Keeping the flame alive, here’s the year-end giftmix. You know the drill. It ain’t the best of 2012 and it’s barely generically coherent, but these are the tracks that either (a) made people on the dancefloor happy at Beat Research Chicago or (b) were in one way or another special to my family this year. (You’ll gather that I took my son to his first concert, Roger Waters doing the entirety of The Wall this year, for instance.) Hope you enjoy.

Tolva Giftmix 2012 by Immerito on Mixcloud

In The Flesh? – Pink Floyd
Flutes (Sasha Remix) – Hot Chip
Chime/Crime (Live in Australia) – Orbital
Sweet Thing (Adam Faz Dub Remix) – Tenor Fly & Dreadsquad
Whiskers – Gemini & Feed Me
Breakn’ A Sweat (Zedd Remix) – Skrillex & The Doors
Random – Gary Numan
Puttin’ On The Ritz (Club Des Belugas Remix) – Fred Astaire
Keep Pounding – Mooqee & Pimpsoul
Baby Battle Scratch – Lemon Jelly
Good Gone – K Theory
Ana Ng – They Might Be Giants
Debaser – Pixies
Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
The Trial – Pink Floyd
Outside the Wall – Pink Floyd

Full stream at Mixcloud, above. MP3 for download here.

Happy holidays and a healthy, propserous new year to you all!

I just realized I love Supertramp and always have. WTF. What else do Ilove that I don’t know that I do?

— John Tolva (@Immerito) March 21, 2012

Really the only way to get this out of my head was to mess with it.

Done.

Pretty sure there’s at least a few naughty among you, but here’s the annual giftmix just the same. Happy holidays and best in 2012, friends.

Tracks:

This City Is Killing Me – Dusty Brown
Seeing the Lines – Mr. Projectile
Futureworld – Com Truise
Unbank – Plaid
Daydream – Tycho
German Clap – Modeselektor
Spacial – Tevo Howard*
Rubin – Der Dritte Raum
Human Reason – Adam Beyer
Planisphere – Justice
Genkai (1) – Biosphere

* Chicago artist

This past weekend was our annual neighborhood party, Retro on Roscoe. It’s a all-out fest that ignites the blocks around it for 48 hours. As such, some friends of ours host an annual pre-party that spans all five of their contiguous backyards — something you don’t often see in the city.

I was asked to DJ the party whose theme this year was “Boogie Nights”, basically 70′s tunes infused with other tracks that carry forward the ethos from that era. The booth was a treehouse smack in the middle of the party which we outfitted tip-to-tail with music and lighting gear. I played from 8pm to 3am and, though I almost wet myself (with no backup until late), it was an astounding event.

I had a stripped-down setup (compared to, say, Christmas Party), but it was ample. Just the Macbook Pro running Ableton Live, a Native Instruments Audio Kontrol multichannel interface, and an Akai APC40 control surface. The Akai was perfect, a monome-esque grid with the knobs and sliders of a Novation SL Remote — though far sturdier.

I had hundreds of song fragments pre-loaded and warped — something that gave me almost unlimited flexibility to respond to the crowd without letting things drop. I even entertained requests from those brave enough to scale the nearly vertical steps.

I didn’t want to come down. Why? Let’s recap. I was in a kickass treehouse with another geek (Tom, on lights), a good friend, and a cooler of beer. We were controlling several hundred watts of music and commanding the best view of the space. Sure, we were one chain link’s failure away from death by falling steel, but if that’s how I was supposed to go, I wouldn’t complain.

A few have asked for a recording from the night. I’m still cleaning up most of it, but here’s an excerpt from when I think the most people were out in the yard dancing. (Specifically the slightly sped-up Diana Ross with a few claps and bloops layered on top was the pinnacle, if memory serves.)

[Download]

Full photoset here.

PS – I’m two-for-two luring Chicago’s finest with low frequencies. I suppose next Christmas we’ll go for the hat trick.

It’s out. Jesse’s posted his 2009 Inauguration Mix.

Superb track curation, tasty scratches, all mixed live like a guy who knows what the hell he’s doing.

My contribution? I am a spectral fraction of the crowd-cheering waveform from the Grant Park speech layered in. So, yeah, I’ll be demanding royalties.

Pull it down and turn it up.