To kick off 2012 we bring you our first podcast of the year from a very special talent, Mick Finesse. To coincide with his first release on one of our very favourite labels, Perc Trax, we invited Mick to display his considerable DJ talents and become a welcome addition to our series.
Since 1999 he's been DJ'ing and promoting in a number of worldwide locations including Toyko and Boston, but it's in his current home town of Denver where he's a leading figure in an ever growing techno scene. It's this pedigree which is evident in both his work as a producer and a DJ.
The well structured mix slowly shifts your mind state as it progresses through dark textured layers of suspense and intensity before spitting you out at the other end in a wash of relentless droning techno. This mix delivers a perfect representation of the sound of Slash Dot Dash so we're extremely pleased to have Mick as part of Slash Dot Dash.
You can download the podcast either by subscribing to our series in iTunes or you can follow, download, stream and or comment through the Soundcloud player below
Tracklisting
1) Andy Stott - Submission [Our Modern Love]
2) Perc - Pre-Steel (Tengui Remix) [Perc Trax]
3) Planetary Assault Systems - Motif [Ostgut Ton]
4) Cio D'Or - Magnetfluss (Milton Bradley Remix) [Prologue Records]
5) Traversable Wormhole - Four Dimensional Manifold [Traversable Wormhole]
6) Isodyne - Sentinel [Broken20]
7) Abstract Division - Shifted Reality (Milton Bradley Remix) [Dynamic Reflection]
8) Ventress - AVN002 A2 [Avian]
9) The Black Dog - Heavy Industry (Shifted Remix) [Dust Science]
10) Dasha Rush - Dark Light Blind [Sonic Groove]
11) Endless - Clearing [Electric Deluxe]
12) Planetary Assault Systems - Function 4 (Marcel Dettmann Remix) [Mote Evolver]
13) Lucy - Triad [Stroboscopic Artefacts]
14) Mick Finesse - The Tunnel [Perc Trax]
15) Go Hiyama - Harbinger [Audio Assault]
After he sent us over the mix we caught up with Mick to find about more about his history, his work and what we can expect from the year ahead...
1) How did you see in the new year?
Quietly. Stayed in with my wife and had a nice little toast and reflection on the past year with our newborn son. It was nice.
2) How did you get into DJ’ing and producing?
When I was in the US Navy and stationed in Japan in 1999 I ran into a group of guys that were into all kinds of music ranging from epic trance to drum & bass. We'd all go out partying all weekend in Tokyo at places like Liquid Room and Club Yellow and developed a little ritual of spending our Sundays in Cisco Records in Shibuya spending the last bits of cash we had on vinyl.
I was very big into drum & bass / jungle at the time and was buying loads of Virus, Metalheadz, 31 Records and the like. We turned this collection of records into a Thursday night weekly in Yokosuka at a very small bar called Planet Earth. None of us really knew how to DJ well and it was messy and extremely varietal in selection, but we all learned a lot and had fun doing it.
Producing didn't come until much later and me giving up djing and d&b out of frustration and stagnation around 2006. I bought Logic and played a load of terrible productions to the dismay of my friends and family over the years as I learned.
3) Your latest release on Perc Trax is out soon, how did that come about?
I think with extreme luck and little bit of persistence. I was sending about techno demos anywhere I could and one day I had a reply from Ali ( Perc ) for the track 'They Sex Machinas'. Originally it was intended to be just the one track with a Perc remix, but he ended up being tied down working on his album and unable to finish the remix for some time. I just kept sending him more stuff and the release evolved into the Tunnel Vision EP.
I want to add that Ali has been great to work with through the process and is very insightful and helpful to new artists like myself. He has a focused resolve on where he wants Perc Trax to be but he finds a way to make the artists' and the labels' vision work together. I'm pretty grateful at the opportunity to be on his label with such a stable of great artists.
4) You’ve done a fair bit of travelling, what brought you to Denver and what’s the scene like there?
My wife has family here and after she finished college at the Rhode Island School of Design she made the call to set up shop in Denver.
Denver is really proving itself to the world on its techno chops in the past couple years. We had our first multi-day all-techno festival in the Great American Techno Festival this past fall ( which aligned with the staple craft beer event Great American Beer Festival ) bringing all techno headliners like Audio Injection / Truncate, Tony Rohr, and Derek Plaslaiko to name a few. We have a few different groups pulling headliners every couple of weeks it seems like and even the big nightclub here Beta, which is associated with Beatport, is on board and bringing techno in on occasion too. This is a big transition from just 2-3 years ago where small groups of locals would compete at smaller venues and headliners were not profitable to bring in as often.
We have a nice little community of producers here doing big things in their own right such as John Templeton at Emote, The Missing Link, and Daegon. We're seeing a solid amount of growth in talent and numbers so I'm highly optimistic for the future of techno in Denver.
5) Finally what’s in the pipeline for 2012?
For now there's a release due on Prosthetic Pressings in the same vein of broken-beat industrial and ambient flavored techno. I'm also working on some stuff for Broken20 which I'm very excited about and happy to have another proper outlet for my more experimental tendencies and be bit less worried about the techno side of things.
For more info on Mick, please check out his Facebook Fan Page
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