BC093 - Five Mixes: UK garage on pirate radio, 1996-98

The first in a series of looks back at vintage UK pirate radio sets

Not from a set below; just an image of DJ EZ, who spins two of them.

Recently, I opened up an Excel file on which, over several sheets, I’d noted the info of a lot of potential sets for my Wire Primer on pirate radio DJ sets, which appeared in the April 2018 issue. I spent four months listening to mixes for that piece, which eventually included 28 sets, and I made copious notes. Mainly, I was looking for DJ Randall sets, and found some good ones. I wanted great listens that were definitive of their moment, and knew I’d left plenty of good ones out.

What I’d forgotten was that the second tab consisted of the mixes I left out—I’d been considering 70 total, so there were 42 leftover. Some of those are longer around—they were on a now-deleted Mixcloud account. A handful I’ve already written about elsewhere or here, or have earmarked for another grouping TBA. It still left me with a whole bunch of tried and tested pirate goodies still around for the listening, and I began earmarking them for use here in no time. (The rest of this post is for paying subscribers.)