FMB MIXTAPE 214 | MICHELLE MANETTI
FMB MIXTAPE 214 | MICHELLE MANETTI (iTUNES)
FMB MIXTAPE 214 | MICHELLE MANETTI (320 DOWNLOAD)
This week’s mixtape guest is none other than Michelle Manetti! Having been on the scene for over 20 years, Michelle started as an underage clubber in the late 90s and now champions underrepresented artists in the music scene through her work with female-focused queer girl party Fèmme Fraîche and East London’s underground queer scene. You know the drill, we asked more about Michelle and the mix….
It’s been a pretty busy summer so far, this month I’ve had gigs in Ibiza, Madrid, Bristol, London and a little short break in Somerset and just gearing myself for a hectic festival season.
I recorded the mix at home, in the comfort of my living room, on some 1210’s and a DJM900nxs, rooted through a Pioneer DDJ1000 and recorded into Rekordbox.
So I wanted to do something really special for this mix, I decided to go back to my humble beginnings and record a vinyl mix. When I started DJ-ing over 20 years ago I was a vinyl only DJ (CDJ’s barely existed then) and used to record vinyl mixes all the time. I stopped playing vinyl about 10/12years ago and haven’t recorded one since then, so I thought i’d set myself the task and challenge to deliver one for this, as much for my own pleasure and benefit as anything else. Lately I’ve been digging around and buying much more old music than I have new current stuff, my sound is very 90’s influenced and right now, I’m really into the piano vibes of Italo and Euro house, as well as a lot of Ravey, leftfield and garage – especially speed garage (playing homage to my Croydon roots!), so wanted to bring these sounds into the mix to really showcase my sound, which is so eclectic, but always underpinned by house.
I’ve been buying a lot more vinyl again this last year, influence by the sounds I’m enjoying as well as by Vinyl loving DJ pals such as Eris Drew, Octo Octa, Marie Malarie and Angel D’Lite – I enjoy digging and finding those hidden gems, also shout out to a few instagram pages Belters4u, Discovery Vinyl, Todays Wax, Underground Sound who post little vinyl gems daily (some of the tunes in this mix actually came from recommendations from these pages) these are like the modern day music bloggers, which comes full circle as I actually first discovered Bicep from their music blog, when I was running a similar one back in the day. All of the tracks in the mix, apart from two are only available on vinyl, one of them however is some random track that’s only available on CD single, that had to be imported from Australia and record into the mix through rekordbox. I also snuck in my forthcoming track / collab with Demi Riquisimo, which is a vinyl only release coming out in July on Semi Delicious.
I’m gonna give a full disclaimer on the mix though, as enjoyable as it’s been to reconnect with vinyl, I’d forgotten how painstaking vinyl mixes are. I’m such a perfectionist and it took me more than a few attempts, a few swear words and some nifty editing to get this mix sounding right and I still wish the mixes were a bit tighter, but that’s the painful joy of vinyl for you. I was originally going to record the mix on these jenky old Numark belt drive decks that I’ve had since I first started to learn how to DJ, they’re cranky and wonky and I always told myself, if you can mix well on these old things you can mix anything.. they served me well, but at the weekend I was talking about my mix to my family and my brother-in-law, who used to be a DJ back in the 90’s offered to lend me his 1210’s he had sat gathering dust in the garage. There I am, about to record my mix (a night before the submission date, because as you well know, us DJ’s are always last-min) and I noticed the decks are coming out in mono, a little check and noticed the contacts were broken on one phono on each deck, I literally had to get nifty with some blue-tack and electrical tape to fix up the cables!! So when I tell you, this mix has taken blood sweat and tears, I’m not lying – but it’s probably the most heartfelt mix I’ve done in ages so thank you for the honour and I hope you enjoy!
Up Next?
Well I’m actually travelling off to Mexico in the morning, to play Mexico pride this weekend, but also have a super fun summer coming up. I’m playing 4 parties for London pride next weekend, including a big collab party called Studland Soho, which is a collab of my clubnight Femmme Fraiche, with Feel It, Little Gay Brother and Meat. I’m also doing some stage takeovers with my clubnight at Wilderness and Body Movements festivals and then just bouncing around for summer. it’s looking hot hot!
