Just over 10 years ago a depressing reality check start started appearing in music publications. Pieces like this, from RA’s Andrew Ryce, were calling time on the mix CD format.

For me, mix CDs were a window into a world which I was too young for and too isolated from, eagerly hoovering up things like the early Ministry Of Sound session mixes to fuel my US house inspiration. As such, seeing the death knell being foretold was something that hit me. These mixes were my clubs. To be fair, they were right - despite the constant heartbeat of the Fabric series and some select evergreens like the DJ Kicks! series, mix CDs were drying up to the point where even the likes of Global Underground couldn’t command the limelight they used to.

Times change. Ire at streaming platforms is well documented, and a desire for ownership and authenticity are increasing, especially in a post-GenAI world. Vinyl found its place over the last decade or so, but with increasing costs hitting the medium, CDs and cassettes have filled a gap to satisfy the demand for physical - helped in part by platforms like Bandcamp offering purchasers a best of both worlds approach.

Mix CDs make you sit up and listen. Not metaphorically - the premise that someone has put on their best showing to commit audio to a physical medium and you’ve chosen to buy into it brings with it a desire to put time aside for a cover to cover listen. As an analogue - this happened with me when I switched gaming platforms from Steam to Switch. Instead of idly leafing through a digital catalogue and playing for a remarkably non-committed hour on my (now long gone) PC, I was putting a physical cartridge in a machine, playing it and not removing it until it was done.

So when this release from Felt Sense Recordings popped up on one of my discovery sessions through Instagram, I made a point to get it into my ears the very next day. Uniqueness in this market is a rare thing and we should celebrate it whenever it manifests.

It is the first in a series (with the second, a live performance from Louis Marlo, already out on the Bandcamp page), and features a session from Chaz, who is described as “an uncompromising digger, a purveyor of the most legendary parties in recent memory and a fundamental DJ in the Melbourne club scene for over a decade.”

One huge green flag was the tracklisting: an array of things I had absolutely no knowledge of, bar recognising the presence of Audio Soul Project, Omni AM and Rabbit In The Moon. Further digging uncovers that this is a selection of mostly peak 00’s material with a scattering of mid/late 90’s sounds, spanning labels like Peacefrog, Poker Flat, Low Pressings. To draw a parallel, the vibe is not too dissimilar to the original Tyrant mix - breaksy, trippy, and murky - with little hints of Akufen’s glitchy and unpredictable Fabric session.

There is an intimacy to the session. Mixed live it is without the lifeless gloss that a studio session can bring with it. As you listen, you’re transported out onto the dancefloor, but not as an isolated individual, you’re in the moment and synchronised to a communal BPM heartbeat. There is something about a live session brings a certain sense of a “we’re all in this together” anticipation. The blends start to appear and breath is held, gears shift and tensions release. Brings me back to a moment years ago in Fabric where I took a moment to step back from the melee, surveyed the floor, and was mesmerised by the complete synchronisation of everyone in front of me.

Live sessions have a vibrancy that is hard to recapture when poured over audio Tetris inside Ableton. What I particularly like is that this is music that is perfectly attuned to the function of dancing but without ever feeling functional. Each track has diversions, nuances, purpose, without ever feeling like it is a means to an end.

The 00’s feel as if they were last week to me but in musical terms they feel long forgotten - existing in a weird middle ground of possibly being too recent to be part of the great genre renaissances that have happened over the last decade or so but not recent enough to be currently in rotation. This selection from Chaz illustrates that there’s gold to be had if you go digging. But it’s more than that - it’s fun.

When I finally got around to putting some words down for this thing of mine, I had a little cadence of releases in mind to kick things off. Being remarkably unreliable, I’ve abandoned my little mental schedule at a whim. I’m also slightly bending my “new wave prog only” self-imposed constraint with this release from Prism.

Prism were a mid-90s outfit, originally popping up on Joy Division / New Order manager Rob Gretton’s Robs Records. Refraction and Rain are is peak 90’s hypnotic chug, layered, interwoven and undulating. They’re both fantastic but it isn’t what drew me to the release.

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Over on Instagram Sunju Hargun flagged people attention to a release from his Siamese Twins imprint that was still circulating on Discogs with a nice spread of copies [spoiler: it isn’t now], highlighted with an incredible psychedelic reworking from S.O.N.S under his SYO alias. Instagram, for me at least, hasn’t been a poisoned well regarding social media and kicks off many threads of curiosity, so this started me picking at an SYO related thread.

Next comes an element of reading between lines that may or may not exist, but let’s go in nonetheless: SYO came into life as the “One Night Stand” series came to a close. The series is best known for lush, freeform electronica - straddling many stools, evoking nostalgia but quite unlike anything you’d heard before. SYO was much tauter in intent. Driving, more dancefloor orientated, yet no less fluid and unpredictable. From what I can see SYO is a connecting thread from the S.O.N.S of the past, right up to where we are today on the Junction Forest imprint, that DNA exists.

Back on track. Slightly disheartened by missing the Discogs boat, I went to see what else existed under the SYO moniker. This is where I landed on the Prism release.

One thing I love: copies are available over on Bandcamp (minus one copy which should be winging its way to me around now-ish.) The second thing I love: the SYO remix is a contextual counterpoint to the Prism originals. Where they are lush, broad and meandering, the SYO version of Refraction is stripped bare, stark and urgent. Space exists, sounds bounce around in the gaps that are left. There is a real element of stealth about its tone. It peaks with restraint and all the sounds feel like they are intimately skipping around on the surface of your eardrum.

That this is still available since its release in 2022 is a blessing - S.O.N.S material on Junction Forest goes fast and is gone forever, and this is directly comparable to what has been coming out there - and you could do no worse than linking it up with the second Prism release on Cosmocities “Vapour Trails”, which is backed up with a remix by the ever compelling Bliss Inc. Careful though, it is currently at a slightly more urgent 7 copies remaining.

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I knew I wanted this a year ago. Around the middle of last year I got hit by Bandcamp insanity. While I already had a decent record collection, I was wanting to get the dual joys of a combined 12” and digital footprint over at Bandcamp. So I started absorbing releases at gather pace. As part of this initiative, I’d resolved to get myself a few Sleep D bits. I’d been enjoying their stuff since covering their debut LP Rebel Force some years ago. Very quickly, I’d grabbed a couple of fresh cuts from their own Butter Sessions imprint, as well as an entry onto a continually strong Kalahari Oyster Cult.

In conjunction with this, I’d also been monitoring Magicwire after arriving a little bit too late to the party for some of their releases. Small pause for a history lesson: originally it was a label started by Lone named Magic Wire (very load bearing space there) for his own material and gradually expanding into the world of cosmic and woozy house from the likes of Gnork. A pivot in 2017 with the removal of the space and the addition of Gabriola to helm the label, saw a marked shift into full spectrum progressive material. Releases from Gabriola himself were joined by Ex-Terrestrial, Bliss Inc. and S.O.N.S party-time alias DJ Jacuzziy.

Back to Bandcamp madness summer: a London Magicwire gig saw Sleep D brandishing a mysterious 12” that was only on sale at that night. The yearning was strong - on paper that was going to absolutely be my sort of material.

Time passed.

Just a few weeks ago, the 12” came into my mind for some reason I had a speculative search only a couple of weeks ago trying to see if any information had surfaced about. Nothing was apparent, but just a few days later the Magicwire whatsapp group sprung into life - the record had a name and it was coming out. Joyful times for me - it now sits upstairs resting against a recently built Kallax.

There have been countless times where something I’ve anticipated, where all the stars have apparently aligned, has left me disappointingly cold. Reliably, Sleep D are in great form and “Odyssey” is possibly one of their most direct and playful tracks. The original goes for drama, pairing a moody synth hook with syncopated driving bass. Hallmarks of peak material but with a touch of a frown to it. This is paired with the “North 2 South Mix” going dubbier into hypnotic psy/acid territories although with a really deft but totally “not heard that in this context before” use of a classic house organ. You’re going for the original if you want the hook, the alternative if you want hypnotism with both being equally pulsating.

On remix duties, Bliss Inc. and Gabriola combine - as they have done before - under the Equator moniker, and turn out an absolute headline of a version. As a rule of thumb, tracks have been trending towards the five to seven minute mark in recent times (and I suppose it makes sense - that’s 4x tracks per 12” in a time when it is expensive to make, expensive to buy). Here we are channeling peak turn of the millenium prog with a nearly eleven minute monster that’s going to have you reaching for some classic Lexicon Avenue or Bedrock type material to slide into it. Dark, subtle, measured, although far from placid, it is the perfect counterpoint to the Sleep D originals, which makes for a fantastic release for those with mercurial moods.

For me, something about this hits the nostalgia buttons, flipping over onto the B-side to see the entire surface area of the 12” covered by a single track. A real rubbing of the hands moments “oooh, where is THIS going to take me?”

Unfortunately, as of now, it will be taking me precisely nowhere - aforementioned Kallax has an empty space on top of it where a pair of decks (currently in need of a service and in storage) will go. When they’re fixed, this is 100% getting a shake out in my first session, and most likely with some of that 2000s material on the horizon.

When it came out at the start of the 2000’s - a full 25 years ago - it felt like a statement.

Progressive had its first wave over the course of the 90’s but absolutely took to the fore as we ticked into the millenium. A time where dominant US house scene was starting to lose its way, disillusion fans sidestepping into maturing deep house and tech house scenes.

Progressive became the broad church: folding in US house heritage acts like Deep Dish and Danny Tenaglia alongside the legacy Quivvers and Tilts, while it happily cribbed upon notes from those deep and tech house scenes. It was how I fell into things, a die hard Masters At Work boy for years, suddenly finding himself dancing along to Paper Recordings material (that I already loved) being dropped by Danny Howells in Bedrock @ Heaven.

Hooj itself shifted ever so slightly at this point, embracing this wider array of sounds. Pulling in more hypnotic and esoteric tracks to sit alongside its more party time, anthemic early catalogue, and Nu Progressive Era felt like the exclamation point at the peak of this journey.

For my sins, my main experience of Nu Progressive Era was on vinyl. Yes, I was missing out on a huge proportion of the compilation at the time (which I remedied later in life), but this was very much an active “playing rather than listening” phase of life. Ceaseless evenings in front of the SL1210’s, just seeing how things would unfold. This collection was a swiss army knife.

If I was leaning in to the chunkier side of my collection, the Police evoking “Voices (Fata Morgana Remix)” from KC Flightt vs. Funky Junction or the sprawling deep trance of Deep Dish’s reworking of “Barbarella” by Sven Vath. Perhaps the Bedrock was starting to get pulled out, and that meant jumping into Quivver’s Boom Q mix of Dune “Boomerang”, full of technoid funk with a menacing bassline hovering below my feet. Or I might be feeling a little less by the numbers, deeper but no less energetic, and ducking into Bushwacka alias Plantastik “Mr Moon” or Jeff Roach “Analysis”. There were directions I could pluck out that would lead me down a multitude of paths.

Obviously my personal retelling there undersells the mix, which also touched on major names such as Sander Kleinenberg and Adam Beyer, Sasha’s scene defining Xpander, Peace Division’s dark taming of pop classic “Touch Me” by Rui Da Silva, elements of the upcoming US tech house scene through Hipp-e and Joeski. Where I had dipped in to a taster, Red Jerry had orchestrated the buffet over on the full session.

It was weird to think that just a few years down the line, progressive would start to wandering into a creative wilderness. As the scene matured, unofficial rules and guidelines established, creative diversity started to be replaced with functional utility. As for its presence in the media - progressive was readily featured throughout the early days of tastemakers like Resident Advisor, but the spotlight shifted. The late 00s wilderness years is another story, but let’s just say that some tried to follow but lost their authenticity by becoming an ill fit into unfamiliar scenes that themselves burnt bright and burnt out.

I noped out around 2003, when I found myself listening to a lot of progressive material that felt like it was going through the motions. I’d been going to Fabric quite a bit by that point and found myself aligning more what was happening there. What progressive stopped doing, tech house had picked up the slack - weaving disparate inspirations into a sound that wasn’t quite ready to be pinned down (yet there was a foreshadowing of the very same situation tech house would find itself in some years later).

While it sounds like I’m retelling the death throes of a genre, the legacy progressive scene didn’t die, it just continued on rails - with a brief re-alignment through the melodic techno (horrible definition imo) movement. The legacy acts are still touring, the audience is still there, and (based on haunting Decoded Magazine’s Mix Of The Month competition) it is arguably a hugely popular genre for DJs as it was when Global Underground was at its peak. It just doesn’t feel the same.

Sasha ruefully states that he doesn’t roll out Xpander much any more due to playing slower tempos nowadays (and Xpander was never a full force banger really), while also sighing through the auction of his old 12”s commenting on how tracks were longer back then. Everything sits at a mid-tempo 120bpm with a low-energy drama not too dissimilar to a Westlife “key change and get up off the stools” moment. Inspiration seems scarce with the genre being reference track’d into the ground.

A good long age ago on Twitter, former Resident Advisor dep-ed Andrew Ryce once quipped “Boards Of Canada is dad-rock for rave dads”, but I think it’s more aptly angled at where progressive ended up. That was underscored when my wife said to me “there are a lot of Simons here tonight” when we went to Sasha’s Refracted live tour a few years back.

There is another story here. Adjacent to the legacy scene, a new wave of progressive has been coming through. New artists, new labels, and a freshness and authenticity that feels more akin to what we once had - going back to go forwards. Diversity in all forms, breaking down the barriers, disregarding the rules. I vaguely cottoned onto things a good 5 or so years ago when Inverted Audio dep-ed Baptiste ran a D.Tiffany premiere (of Human Movement “Waiting”) that was a whole basket of fun. I think it shifts between three different kick drums over the course of its duration, ending on one of those zappy eurodance efforts in a raucous finale.

After discovering that, I was back to being a 14 year-old with ferocious curiosity again. This time instead of absorbing covermount cassettes, compilation CDs and journeys on trains to various record shops, it was taking advantage of Spotify algorithms to find a nice network of labels, artists, record shops and distros to follow on Instagram and Bandcamp. As the catalogue builds and follows amass, more recent months are seeing a big pivot away from Spotify.

So this is where I am today. I’ve spent most of my past years going in hard on this, pure enjoyment and a much needed break from sifting through promo portals in the hope of being served up material I was into. I’ve had to have a break from writing - I’ve got a (now) 3 year old that soaks up a lot of time in-between a demanding day job and two larger niblets, plus I made the error of trying to play through Persona 5 Royal “quickly” at one point (it quotes an average 123+ hours of playtime for this I believe and boy does it take every single one of those hours). Yet this Substack, one that I’ve had open for some time now without direction, has sat waiting for me to get around to banging keys once again. I killed off most social media this year and it has mostly been just me, tunes and… well, some form of Nintendo by my side, but mostly distraction free and able to fire some energies into creativity instead of negativity.

Not many people are covering these new sounds in written form. Progressive attracts a lot of snooty disdain in general, although you’ll find people like Belters4U, The Mudd Show, Wax Merchant (and plenty more besides) doing great content on the likes of Instagram. However, I’m a bit old fashioned and I like to bang out words and read words while listening to music - so I’ve finally decided to turn my hand to talking about stuff I’ve picked up on. Sometimes it’ll be new, sometimes it won’t - I’m just enjoying myself and I’m not going to march to anyone else’s beat.

As for Hooj. Well they’re back and looking like they’re picking up from where they were at the peak, staying true to what they were. I still have a Hooj Tunes t-shirt that has lasted since way back from the turn of the millenium. Resilience, it seems, is a brand thing.