Various - Technics Present The 1990 MixMag/Kiss FM Mastermixes

Having just discovered all this new electronic music in all it's various guises, this cd was an absolute godsend. Smartly tying together the only widely available magazine that was covering the emergent dance music scene in any depth and djs from the newly-legit Kiss 100FM in London (thankfully receivable a good deal further than the actual capital itself), it was a window for young unenlightened idjits such as myself into the sound of tomorrow today. Considering the limitations of time that each dj had to push their own style, it must have been a tortuous process to decide which tunes to use! My favourite mixes were the Warp Records Mastermix - for the industrial sound of Sheffield; the Creation Records Mastermix to bring you into the balearic Ibiza sunshine and the NuGroove Mastermix to remind you of where it all began, back over the other side of The Pond. That's not to denigrate the other mixes which are all eminently listenable, just not totally my cup tea like ;-) To give away a free cd on the cover, what is now a standard feature for magazines, back then was revolutionary; and in doing so, all those involved opened up alot of virgin minds to exciting new sounds. Thanks!

"A few issues ago we received a letter from a reader asking us if we’d ever thought of putting a cassette on the front of the magazine featuring the artists we write about. At that time, plans were already underway for such a project but within weeks we’d had the idea of being the first lifestyle magazine to give away a free compact disc courtesy of the generosity of Technics whose sponsorship of dance music is well-documented, from their continued investment and production of the celebrated SL1200 deck through to their annual sponsorship of the DMC World Mixing Championships.

Then came the question of what music to choose. Rather than just a CD full of individual tracks, we thought the idea of mastermixes was far more appropriate to what MixMag and dance music is all about. Discussions with London’s Kiss 100 FM had been in progress since before the station launched in September and when approached with the idea of a CD, they were more than happy to lend five of their most famous DJs to the project, each of whom chose product from respective favourite record labels to mastermix. We owe many thanks to the five record companies involved who all put in many hard hours to make this project possible and we’re sure you’ll agree that the selection of tracks on the disc are highly representative of the way dance music is going in the nineties….."

MixMag, Christmas 1990