Textures

Happy New Year! Well, what a strange trail it has been!  After a somewhat more substantial break than I have taken in the past, I am finally coming out of my covid haze and getting back to work.  As the title might suggest I may also be traveling again in the near future though with the omicron variant in full swing who knows what the next few weeks will bring. This mix was inspired by the thought of perhaps seeing a beach sometime in my near future and the hope of playing poolside again.  I have been trying to reboot my collection of music as it has become so large that it really isn't very easy to navigate so I am using some of the more recent acquisitions in this mix.  I'm fairly happy with the flow these tunes have together starting off light but building to an interesting and melodic climax for the end. We will see if you like it too and hopefully, this will become a more regular podcast again now that I have the ball rolling! RC

Some time off and I'm back and ready to roll.  I'm having fun with breaking out of the boundaries of just a straight up 4/4 set.  The last couple of episodes have explored tempo and break beats.  Here I'm trying to combine a straight and break beat flow.  I hope you all enjoy! RC

Hi Folks, Just managing to get February on the books whew!  This is the first part of a set my good friend Jeff Griffiths and I recorded while he was out here recently.  Jeff and I have been playing records together for years, since records were actually records!  That synergy still hold through all the years.  Enjoy!   (C) 2019 Rob Curtis

Happy New Year All! For the first mix of the year I wanted to continue working through a bit of a tangent I started in December incorporating a wide range of tempos into the set.  In addition to that it has been a long while since I have had an opportunity to put an all breaks mix together.  So Voila! This one starts out in the 90 BPM range and builds up to a solid 124.  For those Progressive Breaks fans out there this one's for you! Enjoy! (C) Rob Curtis Music

Merry Christmas folks!   I ended up taking November off and didn't put out an episode and I imagine some of you were wondering if that was it for the year.  Luckily I have found some time while on vacation over the holidays to put out another set.  This is a bit more artistic than I have done over the past several episodes and I got a chance to really delve into my crate and find some very eclectic tunes.  Atmospheric ambiance? Check! Progressive Breaks? Check! Melodic Techno? Check.  This is a great set that covers a lot of ground.  We start off up around 140BPM and drop as low as 104 before settling out around 122.   Hope you enjoy!  Happy Holidays!   (C) 2018 Rob Curtis Music

Hi All, I went a little long on the mix this month and had to shave off some of the last track to make it fit into the space available for the podcast.  I hope you fogive me! Enjoy (c) Rob Curtis Music

This month I had the pleasure of doing opening duties for a true legend in the industry.  Mr. Nick Muir has been the man behind the curtain on all the Bedrock releases going back 20 years.  He is one of the few people who can truly say he had a hand in the genesis of progressive house music.  I have been following this guy's music for years and to have the opportunity to sit down and chat with him and play some music alongside him was a true honor.   Now while I did record my set, it did not end up coming out properly and so I spent the afternoon re-recording it so I could bring it to you.  This set was much more progressive than I usually get away with at Habitat but it went off great.  I hope you all enjoy as well!   (c) Rob Curtis Music

Whew almost didn't make it this month what will all the travelling around I've been doing.  The good thing about all that travel was that I got lots of transit time to listen to a bunch of tunes that I had purchased but hadn't gotten around to auditioning.  This mix is something I whipped together after getting home and is comprised of all recent purchases woohoo!   Enjoy!   (c) Rob Curtis Music

Hi all,   A few weeks late this month due to me getting used to my new Pioneer controller and tranferring my music collection over to Rekordbox.  I think i'm getting the hang of things now.  This month I delve into a genre I call Minimal Tech which probably differs from what many of you would consider that style of music but suffice to say that this month's mix is much more focused on percussive elements.   Enjoy! (c) Rob Curtis Music

So I'm hanging in Lafayette Louisianna with my good friend getting some good ol' creole culture.  Tomorrow we're doing a crawfish boil which is something I haven't had for about 20 years.  I put this mix together on the plane ride down and I have to say that it turned out better than I could have hoped.  Great summer sounds for a hot part of the world. Listen poolside if you can!   RC

This month I pulled a bunch of B-Side out of the dustbin and weaved them together with some top notch music.  I've always found that when you originally assign a track a certain rating it can be deceiving and so I like to do this from time to time as some real gems pop out.  Not to mention this time I also went back a fair ways and picked up some pretty old music that I think still sounds relevant today.   On a side note, I also decided to plug an upcoming event in this month's artwork so if you are in the Calgary area and like the sounds, please come and join me at Habitat on May 25th. Cheers! RC (c) Rob Curtis Music

The name of this game this month is moody, which probably is somewhat influenced by how I've been feeling lately.  I have just come through a couple of months of very intensive work as well as a lot of stress.  I think this month's mix reflects that.  Lots of dark and subby basslines and sparsely melodic hooks.  Feels good to go a bit dark for a change. Enjoy    (c) Rob Curtis Music

Sorry for the delay this month, I've found it difficult to find the time to record this month as work has been exceptionally busy.  Never fear though I do have some great tunes to share this month.  This mix is a bit more agressive at times but settles into a pretty nice groove early on.  Enjoy!   (c) Rob Curtis Music

This mix turned out to be a bit more introspective than I anticipated.  I think one of the reasons for this was the serrendipity of the whole thing.  I had not left myself enough time to really think the mix through so i just winged it and I must say I'm very happy with the result.  I don't think I would have selected this set of tracks to play but as I listen to them again, they worked out very well and broke me out of a trend I had been setting for myself over the last several podcasts.  I hope you enjoy this mix as much as I have! RobC   (c) Rob Curtis Music

I had a conversation with an old friend over the holidays and we were talking about getting back to our roots musically.  From that conversation I began to pull out some tracks that I had recently bought that I felt really laid out the roots of the kind of music that I love and enjoy to this day.  These are new records, but they embody the spirit of the sound that I grew up listening to and trying to play.  This mix is the outcome of that effort and really brings me back to my progressive roots.  For those of you that have known me for a long time, you will hear the undertones of this mix and think to yourself "That is Rob's Sound".  A new mix for a new year, lets kick things off right!   Rob C

As the holiday season kicks into high gear, I am preparing for a show that is taking place on December 8th with a good friend Chad Hardcastle to celebrate his Label Vivid North's 5th anniversary.  This month's podcast is the output of several days spent pouring over my music collection to find great tracks for this show specifically.  I have some older stuff in here and some brand new cuts as well.  All in all it is a great cross-section of music that speaks to me these days.  Please enjoy the mix and come down to the show at Habitat on Friday December 8th! https://www.facebook.com/events/160171961386605/ Happy Holidays!

So the last couple of podcasts have been on the slower and mellower side so this month I've decided to pick it up a bit.  Higher tempo and energy are the flavours of the month! Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving all! Some new tunes to help you while away the time pre and post turkey! Enjoy!

Here is the opening set I played for the Dave Seaman show in Calgary back at the end of July.  Probably one of my favorite mixes that I have put together of all time.  Starting things off really slow at around 100 BPM and slowly working my way up to 120 over 90 minutes. Enjoy!

I took a bunch of lower tempo tracks that I had been sitting on for a while and put together this month's set.  We start things off and slowly ramp up over the course of the mix.

This month we have a carefully crafted guest mix by a long-time friend and excellent DJ: Magnus Keith.  In my new style of keeping descriptions short, let the music speak for itself!

Nnnnnnnext!  More tracks, so much good tunage!  More to come but enjoy this for now :) Rob C

I'll keep this short and sweet...Long time, glad to be back, some great tunes to set things off again.  Enjoy!   Rob C

For many years I spent a lot of time and effort planning out my sets for the podcast.  Meticulously going over every mix to ensure they were emaculate.  Well i'm getting old and I just don't have time for that $h!t anymore.  :) Well actually, I've found over the past year or so that I really enjoy just setting up the decks, hitting record and seeing what happens.  I have dozens of recordings from various jams.  Sometimes its with other DJs who stop by and other times it's just me solo behind the decks.  I've started to go through the last few months worth of recordings and pull out the ones that really seem to gel.  This month we have part one of a two part recording I did back in April.  I've trimmed it down to two 1:15 minute sections, though the original was over 3 hours! I will continue to publish these impromptu mixes as I find them. Enjoy! RC

Prism!  I have had the great pleasure to work closely with this collective since their inception.  Over the past year they have carved their way into the Calgary music scene playing a multitude of shows that have captured the spirit of what is going on here in the electronic music community.  Seamlessly mixing the styles of 2 DJs can be challenging.  Add two more to the mix and now you've really got a difficult task ahead.  These gents pull it off with amazing poise.  Will Devlin, Theo Hansen, Magnus Keith and Rick Sharma have curated and crafted a set that you'll find yourself listening to over and over.  I know I have.  Enjoy this mix crafted exclusively for Textures. Tracklist: 01. YokoO - You Said I Would (Jonas Saalbach Remix) 02. Kollektiv Turmstrasse - Last Call (Original Mix) 03. Neville Watson - Warchild (Original Mix) 04. YokoO - Xani (Original Mix) 05. Maxi Degrassi - Grunge (Bunge & Kevor Remix) 06. All Is Well - Vabene (Original Mix) 07. Atapy, Bog - Strung (Original Mix) 08. Hasan Mogol - Prolepse (Original Mix) 09. Freakme - Apollonia (Original Mix) 10. Daniel Bortz, Sascha Sibler - Who Is Manfred? (Original Mix) 11. Stephan Bodzin - Sputnik (Dominik Eulberg Remix) 12. Dj Koze - It's Only (Original Mix) 13. Morgan Geist - Darkstar (Original Mix) 14. Eagles & Butterflies - Moonlight (Original Mix) 15. Kasper Koman - Mr. Merchant (Original Mix) 16. Kosmas - O.11 (Miguel Puente Remix) 17. Maher Daniel, Jon Charnis - Lonely Stars In Open Skies (Luca Bacchetti Endless Remix) 18. Marc Marzenit - 9909LA (Warehouse Mix)

I put this mix together for my good friend Wes Straub's 100th radio show for which he took over Digitally Imported's progressive channel for a whopping 12 hours of music.  This mix is also special as it is one hour of all original production work from your's truly.  This spans a number of tracks that I have produced over the past year along with a few classics from my sordid past. Several of these tracks will be released later this year on NuevaDeep. Tracklisting: Medway - Trauma (Rob Curtis Mix) Rob Curtis - Eyes Bright with Wonder Rob Curtis - Bakcheia Rob Curtis - Proudly Made on Earth Rob Curtis - The Tesseract Collapsing Rob Curtis - Ratat-tatat-tat Rob Curtis - Your Robot Doesn't Live Here Rob Curtis - Overboard Rob Curtis - The Spaces Between Spaces

Following up Part 1 from last month here is Part 2 of the Impromptu mix laid down by Magnus and myself in January.  More gritty dark and moody themes with some compelling melodies to keep things from brooding too much. There will likely be more music from Magnus and myself in coming months as we seem to have hit a stride recently where some great mixes are coming out. Enjoy!

It's a rare pleasure when you can put a mix down like this off the cuff.  I feel that there are only a few individuals that I could engage in an effort like this and have it come off this clean.  I have several hours of this mix that I will be releasing over the course of the next couple months but for now enjoy this first hour of a very impromptu mix put together by Magnus and myself last week on a whim.  Thanks goes out to Magnus Keith for bringing his amazing style of mixing and razor sharp track selection! Enjoy all! RC

Part 3 of the Galvanize series goes a bit deeper and a bit faster tempo-wise.  So much good music to close our 2014!  Happy New Year all!   RC

Part 2 of last month's Galvanize debut.  Happy holidays all!

Part one of a new mini series! Yay!   Galvanize is a mini-series that I have begun to work on bringing together the elements of what people are calling deep house these days with the more technical elements of tech house. This intersection has become a cornerstone of the sound that I love to play out at the club these days. Parts 1 & 2 of this series came together quickly and there is close to 2.5 hours of music contained within. The other element to this set is the tempo which has been dialed back to 117 BPM. This slow chugging groove allows all the technical elements of each track to breath and new details can be gleaned that may be overlooked at faster tempos. Enjoy!

We all have them, those friends that just don't get it.  I've lived my adult life loving Techno in almost all its forms.  I have also lived with the knowledge that we have historically been a counter culture to the mainstream.  That was one of the reasons I got into this music to begin with.  Man do I ever hate Pop music.  That's not to say I don't have Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and "Bad" on vinyl, but the pop of the 80s is part of the reason I love Techno today.  How much inspiration have we all taken from that era? One of the most common complaints I get whenever I DJ for a non-house-head crowd, or try to bring some techno or house music to the attention of a pop music fan is "This all sounds the same, there are no words I can sing to!"  Challenge Accepted! I did a mix years ago now when I lived in Vancouver for my cousin who just couldn't wrap her head around Techno.  She was used to singing out her favorite songs on the radio and was just unfamiliar with taking in the sonic tapestry of an instrumental track, more specifically of a whole hour of them! "Hey I get it, there is something visceral and ancestral about vocal music, it's where music started after all.", I said.  So I proceeded to create a Progressive House mix made up of all vocal tracks.  That was tough back in the days of Vinyl as I had to peel through a relatively modest collection by today's standards. This months mix is the start of a new series that I have had the pleasure of compiling in order to try to introduce this music to another un-initiated.  My goal is to slowly ramp up to the non-verbal mixes that make this group of genres so compelling to me but to start with... A mix of all Vocal tracks!  And let me assure you, even I was surprised by how many I have been able to compile over the last decade of digital music.  Hence we have another Rob C series on our hands and hopefully some classic mixes for you all to enjoy in the years to come! RC 

Part 2 of our opening set keeps getting a little bit more intense without going full out.  At the very end we play a couple of pretty banging tracks before mellowing out for the headliner.  Enjoy!

What a great night this was!  Such a great crowd and we managed to put together what I consider a top notch opening set for Chymera.  There was a great vibe in the room that night and this set just seemed to sparkle as a result.  As it turns out I couldn't get the whole thing into one podcast so look for part two in the early days of July! As always, Enjoy! RobC

If you have been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you've certainly heard me use the words Tech House before.  However, you have probably never heard me call one of my sets a Tech House set.  Throughout my career making this podcast i've used many tech house tracks and blended them in with more traditional deep house or progressive.  In this month's installment, I have taken a live set that I did where I tried to stick to the more techno driven style that I currently think of as Tech House.  This set has some pretty banging moments but I think it came off rather well.  Especially given the fact that it was recorded live, yay for traktor's record function! Enjoy!   RobC

I had been contemplating this mix for a long time waiting until I had a critical mass of the right kinds of tracks to put it together.  I have loved the sound of what I consider melodic techno for a while now.  Usually you will hear this kind of music at the beginning of a set by DJs like Hernan Cattaneo.  Rarely do you get a full set of this very melow but compelling sound.  I put this set together in the best place possible, the beach.  I would get up in the mornings and watch the sun rise over the ocean and work on this set with my morning coffee.  Sublime! Hopefully you can find somewhere as calm and peaceful to enjoy listening to it.   RC

A note from Magnus about the mix: The meeting of two minds can be a stimulating and productive endeavor, but having a mutual love of underground house and techno is no guarantee of a successful collaboration. Rob and I have wanted to do a mix like this for some time now, and finally, after a few months of jamming and curating, we’re ready to unleash this mix on our fellow house-heads. Drawing on our expansive collections of deep house and tech house, we’ve proudly crafted a testament to how we’d like to be able to warm up a room and set the tone for a fun-filled night of dancing and debauchery. Full of spacey, deep grooves and airy vibes that lure you towards a finale of banging, bass-driven rhythms, this mix takes its listeners from their first few tentative steps on a empty dance-floor to a floor packed with raised hands and wiggling booties. Rob and I hope you enjoy this mix as much as we enjoyed putting it together.   Mixed live using Traktor and an S2 controller. 1 Fourss - Journeyman (Slope remix) 2 Stellios Vassiloudis - Hunger 3 Kevin Yost - Right To Your Soul (Deep Spelle remix) 4 Booka Shade - Many Rivers 5 Harlem Knights & Rebound - I'm Gonna (Marco Grandi remix) 6 Dale Anderson & Anil Chawla - Leftorium (Philipp Ort remix) 7 Matthias Vogt - I Dreamed the Impossible (Wiretappeur remix) 8 Tvardovsky – Essention (Sound Process remix) 9 Helly Larson & Riccicomoto - Moving Dub (Deep Spelle remix) 10 Sebrof & Sterbai – Mosaik (PRT Stacho remix) 11 M.A.N.D.Y. & Booka Shade – Home (Monaque remix) 12 Stereo.type - Momento 13 Miss Disk - White Obsession (Zach DeVincent remix) 14 Oxia & Nicolas Masseyeff - You Know 15 John Selway – Countenance (Christian Smith & John Selway remix) 16 Peter Horrevorts - Stab 17 Pig & Dan - A Sudden Rush 18 Dousk - Jit Jit

This is a special episode for me, a milestone really.  2013 marked the 10th year since my very first release was published.  To commemorate the occaision I have put together the first podcast I have ever done that features a tracklist comprised entirely of tracks by yours truly.  Original tracks, remixes I have done as well as a couple of choice remixes that others have done of my original works. At first I didn't really know if I would be able to pull off a full mix of my own stuff but as I started to dust off some of the old tracks things began to come together quickly.  Before I knew it I had over two hours of music on my hands.  Once I had the basic layout down, I began to do a number of edits and reworks to knit the individual tracks together better and give a better flow to the whole work.  What you are hopefully listening to now as you read this is the outcome of about 20 hours of meticulous editing, re-mastering and tweaking of these tracks to work together as a whole.   My journey as a published artist began back in 2003 when I entered a remix competition held by Release Records out of Toronto.  The track to remix was by Medway and was titled "Trauma".  It featured a cool little spoken word sample by Ice Tea and some really cool stems to play around with.  Back in those days I was still very much walking the line between trance and progressive house and my mix is a wash of reverb tails and big crashy booms.  Somehow I managed to catch the ear of the folks at Release and they picked my mix among the hundreds that they received and released it on vinyl. It seemed fitting that I should start this mix off with the track that started me off.  Over the course of the two hours of music in this mix, I travel in a lot of different directions from the more traditionally progressive to trance, tech house, deep house and even breaks.  Please enjoy this journey through time and sound and help me to celebrate 10 years of releasing music to the masses! Tracklist: 1. Medway - Trauma (Rob Curtis Mix) 2. Medway & John Morgan - Toobin' (Rob Curtis Mix) 3. Rob Curtis - Backeia (Dale Anderson Mix) 4. Rob Curtis - Faded Too Deep 5. Rob Curtis - Dense Waffles 6. Rob Curtis - Quicksilver (Anisotropic Mix) 7. Marcelo Castelli - Montevideo (Rob C's Punta Del Este Mix) 8. Rob Curtis - Eclectic 9. Rob Curtis - Twilight  10. Rob Curtis - Clandestine 11. Rob Curtis - Body in Motion 12. Wes Straub - Lost in Humidity (Rob Curtis Mix) 13. Rob Curtis & Jerome Robbins - Starkid's Theme 14. Rob Curtis - Hollowed Out 15. Rob Curtis - The Assessment 16. Rob Curtis - Backeia

Part 5 rounds out this mini series which I have been working on all year.  Five parts later and I have come back to a nice cross section of deep house, minimal tech house some housey progressive stuff and a bit of just good old fashioned good vibes music.  It has been a really incredible journey putting these mixes together this year and if there is one thing I have learned it is that there has never been a better time to consistently find great new music.  I am starting a few new projects in the new year so look for new mini-series, collaborations and even a few new original compositions if all goes well.   I hope this last episode of the year finds you all well and warm, with good family, good friends and some great tunes!

Continuing to roll through more good music.  I'm constantly impressed with how much of it is out there these days.  Many of you out there have heard me remarking on all the good music I have been able to pick up this year and the trend doesn't seem to be ending.  I have hit a milestone in my efforts to find more good music to present to you all here, I have for the first time ever found more music than I can afford to buy in one go and have had to relegate a large portion to my hold bin for further scrutiny.  So while I hope that you enjoy this month's installment, know that there are many more new tracks waiting in the winds!  As always, Enjoy!

Part three of this series gets straight to the point and leans much more in a Progressive/Trance vein than the previous two parts.  Lots of great melodic tunes and some seriously deep basslines come together to make for an intense 2 hour trek through a style of music that I have found it hard to find anywhere else. Enjoy!

Part 3 in the series continues in the same vein as the first two parts but ratchets up the intensity a few more notches.  This mix definately starts wandering back into the more progressive side of deep house and tech house.

Part 2 of the Realizations series is one of my personal favorites from this year.  The music on this mix drew me much further down the rabbit hole and on the other side I discovered a host of new artists and labels that have been pumping out some amazing music over the past year.  Much more to come from this series as I continue to investigate these new avenues!  As always Enjoy!

Part 2 of this mini series gets into some more aggressive tunes that culminate and then break into a very soft piano accapella that serves as a gratifying denoument.  This completes the first half of the mini series with a second set of two mixes to be release here in future months.  Enjoy!

Part 2 of my Bedrock Tribute series.  This label has contributed an enormous amount to electronic music over the course of the past decade and I continue to be amazed at the caliber of sound coming out of this publishing house.  Enjoy some more old and new Bedrock!

The Realizations series is part exploration and part self discovery.  I took about a two year break from putting podcast episodes together.  For a long time I just didn't feel the draw to it anymore.  I had largely stopped DJ'ing in clubs and stopped buying new music.  Part of this was just because I couldn't find anything worthwhile out there and part was lack of interest.   Well that's finally changed and I have re-discovered my love of this kind of music again.  The realization series is about my realization that there is a ton of great tunes out there and my discovery of how to find them along with the fact that I do still truely enjoy putting these mixes together.

The Cornice & Couloir Project is something that I started last year about this time and have been hoarding for a year.  I wasn't really sure what I was up to until I had recorded over 2 hours of the mix and pieced together another 2 hours of ideas for a follow up.  What this ended up being was a four part mini series of mellow trance tunes that makes for some really good listening.  After running it by a few friends I got enough good feed back to figure I was on to something and completed all four parts.  This is part 1 which starts out in a more traditionally progressive vein but quickly branches into some much more melodic pieces.

I did one of these years ago for Hooj Choons when they released their back catalog digitally and Bedrock has now put a number of collections together that feature some of their best music over the years.  I love doing these kinds of mixes as they provide unique challenges in terms of tempo, style and timbre.  Weaving a set with this much music has also required me to break it up into several parts.  I have parts 1 & 2 completed and will be posting them in consecutive months.  By the time those are played out I should have part 3 and possibly a 4th part done as well.