Gabriel Mendoza is a DJ’s DJ. A crate digger’s crate digger. From punk to metal to psyche to funk to Britpop to disco to Krautrock and beyond, he is a hard man to stump. Mendoza has the keen ability to find infectious funk in the places few choose to even…
Matthew “Urbanic” Urban is an Ohio ex-pat who followed a winding path that led him to Dallas. Appropriately, then, Urban’s contribution for this week’s mixtape is all over the place genre wise, more than just a string of tunes with similar beats per minute. There is an emotional depth conveyed…
Adam Pickrell is a producer-DJ-musician triple threat. He made waves with his live band house experience White Lotus Society and as a session musician, he has sat in with everyone from St.Vincent to Cas Haley to John Congleton’s Nighty Night. He recently became the musical director for Nellie Furtado. Pickrell’s…
Scott Augat is a transplant from New England who has been behind the decks for over two decades. He has a firm background playing variations of hip-hop, techno and house. Along with Aleah Axiom, he holds down the techno and house weekly residency at the recently opened Drugstore Cowboy in…
Clinton Butler is a serious devotee of the techno and house arts going by the name P2P DJ. As an audience member, DJ and promoter, he has spent time in Denton, Dallas and Austin over the years and kept his ear to the ground of the Texas techno scene as…
Frank McCright has just shy of three decades in the DJ game as DJ Love. He has seen every facet of the DJ biz, from the production side in the studio to a front row seat for the infamous ’90s rave scene. Love has benefitted from a depth of experience…
Tom Strong comes to this week’s Mixtape with a banging electro mix. Electro as a term is often thrown around as an adjective to describe a wide variety of electronic music styles when it is very much a specific genre. It has evolved from its humble roots in hip-hop, from…
DJ EZ Eddie D has been a Dallas staple for just short of three decades. His vault of music is vast and wide beyond the hip hop he is most known for. Eddie can still be heard on the radio every week spreading the musical word on his Knowledge Dropped…
Jonny Brashear is an old-school techno head in the purest sense. He’s a connoisseur of the robot dance music and was owner of the now-defunct Sonic Convergence, a label that was based in Dallas but focused on European producers. Though not as active now as a DJ as in the…
For 18 years, Joe Virus has held down his residency The Church at Lizard Lounge where he still plays every Thursday and Sunday. He has been delivering industrial and goth standards in line with his own take on cyberpunk on a consistent basis for almost two decades, making it the…
For the past three years, Dustin Evans has received the best club music education by living in Berlin, the beating heart of modern dance music. It’s also a far cry from the more modest club scene of his native Texas. Every year he comes back to Dallas for a bit…
This has been a banner year for DJ Santa Claus. During his off time from his day job (really more of a night job), Santa dug his heels into his craft and toured relentlessly on the underground circuit. He released a string of 12-inches as anonymous, candy-cane coated white labels…
Brent Nuro transplanted to Dallas after cutting his teeth in the Kansas City scene. Nuro can now be found playing at the Nothing But Techno residency at Crown & Harp. For this week’s mixtape drops deep in to the vortex of deep techno vibes more common with Berlin’s Panorama Bar…
Jen Littlz has traveled far and wide to witness many of the finest talents in underground house and techno. She has been a fixture on Dallas dance floors since the ’90s. In recent years she has taken that extensive dance floor knowledge behind the decks with her feet firmly planted in…
James Kelley is a true techno journeyman. Kelley is based in Dallas, but has taken advantage of the mobility and flexibility that comes from being a solo electronic artist to travel and play all over the country, as well as some gigs on the other side of the pond. As…
For the past eight years, Keith P was best known for his goth and dark wave nights, but before that stint in the dark realm Keith was one of the most cutting edge bass DJ’s in the city. He used to be a regular at Dub Assembly where he was…
Boston Kassidy is notable for his contributions to the Dallas bass scene, but he also stretches into a variety of techno and house-related styles — a fact which is reflected in this week’s Dallas Observer Mixtape. As a member of The Guild, Kassidy can often be found playing their Thursday events…
If you’re looking for a definition of what really makes for ambient music, there’s no one better than Brian Eno. Ambient music, he says, ”must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.” That’s not exactly…
Brian Knolley had a calling to house music 25 years ago. Over that time he has witnessed the highs, lows and heavenly blows of Dallas house music culture, from the glory days of Starck Club to playing parties nowadays with his mates in the Our House crew — a crew…
Performing under the name Left/Right, producer and DJ Chris Lund has established himself as one of the more prolific electronic artists in Dallas over the past decade. Lund recently added his own label BRØKEN to his list of musical responsibilities. Over the course of 19 releases (around 50 Tracks) Lund has…
As a member of the Our House Crew, Jason Ramirez is a major cog in the Dallas house machine. With two decades of experience behind the decks, he brings a depth of knowledge to his mixes. Ramirez has had a front seat to the highs and lows of Dallas DJ…
David Bikowski produces and DJs under the name Hands Free and has caused quite a stir with his releases on labels like Audiophile Deep, Faceless and Motek. Part of a long tradition of punk rock ex-pats that find their way to dance music, Hands Free is a standout artist amongst…
