DJ Mixtapes Today and the Best Around

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Once upon a time, DJ mixtapes were for the faithful. Today, it's the opposite – everyone can access them, and more and more, they do. By the time you finish this sentence, 20 more live-casts and podcasts, club and stadium sets, amateur and pro, old and new, will go up on SoundCloud, and 20 more on Mixcloud. It's overwhelming, but it's also a treasure trove, as this chronological selection of 20 of the best we heard in the first half of 2013 proves.

The 25 DJs that Rule the Earth

Tensnake,

https://soundcloud.com/everybodywantstobethedj/tensnake-essential-mix-2013-02

Essential Mix (February 16th)

Hamburg DJ Tensnake's approach on his 2010 club banger "Coma Cat" – friendly, assured, patient – typifies this Radio 1 showpiece. It begins slowly, with Alice Coltrane, but rides a steady arc to far giddier grooves – especially the second hour, where Todd Terje's remix of Hot Chip's "How Do You Do" and a yet-untitled new one from Tensake mesh easily with house classics like T-Coy's "Carino" and Röyksopp's remix of Felix da Housecat's "What Does It Feel Like."

[embed]http://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F88719332[/embed]

[embed]https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F88719332[/embed]

Truss / MPIA3, RA.351 (February 18th)

Nail-hard, back-to-basics techno – the kind of machine-oriented music that made Surgeon and Adam X underground DJ kings in the mid-'90s – has been on an upswing recently. London producer Tom Russell is a prime example, as both Truss and MPIA3. His edition of dance site Resident Advisor's podcast works as a primer for this new wave of brutalist techno, grounding it in Nineties touchstones by Der Dritte Raum and Pilldriver, and letting me...

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...ster favorites such as Blawan and AC Slater. It's an audacious gambit that he puts over with real vigor – a conscious statement his big-tent peers now have to catch up with.

[embed]https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F96949948[/embed]

DJ Koze, Fact Mix 387 (June 18th)

Daft Punk get all the headlines, but the wooziest widescreen dance album of 2013 is DJ Koze's endlessly lush Amygdala. He's also a joker, and this set for the weekly series for London's Fact Magazine features a robot voiceover back-announcing the tracks, a nod to both radio and reviewer-promo album advances. It's a lovely head-trip consisting of sixteen favorites from the year's first half – including three of Koze's own. If you're that good, why bother with modesty?

Top 20 Mixes According to Rolling Stone

p.s. here's mine.. www.mixcloud.com/scalco/ (WINK)

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