John Digweed — Renaissance: The Mix Collection Part 2

Release details

• ArtistJohn Digweed
• Year1995
• LabelRenaissance
• Format3 × CD
• SeriesRenaissance: The Mix Collection
• Catalogue numberRENMIX2CD

A Renaissance mix with John Digweed fully in control

Some mixes capture a year. This one feels like progressive house working out what it wanted to become. After the Sasha/Digweed original set the template, Part 2 handed Digweed three discs on his own — and he used the space to show what the sound could do when one DJ had room to think.

There is clear continuity with the first collection, but Part 2 is more patient. The blends are longer, the weight sits lower, and the restraint is deliberate. Nothing here is chasing a moment; everything is building one.

CD1: house music first, but already leaning somewhere deeper

The opening stretch is warm, vocal house: Further Out's Another Love, Daphne's Change and Shanna's Your Love, all in Fathers Of Sound mixes that roll rather than peak. J.T. Company and Floppy Sounds keep the groove chunky, and Judy Cheeks' So In Love — in Sasha's Qat mix — is the early highlight.

But listen to where it ends up. Moby's Into The Blue, Dum Dum's two One Earth Beat mixes, Rising High Collective's Tangled In My Thoughts and P.O.B.'s The Essence gradually trade the vocals for acid lines and deeper pressure. By the close of the disc you are somewhere else entirely, and you never felt the turn.

CD2: this is where the collection really locks in

CD2 is the heart of the set. Marco Polo's A Prayer To The Music, in John Digweed & Nick Muir's Northern Exposure mix, sets a long, patient tone, and Libra presents Taylor's Anomaly (Calling Your Name) and Blue Amazon's Four Seasons carry it further into proper progressive territory.

Fluke's Bullet and Castle Trancelott's Indoctrinate stretch the atmosphere out, and then Pete Lazonby's Sacred Cycles arrives twice — Gary D's mix and the original — treated as a section of the journey rather than a single hit to be dropped and escaped. That confidence is what separates this from a compilation.

CD3: bigger records, brighter colours, no loss of control

The third disc opens the windows. LaTour's Blue, Underground Sound Of Lisbon's Dance With Me and Opus III's Hand In Hand are bigger, brighter records, and Quivver's Twist And Shout gives the disc its most direct club moment.

Yet nothing here abandons the discipline of the first two discs. Moby's Move, Blue Amazon's No Other Love and Robert Miles' Children carry real emotion, but they arrive as conclusions rather than shortcuts. The control never goes.

Why the programming still matters

The progression across the three discs is the product. Warm house into deep progressive into melodic release is an arc you can hear, and the sequence matters more than any isolated track on it.

That is also why individual streaming misses the point. The tracks you come back for — Another Love, Anomaly, Four Seasons, Sacred Cycles, Twist And Shout, No Other Love, Children — work as architecture here, not as a best-of list.

Does Renaissance: The Mix Collection Part 2 still hold up?

The production is of its period, and honestly so. What survives completely is the selection, the patience and the contrast between the three discs.

Thirty-seven tracks, three discs, one unbroken statement about where progressive house was heading in 1995. Owning it means owning the exact journey, not a playlist approximation — and the decisions are what earn it the shelf space.

Related on The Mix Archive

• The Renaissance collection
• John Digweed's DJ profile
• Sasha & John Digweed — Renaissance: The Mix Collection
• John Digweed — Global Underground 006: Sydney
• What is progressive house?

Want Digweed's full three-disc Renaissance journey back?

Part 2 is a three-disc, 37-track argument for the mix CD as a format. Owning the CDs means owning the exact 1995 sequence — the patience, the pacing and the programming — rather than a scattered folder of the individual records.