All X-Mix videos available for your viewing pleasure! See below.
Ah, “the good old days,” when music still felt new and not “been there, done that.” One of many treasured memories is the early nineties, when we witnessed how the masses discovered electronic music, how they adopted it and changed it to their world view. Me, I was on a search for “real” electronic music, not 2 Unlimited. And I found it on long-forgotten radio stations and on MTV. Saturday nights started with the Party Zone and the discovery of great music and annoying hosts.
And then it happened. Up till X-Mix videos, most clips were either blueprints of existing patterns or very primitive computer animations. X-Mix was different. It was an hour long mix, with high quality visuals, a lot of computer generated 3D. It was my first encounter with this kind of stuff, that would eventually lead to me creating demos.
It’s rather pointless to try to describe the mixes, you have to see and hear them, experience them. There were 10 X-Mix “longvideos” made in total:
- Paul Van Dyk – The MFS Trip (1993)
- Laurent Garnier – Destination Planet Dream (1994)
- Richie Hawtin & John Acquaviva – Enter: Digital Reality! (1994)
- Dave Angel – Beyond the Heavens (1995)
- DJ Hell – Wildstyle (1995)
- Mr. C – The Electronic Storm (1996)
- Dave Clarke – Electro Boogie (1996)
- Ken Ishii – Fast Forward & Rewind (1997)
- Kevin Saunderson – Transmission From Deep Space Radio (1997)
- Hardfloor – Jack The Box (1998)
Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, I can give you a preview of all those mixes (sushigroove, revenant7605 and EmpiemaBack we love you for your hard work). Only X-Mix 4 and a few parts from 9 are missing in action. Can any one help out?
The quality of most of those videos is pretty low. The source is usually a VHS tape of the MTV program, and, well, this is YouTube after all. If you want high quality videos, you can still buy the DVD collection from the !K7 Records site. The entire X-Mix archive fits on 3 DVDs. It’s only missing the Ken Ishii mix, because that one was released seperatly. €19.99 for each DVD, a very reasonable price, in my humble opinion.