Reviving 90s Music: Headphones-Friendly Mix Out 1/15

Listen to a lot of music on headphones/ear buds? Me too. If you are on the go, exercising, or just walking around the kitchen, headphones are a great option. And I noticed some of those older tracks from the 90s are a little easier on the ears.

Back in the day the underground stuff often did not have all the modern sonic treatments. Today it is common to apply loads of limiting, intentional distortion, sonic carving and the rest. It’s not something I do in the beginning but a club track has to keep up the pace with the rest of the music out there. So either I will add some of that in at the end, or else the mastering engineer will be doing that (quite rightly) to make the track competitive.

One day I was out for a run and I was thinking about all this. I thought – hey why not try to bring back some of that underground headphones friendly vibe. Instead of piling things on, let’s try subtraction. So for this mix I took out all the drums and then redid the drums entirely. I did a lot of subtraction on vocals. And no mastering engineer on this one. The result is Let Go (Astramental Headphones Mix) and it’s headed your way 1/15/25. So I hope you enjoy this mix and let me know what you think. Should I add headphones mixes for my future tracks? Drop me a line and, as always, thanks for listening!

Let Go (Club Mix) – Out Now

New track featuring trance-inducing keys. As I was making this track I found myself getting lost in the keys. They just transported me to a headspace. What kind of genre is this? Well it reminds me of the dub techno stuff I used to hear in the mid to late 00’s shared by some of the great folks at the defunct Elektron Users forum. But this track is a little too active for your average dub techno. It’s also got my signature house vibe.

Put it all together and maybe it’s deep dub techno trance house. You heard it here first 🙂 Hope you get lost in the vibe as well. Enjoy.

One-hour Deep House Mix

For your streaming enjoyment. I’ve recently posted a mix of some of my deeper, vibier tracks. This one covers both some very recent tracks as well as some of my classic tracks. Sit back and enjoy the grooves. I rarely post mixes so this is a rare one from me. Let me know if you enjoy it and would like me to post some more.

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Behind the scenes – I usually make tracks in an environment called Reaper. But for this one I got out my classic copy of Ableton Live. I got my set list together and then pulled all the tracks into Ableton. Then I started thinking about set tempo. I usually produce tracks in the 120-125 BPM range, but here I thought I would go for 120 BPM so the vibe would be a bit more laid back. Next up I worked on track transitions. Once I had everything the way I liked it, I bounced it all out for sharing.

Midnight Hearts on YouTube

For your streaming enjoyment. My latest deep house track is here. Midnight Hearts is dedicated to you late-night lovers everywhere.

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Time flies when you’re jamming.

Making deep house featuring one of my recent Rhodes jams. #deephousemusic #housemusic #deephouse https://www.tiktok.com/@musicbycatabolic/

Be My Devil

Hell actually freezes over… a fiendish new track from me comes out! Check it out on SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/catabolic/be-my-devil