Oldskool revival!

The last few non-Top 40 bookings I’ve started going back to playing more Oldskool UK Garage.  Subconsciously, it might be to battle against the increasing agony of “Brostep” and Dutch House.  (NOTE: To my musician friends who work with these sounds, please don’t misunderstand — I feel there is a time and a place for these genres of music, but in Chicago, especially event-wise, I feel like these sounds are being force fed to us and, because of this, there are increasingly less avenues to listen to deeper, smoother styles of music other than Chicago House.)

The past week, I discovered a few hard drives from my old computers.  On one of the drives, I found a little folder named “mp3” (well, if you consider 13.9 GB as “little”), and after digging further, I found a folder of around 150 unmixed Oldskool UK Garage tunes!  Well, it seems like the more I sift through the folder, the more Oldskool I find!

So, while in this process of listening to all these tracks to see if the quality is acceptable to play on Serato, I created this little “Top 10” of my favorite found tracks, complete with YouTube playlist link!  Hopefully you’ll see something on the list that you haven’t heard before, but otherwise, enjoy reliving living the 1999 - 2004ish era.  Enjoy!

SUSHI’S TOP 10 TRACKS HE FOUND IN SOME RANDOM MP3 FOLDER ON SOME OLD HARD DRIVE

  • 10. Roachford - From Now On (Sunship remix) — not played out much in the US during the time of the “UKG invasion,” but definitely a classic!
  • 9. Maxi Preist - Back Together Again (K-Warren remix) — the K-Warren treatment definitely works for this Roberta Flack cover.
  • 8. Amira - My Desire (Dreem Teem remix) — this track stood the test of time, making an appearance on Rossi B & Luca’s “More2DaFloor - Volume 2.”
  • 7. Barbara Tucker - Stop Playing With My Mind (Artful Dodger vocal remix) — Artful Dodger needs to make an appearance on any given top 10 regarding UKG.
  • 6. Boniface - Cheeky (Todd Edwards ‘Time Like No Other’ remix) — my all time favorite Todd Edwards remix; glad I found this unmixed on mp3 because my vinyl copy is way too beat up to transfer to digital!
  • 5. Craig David - Rise & Fall (MJ Cole remix) — loved this “2nd gen” (around the time of “Cut to the Chase”) MJ Cole remix…almost forgot about it!
  • 4. Mya - Free (X-Men vocal mix) — great dancefloor tune from the lies of X-Men; was surprised I couldn’t find a YouTube video of this track, so the playlist has a different X-Men tune in its place.
  • 3. Dane Bowers - Shut Up & Forget About It (G4orce remix) — we’re used to these types of tunes from ladies, but Dane Bowers shows that guys can give it back as good as the girls — UKG style!
  • 2. TJ Cases ft. Kat Blu - Do It Again (full ground mix) — the chat before the vocals is hilarious, but this track is heavy on the vocal, as well as the beats.
  • 1. Ed Case ft. Ming Xia - September Sun — this track definitely sends chills down my spine…Ming Xia’s vocals are the perfect accompaniment for the production style of Ed Case.

Listen to the entire playlist HERE!

And, as always, keep it classy!

—Sush