Guest Mix: Sight Unseen – Selected Works

This mix is a very special one for me, as it contains all original material by some old friends of mine from Pittsburgh who have been banging out drum and bass music as Sight Unseen. Because the tracks are almost all unreleased and they don’t own CDJs or Serato, this was done Ableton style.

As you may or may not know, I got into dance music and deejaying through jungle/drum and bass back in the mid-to-late-90s. That music was huge here at the time, with established deejays like Dieselboy, Sine, Saint, and many others banging out a large variety of different sounds from ragga to intelligent. The guys in Sight Unseen, Adam Ratana and Preslav Lefterov, were part of the next generation of deejays that included myself and a bunch of our other friends. We all met back in the days of Hypervinyl Records in Oakland, where most of the new dance music in the city was coming through (and where we would discover techno and house music, setting me off on my current path and leading Adam to be one of the guys behind Technoir Audio) and the culture of electronic deejayed shit really took off here.

Preslav had a radio show on WRCT every Friday night from where they would play all different styles from the newest hot shit to the classic old school sounds, and where Adam had previously had a show (and was now a guest deejay on several occasions). This hookup led to them beginning to explore production, which they have been working hard at ever since. Preslav is now one of the owners of The Machine Age studios in Pittsburgh (check here to read an interview with him discussion the studio, and here for SERIOUS gear pr0n) and Adam has his own small home setup, each of which mixes classic analog gear with modern computer rigs. They don’t just love the old gear though, they also love old music; these guys know their shit.

After laying low in the studio and seeing their tunes played from CD by deejays like Marcus Intalex, DJ Flight, Loxy, and Presha, Sight Unseen have their first track on vinyl as part of a double pack on the legendary 31 Records, owned by Doc Scott. This track, “Staks 2”, kicks off the mix in fine style, rolling through 19 original cuts (including some collaborations with Loxy) that feature a little old-school style breakbeat science mixed up with dub and techno influences to make beautiful soulful music that can be both rough and smooth at the same time. To my ears, their music is reminiscient of labels like Partisan and more recently Offshore Recordings, both of whom made much of the drum and bass that I continue to listen to through today.

Here is the tracklisting:

01. Sight Unseen – Staks 2 – 31 Records
02. Sight Unseen – Oxblood
03. Sight Unseen – Reminisce
04. Sight Unseen – Blackletter
05. Sight Unseen – Here to Stay
06. Sight Unseen – Get Mine
07. Sight Unseen – Hoodlums pt. 2
08. Sight Unseen – You Make It
09. Sight Unseen – Lust
10. Sight Unseen – Praying Mantis Dub
11. Sight Unseen – Steady Dub
12. Loxy and Sight Unseen – Waterstrokes
13. Sight Unseen – Essence
14. Sight Unseen – Kingston 2081
15. Sight Unseen – Precipitate
16. Sight Unseen – Decompression
17. Sight Unseen – Greenland
18. Loxy and Sight Unseen – W.A.S.P.
19. Sight Unseen – 7 a.m.

Download the mix here.

I hope you all enjoy something a little bit different in style, but not dissimilar in attitude, from what we usually do here at ISM. I’ve been on these guys to do something for us for a hot minute, and I am pleased as punch that this is what we got. It was very cool to hear most of these on a decent rig a couple weeks back where the sub-bass can REALLY hit. So turn the bass up and let it roll…..