“Vines” graces the more downtempo Act 1, while “X-Ray” on Act 2-the livelier of the two mixes-fits in nicely with Avalon Emerson’s ethereal “The Frontier (High Desert Synthapella)” and Redlight’s retro piano-house “City Jams.”Īrmed with Ableton Live software and a Pioneer DJ DDJ-RZ controller for rekordbox dj, Zabiela set himself up at his coffee table in his living room for hours at a time.
Zabiela himself has two new original tracks, one on each mix.
On Act 1, Zabiela hits the heady chimes of Talaboman’s “Safe Changes,” going through the ambient washes of Grandbrothers’ “Bloodflow” and the quirky jazz loops of Sad City’s “Steady Jam” along the way, eventually dipping into quiet moments with Second Story & Appleblim’s rework of Debussy’s “Reverie 68.” Zabiela takes his time building the mix, and not for a big drop, but more to hit a plateau and maintain the energy there, without wearing the listener out. The result is, not surprisingly, very considered. I wanted to mine for those, which is one of the reasons it took so long, just colliding different tracks into each other trying to find those moments.” “When you’re DJing out, occasionally, you’ll do one of those by accident-and then you’ll replicate that at every gig for the next six months. “When you have those moments when two records just sing at each other, it’s amazing,” explains Zabiela. Each one of those was divided into folders of: “deffos,” “nearly deffos,” “I like these,” and “possibilities.” This intensity is for one goal only: Finding as many magical mix moments as possible. For the former, this was 1,124 tracks, for the latter 1,152, with the odd crossover. He created a playlist for each disc, which are called Act 1 and Act 2. Zabiela took a different approach toward Balance 029 than he has taken to compiling mixes in the past. I drove Balance Music absolutely bonkers.” When I finally handed it in, I changed my mind about one thing five times, ended up with two versions of the first mix and three versions of the second mix, then changed the master files because I wasn’t happy at the last minute. “I kept getting interrupted, which made it very difficult, and everything was taking ages. “I was constantly picking it up and putting it down,” says Zabiela from his English hometown of Southampton. It’s not just that he painstakingly chose the 58 tracks that make up the double-disc, mix-compilation in this long-running and well-respected series, but also the number of personal upheavals he’s had to deal with while working on the release. It took James Zabiela the better part of a year to put together Balance 029.
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