Vice Locker

For the next couple weeks I'm going to share stories behind the tracks in my 5 years of Vice Locker set Waterloo https://www.mixcloud.com/ViceLocker/vice-locker-waterloo-celebrating-5-years-of-vice-locker/ First up is Mistral d'Orange (Kwik Beatless Mix).

Early 2025 Fraxinus Prime and I were talking about producing some drum and bass music as we are both big fans. I was a bit rusty working at those tempos so I sat down to do some warm-up jams the night before he came over to my studio. The original mix of Mistral d'Orange came out of that session, and that led to this track here.

It's common in dance music circles to make the full track for the and the dance floor and to release a separate stripped-back mix that lets the music breathe and occupy a different space. These often get branded as chillout or ambient. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. If there's a vocal involved they often get used as DJ acappellas.

I like using remixes as I did in Waterloo. Opening tracks, mid-set breaths, resets, teasers for melodies to come. If you’d like to hear a proper full set of beatless dance music, check out disc 2 of Sasha's Invol