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A Soldier's Story by Dieselboy
soundcloud.comHere is “The Soldier’s Story”, my first truly original cd for the prestigious American electronic music label Moonshine. For this release I was given complete control of choosing all of the music and really went out of my way to find the best future thinking, unreleased and heavy as hell drum and bass at that time. This one was not just for the dancefloor and really started to establish the way I would approach choosing music for all future mix projects. Some of the key tunes on here would be my collaboration with Technical Itch “Atlantic State”. The bassline was born out of a keyboard glitch and the cool pads in the intro are from a Skinny Puppy sample cd. The name was a nod to the classic 808 State tune “Pacific State” (the Atlantic ocean separates the USA and the UK ;). Jonny L “Bellz” was just a white hot smasher that I loved to death. And “The Stalker” was a weird super minimal tune that eventually became the anthem for my drum and bass weekly “Platinum" in Philly (everyone used to love that track!). For the intro I used a bunch of samples from the videogames Half Life and Quake (I found the sound libraries and broke them up and mined the shit out of them). At one point I was contacted by some people who worked on Half Life and they said they used to play my mix at the office. That was awesome. This mix sounds fast because I mixed it on my home turntables that were modified to play faster than normal. I always thought faster was better. The artwork was done by the late Todd Baldwin of Airline Industries. He hired famous Marvel comics artist Paul Gosier to draw me as a super soldier for the cover. Most people didn’t really think it looked like me ;) Finally, I lifted the title from the movie “A Soldier’s Story”. In the drum and bass scene a “soldier” is a die hard fan of the music. That pretty much sums me up to this day. Enjoy!
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TRACKLIST
Dieselboy - Precautionary Procedure
Konflict - The Beckoning
Usual Suspects + Fierce - Sawn Off
DJ Friction - Photon Remix
Future Cut + Mark Da Intallex - Plastic
Technical Itch - Deception
Technical Itch - Stack
Moving Fusion - Sex Drive
Jonny L - The Bellz
Usual Suspects + Loxy - Stalker
Vertigo - Drained
Danny Breaks - Dissonance
Peshay - Vegas
Kosheen - Yes Men (Decoder Remix)
Technical Itch + Dieselboy - Atlantic State
Decoder - BS9
one of my favorite dj's from once upon a time has released their older stuff for free. maybe not for you, but if you like high bpm or any kind of breakbeat, please check this out <3
that was my era too! we really missed the peak "underground" scene but basically got to see the final flame-out of legit rave culture. i saw him in d.c. a few times at a larger club and i believe he knew somebody in our large interconncted group and he popped by an afterparty while i was in a total haze. no free shows tho :( i'm also too old for the scene and got pack into punk/hardcore once the rave act and all that stuff basically killed the best small events. we used to have great field parties on farms out in the country with local/regional djs until it just became too legally sketchy to have them.
haha yeah same, i was in a metal bad for a while a few years back, and go to metal shows pre-covid. my partner had never been to a metal/hardcore show and was always a bit intimidated, then found out most in the scene are gentle folks. i just kinda got back into dj'ing, but in no way want to perform unless im streaming on twitch etc. I was lucky enough to catch the tail end of raves. My first Burning Man was in 97, i was barely a teenager then and got to see some of the worlds best Psy trance and Goa....it was unbelieveable, they did an evern bigger "community dance" the next year. BM was actually fun back then, once it became a household name i stopped going. 06 was my last year
i really wish i could have gone to those old school burning mans but i was always waaay too far away. i always liked the idea of it being a sort of primitive communist culture mixed with a festival. tried to plan out a trip around '10 with my partner but im glad we didn't end up doing it since i'm sure by then it was becoming more silicon valley techbro shit. 97 had to have been like peak awesome
It was so much fun. I paid like $60 at the door midweek, we went with my friend parents so they took care of all the adult stuff like cooking and talking us down from the acid we took. I think barely 9000 people showed up then. Even 2006 was a very different vibe going on, fun still but getting overly popular. Ffs Paris Hilton bus was across from my camp, I think that’s what did it for me. It was fun while it lasted!