About
Why The Mix Archive exists
I built The Mix Archive because too much brilliant progressive house and trance from the 1990s and early 2000s ends up buried in old playlists, scattered across Mixcloud and YouTube, or remembered only when somebody posts a battered mix CD and everyone goes, ‘Fuck, I had that.’
If you owned the Global Underground and Renaissance CDs, taped Essential Mixes off the radio, spent Saturdays in a record shop and then let it all drift while work and life took over, this is aimed squarely at you. The usual pattern is an old Sasha, Digweed, Warren or Oakenfold mix turning up somewhere, you realise how good it still is, and then you want the rest of it back. This is where you go looking.
It isn't meant to be a complete dance-music database. I'd rather have a smaller archive full of things genuinely worth an hour of your evening than thousands of entries nobody has anything useful to say about. Progressive house and classic trance are the two main lanes here, with crossover sounds connecting them. That means Sasha and Digweed as well as Gatecrasher, Paul van Dyk, Ferry Corsten, Tiësto and the records that led between scenes. And no pretending every old record was a masterpiece, because plenty of them weren't.
The two genre collections are where the mixes live: DJ sets, radio broadcasts, live recordings and mix compilations, each with context rather than a two-line placeholder. The DJ Profiles cover the selectors behind them, so you can follow one name through the era. Features are for the bigger arguments — labels, scenes, mix-CD culture and the bits of history that don't fit neatly on one release page.
There is a classic trance chart and its own featured picks alongside the original progressive Top 10. Both deserve space rather than squeezing everything into one ranking.
The Classic Chart is my current Top 10 of essential mixes and Classic Tracks does the same job for individual records. Neither is pretending to be objective, scientific or voted for by twelve million people. They're opinions, they're arguable, and they'll change when something earns its place.
Featured Picks keeps the weekly choices instead of quietly deleting them when the homepage changes. If a Mix of the Week, Bonus Pick or Featured Track was worth highlighting once, you should still be able to find it months later when you finally get round to playing it.
There's also the member-only Collector's Room, which connects the music back to the physical releases from the same era. Members get the complete release deep dives, full tracklists, current finds and the buying layer — including what I'd pay and what I'd leave alone.
No audio is hosted by The Mix Archive. Listening is provided through legitimate source platforms such as Mixcloud and YouTube, with links back to the original platform or uploader.
If you're a rights holder or uploader and want something removed, get in touch and I'll take it down. No drama.
Behind the archive
About Kelv
I'm Kelvin — Kelv for short. I got into dance music at about 14 through Ministry of Sound compilations and the Trance Nation albums. That soon turned into collecting vinyl and becoming a bedroom DJ.
A few years later I was properly in it: playing a few clubs, going to the right parties, hanging around promoters and DJs, and generally doing the rave scene properly. I even warmed up for N-Trance at one point.
Trance was the obsession first. Then progressive house took over — 3 Beat Records, Sasha, John Digweed, Nick Warren, Dave Seaman, John '00' Fleming, Paul Oakenfold and plenty more. I worked in a local record shop too, which did absolutely nothing to help the vinyl habit.
I carried on DJing at home for years, whether the neighbours liked it or not. Eventually I stepped away from the scene to “grow up” — apparently — but the interest in progressive house or trance never really went anywhere.
The Mix Archive is a personal project and my way of giving something back to the scene that gave me so much. If it helps somebody rediscover an old set, track or mix they'd forgotten about, it's doing what I wanted it to do.
Elsewhere
Collector's Room & Facebook
The physical collecting tools are in the Members Club. If you want the less archive-shaped version of me, you can still find me on Facebook.
the Members Club
If you like what TMA is doing, this is the deeper version.
Membership includes Rare Mixes, the 15+ exclusive Deep Archive pieces, listening guides, the Collector's Room and The Drop every week.