As BBC’s Essential Mix turns 25, here are five great mixes from back in the day…
BBC Radio 1’s Essential Mix was first broadcast on 30 October 1993, 25 years ago today, and while musical movements have come and gone in the quarter decade since a fresh-faced Pete Tong introduced the first mix, the late night Saturday session is still… well… ‘essential’ listening.
Here are some of 909originals favourite mixes from over the years…
UNKLE Sounds (James Lavelle & Richard File), 6 January 2002
The recent Man From Mo’Wax documentary charted the career of UNKLE producer and Mo’Wax founder James Lavelle, and this mix from 2002 illustrates the broad range of musical styles that influenced his unique sound.
Featuring Queens Of The Stone Age, Giorgio Moroder, Radiohead, Fleetwood Mac and DJ Shadow among others, the pinnacle of excellence has to be the layered DMX vocal over an instrumental of Tears for Fears’ Shout at around the 17:30 mark. Serious skills.
David Holmes, 15 June 1997
Recorded just prior to the release of the David Holmes’ epic Let’s Get Killed, the Belfast native took listeners on an epic soul/funk/hip hop journey, taking in classic cuts from James Brown, Ike & Tina Turner, Quincy Jones, Marlena Shaw and Jimi Hendrix, in a mix that showed off Holmes’ incredible musical dexterity.
Notable too is the inclusion of Googie Rene Combo’s Smokey Joe’s La La, which formed the base of Holmes’ My Mate Paul.
Andy Weatherall, 13 November 1993
Just the third Essential Mix to be recorded, Screamadelica producer Andy Weatherall captured the ‘anything goes’ nature of early 90s dance music, with an eclectic mix that incorporates Plastikman, Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia, LFO, 3 Phase and, of course, the seminal Beatless Mix of Sabres Of Paradise – Smokebelch II.
Sven Väth & Richie Hawtin, 10 November 2002
Was this the moment that the dance scene truly caught the ‘minimal’ bug?
Styled as a tribute to Sven Väth’s infamous Cocoon nights in Ibiza – very much in their formative years – this mix came in two parts, Sven rocking an ‘at the club’ mix of tech house tracks from Thomas Schumacher, Toni Rohr, Dot Allison and the classic Dirty by Dirty; followed by Richie taking it down a glitchy notch for the ‘after party’ in the second hour of the show.
Paul Oakenfold, 18 December 1994
It’s perhaps fitting that Pete Tong called upon his old mate Paul Oakenfold to record the 25th anniversary Essential Mix last weekend, as the London native was the creator of one of the all-time classics in the show’s history.
Known as The Goa Mix, the two-hour epic was the first introduction to melodic trance for many listeners, as well as taking in classics such as Saint Etienne’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart and Goldie’s Inner City Life.
As Oakenfold himself put it in its authorised biography, written by Richard Norris, “I think [the Goa mix] really opened the doors for a lot of people, because it took the underground sound and played it on mainstream radio. Oakenfold fans weren’t expecting to hear it; they were expecting to hear melodic trance, and I just completely banged it. Psychedelic trance was something that I was really into, and I thought it gave me a good vehicle to showcase what I can do.”
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