Coldfront

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Thursday  10pm - 12am

 Melodic, Progressive house and Trance 

Not counting band class from grade school? A coworker (from Holland) dropped two CDs on my desk - In Search of Sunrise 3 (Tiesto) and Boundaries of Imagination (Armin Van Buurren). I listened to those 2 CDs for about a month straight, the closest I’d come to a continuous mix before that was The Wall or maybe Darkside of the Moon. Around the same time, another coworker was a huge Jungle and Drum and Bass DJ and she taught me how to mix. She likely got tired evaluating my CDs every week for about 6 months - gave me lots of feedback and I learned on the fly! She also shared lots of other music - in the pile of CDs was a track from Darren Tate - whom I recognized from one of the ISOS albums (Let the Light Shine In). That led me to Jono Grant, who led me to Anjunabeats/Ocean Lab - and I absolutely knew I had found something special.

Fast forward a few years: I discovered Night Music by The Thrillseekers and Anjunabeats Vol. 3 - I mail-ordered those together. Guess who was on track 2 of Nightmusic? Air for Life from Above & Beyond - wait what? Jono is also part of A&B? Needless to say, I began my quest to “find the greatest song I never knew existed before today”. 

With new, unmixed music and the means to mix it together - I got started. First, I played a ton of virtual clubs in “Second Life” where I made enough money to build up my catalog. A few years later, I sent a test mix to trance.fm and they offered me a residency. After trance.fm went away, I wandered in the forest for a while until I finally decided to jump into MixCloud. And now, here I am!

I went to school for Meteorology - and I have always been drawn to the colder songs that really leave me thinking about the story I just heard. Combining my love for haunting music and my weather knowledge - it became pretty obvious my DJ name should be Coldfront. Ironically, my specialty is tropical meteorology - living in Miami for 30 years means dealing with hurricanes. But despite all of the heat where I live, Coldfront just works.

My absolute favorite thing is: finding out a listener took 30 minutes before they realized I’d already played 8 tracks before they ever noticed the songs had been changing all along. 

Beyond that, music is powerful. As DJs, we have a responsibility to keep the beat alive and breathing. We also have a responsibility to play through a range of emotions in order to connect with everyone. Listeners are listening for a reason, sometimes to feel optimism, hope and happiness. Sometimes it’s to get in touch with - or deal with - negative emotions - loss or sadness, loneliness, even anger. I love the opportunity and the responsibility to gain trust with a listener and let me help guide them through whatever they need to get from a journey through a set.

“Operation Midnight” from Luttrell is absolutely a trusted floor filler! Yotto’s Mirage Mix of “The One You Left Behind” isn’t a set starter, but I love to drop it. 

The 100th episode of the Deepfreeze on Trance.FM was a back-to-back overseas mix with Paul Fitz from the UK. I started with “By Your Side”, sent him the file, he mixed in the next track, sent the file back to me, and we rinsed and repeated that and built a 2 hour set together - I LOVED getting the new mix back from him to hear what he added. No two DJ’s are alike, so I never even thought about (or really had even heard of) every track he dropped in. It was amazing and a unique trans-Atlantic collaboration.

20 years ago I would have said Progressive Trance. At least for me, that evolved toward Progressive House. Now, absolutely, it’s Melodic House/Trance. The music has evolved from using 138 BPM and lots of huge drops/breakdowns towards a more melodic, musical experience where the feelings and emotions are guided by harmonic climbs and falls, still structured, but there are certainly more surprises. Plus, I kind of hated dealing with 9 minute songs back in the day, it feels like a 5 minute track carries way more impactful sounds and leads to a more interesting and engaging experience for me as a DJ, and hopefully for listeners too.

Paavo from Above & Beyond. It’s extraordinarily rare for a group of 3 people to work together for almost 30 years without egos getting in the way - and these guys are still bringing it, hard, every set. I would pick Paavo over the other two only because his work as Aalto (one of the first artists I gravitated toward re: my musical origin story) and later as P.O.S. I would love to learn how they stayed together, and I know he has dealt with mental health struggles. I would also like to talk about how creating music helped him through his most challenging times so I could help both myself and others navigate through tough times.

There’s a “fake” remix in my crate, and I honestly don’t remember how I found it: U2 - With or Without You (Sean Tyas and Alucard Remix). It’s am amazing track but likely “fake” due to label conflicts…but I have it at 320 and I am not afraid to use it. There’s a lot to work with before the melody arrives.

I also have a mashup I created, although I know it’s out there from other artists in different forms, which takes “Forever” from Smith & Pledger and combines with “Not A Lot Left” from Myon & Shane54 to yield: “Not A Lot Left Forever”