Richmond Record Pool

Being a DJ, one of the things that I am constantly doing is looking for new music to play in my sets and mixes. One of my best sources for new music these days is the Richmond Record Pool. For those of you who aren’t familiar with how record pools work, what essentially happens is that a director for the pool works full-time to collect new tracks from various record labels all over the world. Each pool is targeted to a specific target audience or genre, so for example, the director for a pool specializing in house music wouldn’t be looking for new tracks from rock bands. And this is a two-way operation – the record companies work with the pool directors to distribute the right music to the right people. Anyway, each pool has a group of members (DJ’s) and every month, the director of the pool sends copies of all the new music out to all of the DJ’s in the pool. These DJ’s pay a small monthly service fee for belonging to the pool, to cover pool expenses and a small remuneration for the director. The DJ’s then review all the new music and provide feedback to the record labels about each track. The labels benefit from getting useful feedback about the production on each track, from people who are experts in the field. They also get the benefit of having the DJ’s promote their favorite new tracks in the clubs, which eventually means better sales for some of these tracks once the general public starts hearing the music. The DJ’s benefit too, because it gives them a big advantage in getting new music (at a very low cost), usually long before it is available to the general public. Not everybody is allowed to become a part of these pools. The whole point isn’t to distribute the music to the average Joe-on-the-street; a pool’s goal is to get the music to the most influential people in the industry.

The Richmond Record Pool has about thirty DJ’s as members. All are Canadian, and this particular pool targets “progressive house” and “club house” music (my description), and they're also quickly expanding the amount of "tech house" and "electro" that they service to members. The DJ’s live in various urban centers across Canada (except for myself). Nick Nonsense and I are the only Atlantic Canadians that belong to the pool, and there is at least one DJ from Montreal, but most of the rest are from Ontario and the West Coast. The pool is administered by director Josh Bowman, who usually sends out between 150 and 250 tracks to the DJ’s in each monthly shipment. Here’s a link to the pool website:
http://www.richmondrecords.com

Incidentally, I’m actually a member of the Pool East organization too, which is a Halifax-based pool that distributes music to thirty bars & DJ’s around Atlantic Canada. The music that I get from that pool is more geared to a Top-40 crowd, which is good for the university Pub. There is some overlap between the pools, and I sometimes use music that I’ve learned about from Pool East in my own sets at other venues.

Anyway, since I’m reviewing the RRP music every month, and since my main blog (disregarding the Facebook feed) originates from my DJ website, I’m going to try to put a posting up every month with a listing of my favorite new pool tracks from the month. After all, I should talk about music occasionally. Most of the Facebook readers may not be interested in this info, but a lot of my normal blog readers will be. In these posts, I’m basically planning to separate the tracks that I like into three categories:
1. Live Sets – Tracks that I would play in a live set in a club or at a party, to a busy dancefloor. A fair number of them will have vocals, and I’ll usually be playing them at speeds of between 130-134 beats per minute.
2. Warmup Sets – Tracks that I would play earlier in the evening, before the dancefloor gets too crowded. There will be less energy to these songs, and I’ll usually play them around 126-129 bpm. Not many vocals, but interesting music nonetheless, with a consistent back-beat.
3. Studio Mixes – Tracks that I would put into studio recordings that I make to hand out as demos, or to put on my website. Some of these songs might be tracks that could be included in a live show or a warmup set, but I tend to pick more unique songs for my studio mixes nowadays, with more frequent breakdowns in the middle of the tracks, etc. If I’m listening to a studio mix, I’ll usually do it when I’m working out or driving someplace by myself, so I don’t mind the breakdowns. In contrast, I try to avoid playing too many tracks with long breakdowns when I have a crowd on the dancefloor, so they don’t lose their energy.

Since I normally play progressive house tracks in my sets, with a little bit of house if it isn’t too frivilous and bouncy, my monthly favorites will fall into that style of music. There are often songs in the monthly listings that I think would be great house hits in a top-40 oriented club, but I might not pick those for my own sets. Also, sometimes there will be more than one mix for a particular song. For the non-DJ’s, a different “mix” just means a different version of a song. Sometimes, mixes can be very similar to each other, and other times, they can sound like almost entirely different songs. You’ll eventually notice that sometimes, I’ll pick one mix of a particular song for use in a live set (maybe a vocal mix or “vox” mix), whereas I’ll use a different mix of that same song in a warmup set (maybe an instrumental or “dub” mix, which doesn’t have nearly as much for vocals).

Anyway, here are my picks from the August 2007 Richmond Record Pool collection:

Warmup Tracks:
- Avalon Superstar, “So Alive” (Boston Thunder Instrumental)
- Cadatta, “Waiting For T” (Original Mix)
- DJ Chus meets Pete Tha Zouk, “There Is A God” (Original Stereo Productions Mix)
- Jay Cox, “Panda Ear Muffs” (Original Mix)
- Masque, “Cafe Amargo” (Original Mix)
- Masque, “Moon Bathing” (Original Mix)
- Mindskap, “Twist ‘n’ Shout” (Original Tribal Mix)
- Medway, “Trauma” (Chris Micali Mix)
- Mikel Curcio, “Pain” (Nino Anthony Remix)
- Paul Bowen, “Dirty Weekend” (Disclosure Project Mix)
- Squash 84, “Neon” (Original Mix)
- Neil Quigley & Nick Muir, “Feedback From The City” (Pacemaker Dub)

Studio Mixes:
- Medway, “Trauma” (Benz & MD Mix)
- Neil Quigley & Nick Muir, “Feedback From The City” (Spin Science Remix)
- Ogi Gee Cash & Synchronized, “The Hype” (Original Mix)

Live Sets:
- Avalon Superstar, “So Alive” (Playmaker Dub Mix)
- Karl G, “Crossfire 2007” (Original Mix)
- Levon Yves Eaux & Luke Star, “Fashionized” (Original Mix)
- Nick Fiorucci feat Kelly Malbasa, “Every Time You Move” (Jerome’s Mix)
- Neil Quigley & Nick Muir, “Feedback From The City” (DJ Meri Remix)
- Ogi Gee Cash & Synchronized, “The Hype” (Nicholas Van Orten Remix)