Put it this way - its not often you get to buy a Derrick May mix CD, let alone here him in his eliment doing 3 deck mixes others can only imagine. It starts off as funky house with more DJing tricks than you can wave a stick at, then builds up to a slightly more aggresive style with the likes of green velvet vynil making a welcome appearance. That green velvet mix he manages to pull of is nothing short of amazing, firstly chopping between 2 copies of "preacher man", then as they are both being mixed up, he proceeds to mix in a THIRD tune, suddenly cuts out a copy of "preacher man" and amazingly manages to immidiatly mix in a FORTH tune!! It must be heard to be believed. This CD contains more of an American hard house feel with a hint of tech house as opposed to any real Detroit vinyl, but its littered with absolute clasics (french kiss etc). A must. 10/10

It's fairly obvious that if you've ever seen Derick May spin live, this mix is representative of what the guy is capable of. Every genre has its stars, and Derrick is the real deal. After party of this past year's DEMF was proof- four hours of getting your mind blown.

And BTW, 99% of the mix CDs out there are computer-enhanced in some way.

funny to read these comments after all this time. it was recorded in one pass but it obviously contains some post-production. which, btw, was done by kenny larkin.

and who the hell cares anyway. it's a masterpiece.

When this mix was released years ago, Derrick told in interviews that he was already pissed of because he knew that a lot of people would analyse and criticize this mix. He just underline that this was no demo or lesson but just his way to share his pleasure for electronic music !!!

That's funny, usually I can spot the studio mix a mile away but I didn't get that from this CD at all. Whatever the case, I was somewhat disappointed with it. A lot of the tracks are "classics" but I didn't really need to hear French Kiss again (sorry, I know it's his all time favorite record, just my opinion.) It seems to fall prey to that "educate the crowd" mentality, too many classics trying to cover too much ground over the course of 70 minutes. The transition from funky old school disco house to classic Chicago stuff to techno (and a very cheezy latin track) might work over a 3 hour set but it seemed a bit much for this release.

Just saying...

Derrick May is the best deejay i ever saw live and this mixed cd shows him at the hight of his abilities - he tried to give as much effort into this cd as possible . so what`s the point of arguing , if he actually did it live in his studio as opposed to producing it the way it should be done in his mind . he is a genious , and each time he plays live , you can see that he doesn`t need to hide in a studio to give a memorable DJ-Set .There is nothing on the cd that states it is a live mix anyway.

you can do it with a pioneer djm 600 right now, even though some of the samples that have been used in the cd exceeds the limits of the sampling facility of the pioneer (the reverse playing in the kramer dashwood song, for example), but back then in 1997 the djm 600 didn't exist. Yet, I repeat, there is no disrespect for Derrick for me, he is a genious and together with deep dish's penetrate deeper compilation on tribal usa, this is the best compilation ever made for me. But again as I said listen to the cd with your pure attention and own some of the stuff on vinyl, you will see the impossibility of playing those stuff naturally.

I had 3 copies of that CD and must have listened to it maybe over a million times. At first I did wonder a lot about those mixing skills and other stuff, but as time passed and I happened to own most of the records from the compilation on vinyl myself and after hearing the songs "actually", then I found out that most the skills and the songs being used in the compilation are the perils of great studio ability and a great sampler not true vinyl mixing. i.e. no vocals in message is love, no saxaphone in earth people, somewhere by the end of preacher man the same loop keeps on going all the time, when he plays hayden andre and gene farris at the same time the whole thing is a 15-20 second loop sample, kramer dashwood song, the sample goes normal and then goes backwards then he mixes to alarms, etc, etc There's no disrespect for Derrick though. He's a genious, the songs being played are all killers and must have items and being bought for over 100s of $$ in auctions in ebay.com etc. etc. but listen to the cd as much as I do, and you will see...