Thanks to the Munted! organisers I’ve got permission to upload my Betwixt & Between tribute set a little earlier than originally planned, which sets us up nicely for a little belated Christmas present tomorrow.

This was one of the most difficult sets so far to put together, not only from the emotional side of things, but also in terms of track selection. Any Betwixt fan would agree that you’d need a lot more than an hour to do justice to his sound, but here I tried to at least give a taste of his different styles, while also including a few favourites and some unusual stuff for the more knowledgeable crew in a set that would still get people dancing/head-nodding. Ambitious stuff then, and I’m sure there are a lot of omissions that people thought were must-plays, but thankfully it went down well during the event and has had some nice feedback since.

Given the circumstances, to start I went for some melodic tracks that really show the emotional side of Kaoru’s sound – it was hard to look past Stairway to Solstice as the first tune, while Isolation has always been my favourite ‘new’ tune on the Nanosecond Eternity album. After stumbling on the Tout est Bien – Burst! combo, I decided on a harder detour to show off his other styles, before going (almost) freeform-only for the second half. Then it was a matter of judging when to throw in the big anthems like Zusammengehorigkeit, while happily the City of Solitude – Reincarnation connection near the end (one of my favourites) was a big success on the night.

01. Betwixt & Between – Stairway to Solstice
02. Betwixt & Between – Tankobu Hesotarou no Hourou
03. Betwixt & Between – Isolation
04. Betwixt & Between – Self Extortion
05. Betwixt & Between – Tout est Bien (Sein zum Tode)
06. Poly Calamity – Burst!
07. Poly Calamity – Unam Sanctum
08. Betwixt & Between – Nanosecond Eternity
09. Betwixt & Between – I Think We Can Go To The Moon
10. Betwixt & Between – Zusammengehorigkeit
11. RaverRose – Broken Visage
12. RR-ThermalForce – Moving Flare (Betwixt & Between edit)
13. Betwixt & Between feat Yukacco – Nothing Compares 2 U
14. Betwixt & Between – City of Solitude
15. Betwixt & Between – Reincarnation
16. Poly Calamity – Decillion Catastrophes
17. Betwixt & Between – Flowless

I stopped myself from playing promos simply because they’re promos, or anthems that wouldn’t have suited the flow of the set, but that means I still have a lot of tunes that didn’t fit into this mix. Sometime soon, then, I’ll be playing an alternative tribute on Ustream with some of the tracks that didn’t make it into the real set.

Finally, huge thanks to Munted! for the chance to play at a great event, and special thanks to all the listeners and chatroom ravers who stayed until 4am GMT to hear my set and pay tribute to Kaoru. I hope he would have approved of this mix – I owe him such a lot, and his memory and music will always be part of what I do in this scene.

There’ll be a roundup of the other sets once they’re all online – stay tuned.