuksek, a new contender in the electro-house battle

Yuksek is the newest contender in the french-electro-nu disco-house explosion that’s going on right now. While he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry about him yet, his music places him with the likes of Daft Punk, Justice, MSTRKRFT, Boyz Noize, and Chromeo. Yuksek brings his own flair to the traditional screaming synth lines and glitchy fuckup beats that we’ve all grown to love so much over the past few years.

Hailing from France like Daft Punk and Justice, Yuksek has just released his debut album Away From the Sea in Europe, and it’s scheduled for a Feb. 10 release here in the States. While not quite as raw as Human After All or as glitchy and compressed as †, Yuksek brings his own flair to his music through increased use of vocals and a crazy amount of diversity among the album’s tracks.

Single “Tonight” is a pop masterpiece, “Extraball” mixes hip-hop verses in with a 1-in-the-morning sweaty dancefloor vibe, “I Could Never Be A Dancer” has crazy synth arpeggios that will make your ears melt, and “I Like To Play” is a filthy electro track of the best variety. Every track feels like something different is going on, which is surprising given the ability of electro house to kind of do the same thing over and over again. The album as a whole is another step twoards pop for mainstream electro, providing an even easier entry point to the genre than Justice.

There’s little to be dissapointed with here if you’re a fan of electro in general, and if you’re wanting to get in to house / electro at all, this album is a fantastic jumping off point.

Here’s a music video and a couple of the standout tracks on the album.

Click here to view the embedded video.

http://ohax.com/tracks/thisisnottoday.mp3
“This is Not Today” Feat. Shit Disco

http://ohax.com/tracks/breakya.mp3
“Break Ya”

9. M83 – Saturdays = Youth
I wasn’t alive for much of the ’80s, nor do I remember anything personally from them. Despite that fact, I’m pretty sure “Saturdays=Youth” sums up the decade pretty nicely. M83, famous for his extremely maximalist production, doesn’t let up on this entirely over-the-top record. This disc reeks of teen angst, heartbreak, and those cheesy synth-toms that we’ve all grown to love to hate. It’s too bad that I love every second of it. Most of these songs wouldn’t sound out of place on “The Breakfast Club” soundtrack, and if that’s the style that he was going for with this disc, than he succeeded wildly.

8. Ratatat – LP3
Ratatat’s first two albums consisted largely of the same formula: some crunchy beats underneath huge distorted and pedaled guitars. The formula worked, but most of the songs sounded very similar, and it was hard to listen to “Classics” without getting a little bored of hearing the same sound over and over. LP3 surprised me in the way that it took the formula from the first two albums and refined it just enough to make it fresh and different. The tracks here don’t sound repetitive, each has its own distinct sound. They’ve also strayed from the minimalism of just guitar and drum machines that they’ve stuck to previously and moved into more eclectic fare such as live percussion and other real instruments on songs like “Mi Viejo”. There’s some real club bangers here as well, and the whole thing fits together into a very satisfying listen.

7. Hercules & Love Affair – Self Titled
Rarely do the vocals in dance music matter. Most of the time they’re cheesy, disposable, and (in my opinion at least), unnecessary. “Hercules & Love Affair” completely challenges this assumption. The easiest way to describe this album would be “disco revival” but in reality it’s so much more than that. While some of the songs such as “Hercules Theme” and “Blind” fit nicely into the 70′s disco tune theme, others like “Time Will” and “You Belong” almost create their own genre out of their glistening synths, fantastic vocal melodies and lyrics. Disco influences are present in every track, but the part of this album that shines the most is the beats, mostly created by DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy. The classic 4/4 thump has been stylized and modified, and fits beautifully behind the variety of horns, synths, and congas that made the disco sound so loved.

6. Cut Copy – In Ghost Colours
Spanning the lengths of the synth-pop sound is Cut Copy’s second full-length “In Ghost Colours.” The album moves effortlessly from rock (“Feel the Love”) to disco (“Lights and Music,”) to house (“Hearts on Fire”), all without skipping a beat. This album is a sunny day summer anthem LP–the cheery tunes just make you want to get up and dance in a sun-drenched grassy field. Full of happily strummed acoustic guitars and great vocal melodies, I think the Pitchfork review said it best: “This is a hard album not to love.” Rarely does the meshing of indie rock and electronic music go so well.

5. Coldplay – Viva la Vida or Death and all his Friends
Brian Eno and Coldplay. Huh? After their last disappointing disc “X&Y,” Coldplay needed to reinvent themselves–and what better way to do that than to team up with Brian Eno? The result is arguably the best Coldplay album yet. Brian Eno’s ambient drones add nice touches whenever they appear, and the production on all of Coldplay’s instruments shines. The tunes are catchy, the album has a slick, consistent sound and is extremely tight (47 minutes, and not one of them wasted). Now nominated for multiple Grammys, Coldplay should walk away from this year with an even larger ego. Not that it’s not deserved, or anything.

4. Kanye West – 808s and Heartbreak
When I heard the first version of “Love Lockdown,” I have to say I was skeptical. I remember having a conversation with my roomate about how different it was from other Kanye West, and about how I would be really excited if he took a whole album in that direction. Obviously, he did. “808s” may have gotten mixed critical reception, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s among his best work. While people like T-Pain and Akon use auto-tune to get a consistent, slick effect, West uses it in his fourth album in as many different ways as there are tracks on the album. Where he might sound like T-Pain in “Heartless,” the effect is used in other tracks like “Streetlights” and “Coldest Winter” almost invisibly, making it sound like a human is actually singing the song. Musically it has more creativity than anything T-Pain has ever done, and the sheer variety of all of the tracks make this a definite must-listen.

3. Hot Chip – Made in the Dark
“Before we go any further, I’d like to show you all a game I made up. This game is called ‘Sounds of the Studio.’” If Hot Chip’s studio was anything like the synth barrage that follows those lines in “Made in the Dark”‘s second track, I definitely want to hang out there. This early 2008 album from British synth-pop combo Hot Chip has everything you need in a dance-pop record. Silly lyrics: “I’ve got a roll of coins, I’m aiming for your loins,” sings Alexis Taylor in “Wrestlers.” Catchy tunes: I can’t count the number of times that I’ve had the into to “Ready for the Floor” stuck in my head. Great beats: percussion for Hot Chip is played by Al Doyle, the same person who does it for LCD Soundsystem. Need I say more? This album has upbeat club tracks, soulful ballads and blaring rock songs, and is one of the best produced pop albums I’ve heard in a while.

2. Flying Lotus – Los Angeles
Flying Lotus is something special. I have a soft spot for hip-hop beats minus all that rapping nonsense, and Flying Lotus fulfills my desire for that better than anything since MF Doom’s “Special Herbs.” “Los Angeles,” his second album, is a masterpiece, a wonderfully crafted, timed, and arranged album spanning only 43 minutes. The album has a nostalgic low-fi feel to it, with surprisingly effective use of vinyl static and other noise lingering behind almost every track. The beats lag and change tempo, and are just inaccurate enough to convince you that you’re not listening to a drum machine, even though you are. This is instrumental electronic music at it’s finest.

1. Girl Talk – Feed the Animals
For me, it doesn’t get much better than this–sampling at it’s finest without a doubt. With “Feed the Animals,” Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis) has made 4 albums by taking decades of his favorite music and crammed it into a metaphoric BlendTec blender. Will it blend? Better than anyone could have ever imagined. Gillis continues to get better at doing this every album he releases, and this–his fourth–has transitions so smooth that you rarely even realize they happened. The Jackson 5′s “ABC” floats effortlessly above the thump of the drum track from “Umbrella,” right before Jay-Z comes in with a verse from “Roc Boys, and the Winner is” over the guitar intro to Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android.” It’s a DJ ear-gasm. Released for free on the internet in June, and later on CD, no party at my apartment is complete without a play-through of this amazing LP.