'92 - You know the Koo.

I'm well know for being a stingy git when it comes to offering praise on other DJ's mixes. I measure it out in thimbles and reluctantly dribble it around only when I hear something that satisfies my various (and extremely anal) criteria. That fact alone should tell you how good this set is. Illnoir on SC alerted me to this mix a few weeks back, and it's by far the best '92 hardcore set I have ever heard (and I've heard a lot!). Fantastic selection with a good mix of anthems and obscurities, pinpoint drop ins, tight beatmatching and EQ'ng, and super fast mixing. This Kid Bippy (aka Greg J) fellow seems to be US based scratch DJ and it also seems that the scratch-heads (SC regular DJ Madcap is another one) have the perfect set of tools to allow them to avoid the pitfalls of mixing the badly produced and wonky breaks, out of key stabs and fucked up bar structures that appear so often in hardcore tunes from this era.

This mixing in this set is so good, that some of the heads on SC and other forums have questioned its 'authenticity' - in other words, whether or not it was made on computer, or some of the mixes were pre-recorded in advance. Now, personally I thought that was unlikely given the amount of scratching and beat juggling going on, and after a bit of digging I found this thread on DnBforum, where some answers are provided, straight from the horse's mouth:

...I don't do or condone any computer mixing. I'm a turntables only kind of guy, unless you need to use a CDJ to play your own productions.

However, the speed really isn't as impressive when I let you in on the secret that I used 4 turntables for this mix ... if you pay attention a little more closely you'll notice that one out of every few records will play for considerably longer than the rest. I would have been getting 3 other records cued up to go through more quickly. Nothing incredibly stressful, all of the records were in their sleeves, and because I take care of my old vinyl, they all went back in their sleeves pretty much right after I played them .... but they were set in a stack that I played in a planned out order.

Did I forget to mention that he drops some of Jungle's most sampled Hip Hop acapellas into the mix as well? This is true archive quality mixing, and one for the vaults. Download it now.

Big up Greg J!