Staff Mix No. 1: Stereomagic

One of the benefits of working at Third Bridge Creative is having the space to discuss music with coworkers. I’m surrounded by passionate people with deep knowledge, and every day I’m learning about artists and records that are unfamiliar to me, some of which have become favorites. Today we’re launching a playlist series at Third Bridge that’ll allow our staff to share music that they love in a format that is assembled to resemble a mixtape. Each Third Bridge Staff Mix will be built around a theme—spotlights on labels, aesthetics, eras, moods, and more—and we’ll try to make them all worth an hour or two of your listening time.

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We’re kicking off the series with a mix I call Stereomagic. From the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, there was a strain of electronic music that featured a strong emphasis on melody, dub rhythms and textures, and a general sense of musical playfulness. A lot of this stuff was coming out of Germany—specifically Dusseldorf, Berlin, and Cologne—and was released on labels like A-Musik, Sonig, and ~scape. This mix puts two artists in particular at the center: Mouse on Mars, including tracks from several side projects, and Jan Jelinek, who also appears under a few aliases. In their music, and others included here, I hear an exciting combination of technological sophistication—digital workstations were improving rapidly during this era and brought all sorts of new possibilities—and human warmth, including sly musical humor. Beats and percussion are prominent early on in this set, but over the course of the mix the percussion drops away and the last few tracks operate in a space closer to drone, but with dub elements intact. I hope you enjoy it.