Jay’s new mix is two hours of lush, ambient jungle and spaced out drum & bass grooves. The music here melts into the background if you want it to, but still keeps a good thump going. In fact, as I write this, I’ve uploaded the mix, but it’s still playing as I work into the night on some other projects I have going. I don’t even want to pause this one to go take a leak.

This tour through the breakbeats is an addictive one. This is going to be interesting tomorrow on the track doing 400 meter sprints with Jay’s beautiful blend in my ears. Jay has some enviable skills as a DJ and his taste in music is impeccable. Now I know I’m going to attack his collection with my portable hard drive at my first opportunity.

Well done, Jay. Welcome to Volume 04.

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 04, Session Alpha — Dreaming of Spring. Mixed by Jay Def in Meridian, Idaho, USA, on Monday, March 01, 2010. Running time: 1:58:24.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.

So, we’ve got 26 songs in this finale. On Monday, Jay Def launches us into the next volume. My mix today ran the gamut from big funky house bumps to some Latin flavor and even a few old dusty UK Garage tracks. There was one stall during a fantastic Freemasons cover of an Alanis Morrisette hit, but when I listened to the playback, I couldn’t tell where it was. There are so many vocal tracks here that I’m pretty sure that if we listen to this in the car during a road trip, you’d get tired of hearing me sing along.

Despite the earlier technical issues and the weird stall in the middle, I had a great time with this mix. I found myself playing along on the flute, recorder, harmonica, and guitar. Someday, when I’m extra confident, I’ll turn the microphone on and add a live element to the mix.

Onward!

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 03, Session Zulu — Digeum Volume 03 Finale. Mixed by Apollo Lee in Sunnyvale, California, USA, on Friday, February 26, 2010. Running time: 2:18:40.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.

No technical issues on this one, except a reminder occasionally that my ears are better for telling that tracks are beatmatched than the meters in Traktor. Sometimes, the meters miscount a 4 beat loop when it’s actually in time. Realizing this helps me avoid the panic moment of second guessing what my ears are telling me is okay.

This was a fun mix. Nice and mellow. I hope you like it.

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 03, Session Yankee — Penultima III. Mixed by Apollo Lee in Sunnyvale, California, USA, on Saturday, February 20, 2010. Running time: 1:18:46.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.

Are you ready? This one is just over two hours of seriously thumping electro house grooves in a very interesting mix. Jay always has choice cuts in his mixes (I wish I knew where he found them all) and inspires me to fantasize about raiding his iTunes library.

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 03, Session X-Ray — Electro Thumps. Mixed by Jay Def in Meridian, Idaho, USA, on Tuesday, February 16, 2010. Running time: 2:15:04.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.

The 75 minutes of this mix slipped by quickly as I anticipated a stall out or system crash. There were no technology fails this time, which is fairly rare for me. I probably could have gone on for a while longer. This was fun to spin and fun to listen to afterwards.

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 03, Session Whiskey — Diamond. Mixed by Apollo Lee in Sunnyvale, California, USA, on Monday, February 08, 2010. Running time: 1:15:30.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.

The computer only stalled out during the Miguel Migs track as I was attempting to cue and beatmatch one of my favorite Dubtribe Sound System songs, Nothing is Impossible. For some reason, I find this track a little hard to mix, but I kept on trucking through funky house music and closing with a couple of deeper tracks. Some of the songs here are new (to me), but most of them are classics. I think you’ll get a kick out of it.

I had a great time. The hours just flew by and before I knew it, I was posting the mix and thinking about getting food. I may have to see if I can do a 50 song electro mix one of these days.

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 03, Session Victor — Birthday Bumps II. Mixed by Apollo Lee in Sunnyvale, California, USA, on Sunday, January 31, 2010. Running time: 2:55:08.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.

I do have a couple of nits to pick with Tumblrize, though. If I was more motivated, I’d read up more on the Wordpress API and see if I could help fix the issue that I see with this otherwise nifty plugin.

1. It doesn’t work at all with MarsEdit. I blog with MarsEdit, because I don’t have to log into the Wordpress UI on the web to get my blogging done. When I post using MarsEdit, it posts as normal If I want the post sent to Tumblr using this plugin, I have to go into the web UI, delete and retype a period on the post, and “update.” I’m not sure whether this is an issue with Tumblrizer, Wordpress, or MarsEdit, but it really annoys me.
2. Tumblrizer ignores Textile markup. I also use Textile to format my posts, because I’m lazy and when I’m blogging, I don’t want to code HTML. I want to write. Links that I post using MarsEdit, formatted in Textile, post here correctly formatted. When crossposted, the links, lists, strongs, and other formatting appears unformatted in the tumblr post. This bothers me quite a bit.

I guess one solution is realizing how few of the people following me on tumblr give a crap about what I post here on the Oracle of Apollo.

A few of these tracks are songs I’ve never played in a mix before. A few others were part of my monthly eMusic download this afternoon. I am really happy with the amount of soul in this mix. Some of these tracks are really gorgeous and even the ones I’ve heard a thousand times — like Dubtribe Sound System’s Samba Dub — make my heart sing.

I hope you enjoy listening to it. It’s nice and short and full of great moments. Next weekend, there’s going to be a great big gigantic one — 39 tracks, probably over 3 hours long.

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 03, Session Uniform — Psyching Up. Mixed by Apollo Lee in Sunnyvale, California, USA, on Saturday, January 23, 2010. Running time: 1:01:20.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.

I’ve been plagued with failing motherboard issues on my MacBook Pro for what seems like forever, at least a couple of years, and as soon as I have some money, I’m going to replace this one. It froze up 12 times in 30 minutes during the first attempt at this mix, while loading the songs into Traktor’s memory. During the first pass, the screen went black (which usually means I close the lid and sleep it until the music stops, then open it back up, tap the keyboard, and it wakes up with no gap in the music). I closed the top and there was the familiar reboot chord, right in the middle of my mix.

Welcome to Startover City.

Eventually, I managed to get the computer back up and ready to go. During this mix, the stall happened once, but I was able to close the lid and open it back up a few minutes later and have it wake from sleep without an issue. It still had me seeing a dark enough red that I decided against my originally planned twenty-six tracks.

Pulling the tempo slider back to 124 helped me relax into these electro-house grooves. I like the way it came out, but I really hate this process. I hope some of you listen to this mix, because it involved a lot of yelling at my equipment.

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 03, Session Tango — The Ides of January. Mixed by Apollo Lee in Sunnyvale, California, USA, on Friday, January 15, 2010. Running time: 1:17:42.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.

This is a long mix, weighing in at over two hours. I’m really hoping you have as much fun listening to it as I had playing it. This one felt so relaxing, I could have kept going a while longer.

Digeum Mix Sessions – Volume 03, Session Sierra — Twenty Ten Deep. Mixed by Apollo Lee in Sunnyvale, California, USA, on Thursday, January 07, 2010. Running time: 2:13:45.

Go give it a listen and leave a comment with your thoughts.