Mix: Ian Shonaman, Metropolitique CD1

Ian Shonaman is a name that [unfortunately] not enough progressive house fans in Atlantic Canada are familiar with. It's a shame, because he is unquestionably one of the best DJ's in that genre. But his knowledge of music goes far beyond that. As a record store manager, he's very familiar with a pretty broad range of genres, from jazz to blues to rock to electronica.

I've been working on a pair of video projects this weekend, related to some shows that DJ Dan and Felguk did in Canada a while ago. While I worked on tidying up the video clips, I listened to Ian's recent "Metropolitique" mix. It's got a groove that I really liked. If I had to describe it, I'd say that it's mostly semi-old-school-rave tech-house beats, with a couple of 80's retro-inspired housey tracks. That description probably makes sense to nobody except myself. Anyway, it's a great mix, so I ended up listening to it three times in a row.

Unfortunately, due to bandwidth restrictions, this mix is no longer available from our own servers, but you can probably download it from Mixriot or as a torrent.


Check it out if you get a chance. Great stuff. I'll try to add some more of his mixes to my website & blog here in the near future.

And for colour, here's a photo of myself and Ian, with Danny Howells in the middle. What a party. Look at the sweat on us, and that's with me wearing a white t-shirt. I look pretty scary - I think this photo was taken at the end of a summer, just a few days after I got out of a four month stretch working in the woods on Canada's west coast.