Your DJ, in the mix

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Wow, has it been a whole month since Simple's boat party back in May? I guess a lot has been occupying my time which has delayed my bringing this to you, and does it fly when you're having fun ;) As you probably know it is by far my most favourite of all the parties I play at. The open air, sunshine, the Oxford countryside, springtime wildlife, familiar faces and, I'll be honest, a captive audience! I feel more confident dropping a few classics and taking the mix where I want it to go. Totally in my element. I hope you'll indulge me.

You may have noticed I've brought back crowd ambience to my live mixes. It was never a conscious decision to omit the atmosphere from some recent years' mixes, but it became such a time-suck to set up, extract and mix it all down. Now though I've got an all-in-one device, the Tascam DR-40, that records the mixer and mic feeds as separate tracks, in sync, so it's then just a question of dropping it in Ableton and getting the levels just right.

In this party's success and its selling out three weeks before the event, we forgot to shout about it being 10 years, that's right, 10 years of Simple boat parties, often in collaboration with Simple's friends Slide in the first five years. I had a listen back to my mix from the 5 Years Of Boat Parties celebrations when music trends were on the cusp of turning away from fidget...

Here's a video my Cratedigga friend, Andy James, took when Hardrive dropped around 009:10 in the recording above. It went off!

This mix was recorded live on 24th May 2015 on a boat party floating down the River Thames in Oxford for Simple, and features productions/remixes from Trackheadz, Waze & Odyssey, Hardrive, Chicken Lips, Mattei & Omich, Pezzner, Klevakeys, DJ Spen, Larry Cadge, Copy Paste Soul, Tom Demac, Bodhi, Mr. DJ, Walker & Royce, Chesus & Earl Jeffers, Jonas Rathsman and Deetron.

Photography by Kotched Out Productions.