I was first introduced to pirate radio in 1991, and it played a huge role in shaping my musical tastes.
Being a kid too young at the time to go out raving, I would spend hours at home or at friends’ houses listening to stations like Kool, Weekend Rush, Defection, Eruption and Pulse, and record them to tape on a Musical Fidelity “music centre” similar to the one pictured below – not much to look at but it had an excellent pause button (anyone who used to record off radio will know how important this is).

I was also buying vinyl and playing it on this thing. It received the FM signal through a piano string instead of an aerial, which actually worked quite well!

After I went through a couple more questionable “Hi-Fi’s” (and I use that term very loosely), by 1994 I eventually moved on to a decent NAD amp and tape deck, Technics tuner and an old pair of Celestion Ditton 15 speakers. A year later I also picked up an SL1510 and a Pro 150 (hold tight DJ Jamie, I feel your pain) which was a barely useable combo, so went on to buy my SL1200s not long afterwards, that I still have to this day.

Unfortunately I would often re-record over sets or shows after I got bored of after listening to them over and over on the way to/from/in school or whatever, unaware of how much I’d want to have them back to listen to a few years down the line. I do still have a couple of my favourite ones left though.

The Mix…. 

So this set is based around tunes from the 93-94 era (with one from 92 thrown in that was way ahead of its time) that were big pirate radio favourites of mine, tunes that instantly make me think of a particular station, DJ/MC, tape, time or place the second I hear that breakdown. Basically tunes that had a positive impact on me, that I went out and bought because of pirate radio.

I have spliced in little sections of some of my old recordings (mainly Kool FM ones) that I happen to have ripped and saved on my computer – I tried not to go overboard with this, but did include some slightly longer memorable clips, like the infamous “Duffer Paul” reload, Kool FM NYE 94 into 95, which friends and me creased up over many times.

A lot of these tunes are not heard so much these days compared to the bigger anthems (many of which owe their success to stations like Kool and Rush), some are a bit rough around the edges and some were overshadowed by a monster of an anthem on the flipside (Renegade’s Something I Feel for example).

I purposefully didn’t play tracks by the same artist or on the same label more than once to try and get a nice cross-section of music in there, but it was very tough to leave some out, especially when flicking through the Reinforced back cat from this era. Also, I didn’t want to repeat tunes that already feature in previous mixes of mine such as “Just About Jungle”, which is packed with a lot of my old pirate favourites.

Shouts/credits for the clips used: 
Demolition Crew, DJ Kane, MC Det, Cogee, DJ Ash, Eastman, Trace, Rymetyme, Navigator, Mampi Swift, Kool FM, Eruption FM, and all producers in the tracklisting.

01: DJ Kane – Lost [No U-Turn]
02: Sound Of The Future – The Warning (Remix) [Formation]
03: DJ Mayhem – M-Power [Basement]
04: DJ LD – Parazone Part 3 [Planet Earth]
05: Gappa G & Hypa Hyper – Roach Is Burning [Ruff Kut]
06: B.V. – Vision [World Bass]
07: 4 horsemen Of The Apocalypse – We Are The Future [Tone Def]
08: The Whitehouse Crew – Anonymous [Subliminal]
09: The Quiet Storm – Everybody Over There [Emphasis]
10: Dopeski & Jakes – Mutant Ideology [Face]
11: Ment 4 Bass – Strings Free [Liquid Wax]
12: Double H Productions – Ultra Jungle [Hard Disk]
13: Body Snatch – The Strength (Mental Rapids) [Big City]
14: Majistrate – Big Tings [Intalektive]
15: On Remand – Controllin’ (Tango Remix) [Underworld Vinyl]
16: Underground Software – He’s Gone! [Reinforced]
17: The Joker – The Joker [Skanna]
18: DJ Nut Nut – Forbidden Planet [Virtual Motion]
19: Renegade – Something I Feel [Moving Shadow]
20: Roni Size & DJ Die – The Calling
21: Pugwash & Probe – Army Of Darkness [i-d]
22: DJ Crystl – Deep Space [Dee Jay]
23: Smith Inc – Palomino (Give It To Me) [Absolute Zero]
24: FBD Project – Breakin Up [Bang-in Tunes]
25: The J.B. – Simpin [Back 2 Basics]

* Get the ‘clean’ unedited version of the mix here

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