When I was a teenager there was a series of hit records under the umbrella title of Stars on 45, where popular songs of the day would be combined into a medley, with a common beat and tempo underneath. It was like a kind of greatest hits of a certain artist or style of music, squashed into around 4 minutes. It was a novel and playful idea, and in conversation with my old friend Carsten Nicolai many years ago I joked about making one for him. So, almost two decades later, I’ve finally made time over a quieter Christmas period to create a series of very special mixes.
Each mix of On 45 exclusively features only the music of one artist and a little drum machine. Nothing more and most certainly nothing less. Each mix was created entirely live using Native Instruments Traktor and Traktor Kontrol S2 and nothing else. What you hear is what happened in real time. Even the mistakes are left in. And as I’m not a DJ the mistakes take priority of course.
So far the series began with the work of German experimental artist Carsten Nicolai, aka Alva Noto, and has continued with American producer Holly Herndon, British tech dub artist Andy Stott and American avant garde superhero Laurie Spiegel. The choice of artists reflects my own collection of music so hope you will enjoy the series as it develops over the weeks, months and perhaps years to follow. If the energy permits of course 😀
And since I’m still frequently referred to as ‘DJ Scanner’ despite rarely ever spinning records in public (it’s probably over twenty years since I last even did this!), I thought I might as well use On 45 as a way to justify the title.
