Classic Tracks
Classic Tracks Top 10
A Top 10 of classic trance and progressive house tracks that helped define the sound covered by The Mix Archive. The tracks and listening stay free; Members Club members unlock the deeper archive routes around where they were played, who played them and what they connect to.
- 1
Heaven Scent (Original Mix)
- Progressive House
- Progressive
There was never much of a debate about number one. John Digweed and Nick Muir took a rolling bassline, sat on it far longer than felt sensible, then let the melody in like the sun coming up. It was the first release on Bedrock Records in 1999, it reached the UK top 40, Sasha closed Global Underground 013: Ibiza with it, and it told a whole generation of DJs what a progressive house peak was supposed to feel like.
- 2
The Chain (Babealicious Mix)
- Progressive
- Progressive Trance
No big hook, no obvious drop, just Breeder, Rowan Blades and Simon Noble, grinding away at the same dark groove for what feels like ten minutes even when it isn't. It was one of their first records, a Sasha & Digweed favourite, and Sasha gave it nine and a half minutes on Global Underground 009: San Francisco. It's the record that separated DJs who understood tension from the ones who just wanted a tune, and it still sounds properly muscular in a way a lot of late-90s progressive house doesn't.
- 3
Resurrection
- Progressive House
- Progressive
Dark, patient and built on pressure rather than one big moment, Medway's "Resurrection" is a warm-up record that quietly turns into a peak-time one if you leave it running long enough. It came out on Hooj Choons, and Sasha played it on the first disc of Global Underground 009: San Francisco in 1998, straight after a completely different record with the same name. A good example of how functional a lot of the best late-90s progressive house was: not showy, just relentlessly effective in the right hands.
- 4
My Lexicon
- Progressive House
- Progressive
Put it next to the busier records of the time and you can hear how much space Sander Kleinenberg leaves around it. That restraint is the whole point. Sasha played it on the first disc of Global Underground 013: Ibiza in 1999, and it's the sound of progressive house starting to pull back from chasing anthems towards something more hypnotic. You can draw a fairly straight line from here to where the genre went after 2000.
- 5
Belfunk
- Progressive House
- Progressive Trance
- Progressive
Everybody remembers "Xpander". Fewer people give "Belfunk", from the same 1999 EP, its due, and it might tell you more about where Sasha's head was at. It started life as a remix of Orbital's "Belfast" that Orbital reportedly didn't like, and it takes its time getting anywhere, balancing a deep progressive pulse against melodic lift. Sasha & Digweed played it on Northern Exposure: Expeditions before the EP was even out, straight into Delerium's "Silence".
- 6
Perception (Vocal Mix)
- Progressive House
- Progressive Trance
Cass & Slide were Cass Cutbush and Peter Martin, and "Perception" is the record that crossed over into everyone's mix CDs. Sasha gave it over nine minutes in the middle of Global Underground 013: Ibiza in 1999, and Tiësto put a new vocal mix on In Search Of Sunrise 2 a year later. The vocal gives it a face you recognise within seconds, but it's the long build around it that makes it work: the atmosphere gets to develop instead of being rushed to the payoff.
- 7
Careful (Brothers in Rhythm Soundtrack)
- Progressive House
- Progressive
Twelve and a half minutes, and Brothers in Rhythm use every one. Dave Seaman and Steve Anderson take Horse's vocal, push it right back into the mix, then spend the whole record slowly turning up the pressure, with no shortcut to the payoff and no obvious moment where it announces itself. It came out on Stress in 1997, and it's a proper argument for letting remixes breathe: play the first three minutes on their own and you'd wonder what the fuss is about; drop it into the middle of a set and it does exactly what it was built for.
- 8
Paradise (Red Jerry's Longdubbyvocal Mix)
- Progressive House
- Progressive Trance
Hooj Choons at their most patient. Red Jerry ran the label, and his mix runs close to eleven minutes, most of it hovering rather than building towards anything you can see coming: dubby, vocal in flashes, and with much more space in it than the 1998 date might suggest. It's a record that made complete sense to residents rather than headliners: put it in early, let it settle the room, and it gradually does the work for you. Nigel Dawson opened his side of Renaissance Presents… Volume One with two other versions of it back to back, which tells you how much use it got.
- 9
Horizons
- Progressive Trance
- Progressive
James Holden was barely out of his teens when he made "Horizons", and even this early he was after something stranger than the standard trance anthem. It has the melodic reach of the period, but it's intricate and slightly off-kilter rather than obvious. Way Out West's remix was the version that travelled, on Dave Seaman's Cape Town and Nick Warren's radio sets, and you can already hear the itch that would eventually pull Holden a long way from here.
- 10
Dooms Night (Timo Maas Remix)
- Progressive House
- Progressive
Forget the neat genre labels for a minute. Timo Maas turned Dooms Night into a tough, bass-led club record that progressive, breaks and UK garage DJs could all get behind. That crossover is why it belongs here. There's a newly expanded Timo Maas profile in the DJ archive if you want to follow the other records he was making around 2000.