Being asked to do an Essential Mix by Pete Tong was a huge honour for me and so to do it justice I really wanted to convey my own identity as a DJ to the Radio 1 listeners. To do this I was adamant that I wanted to do this mix live and not resort to mixing it digitally using a program like Ableton. I like the feeling of a live mix and think that to do one on the radio makes it a lot more fun and spontaneous. All DJs make mistakes and I think these add character to a mix and show that the records aren't being played by a robot.

With this in mind this mix was done using just a pair of turntables, a mixer and a copy of Traktor hooked up to a Native Instruments X1 effects controller, though no beat-gridding or auto-syncing was used. The funny thing was, as I've just moved to London and so all of my stuff is either in storage or in transit, I found it surprisingly hard to find someone with a set of decks on which to do the mix. Luckily, in the end my good friend Jamie Jones came to the rescue and so this mix was done in one take on the decks set up in his living room. I'd like to thank Jamie and all of his housemates for putting up with me playing loud techno in their front room while some of them were just waking up after a particularly heavy weekend! I hope you enjoy the mix, let me know what you think to it here.

Seth Troxler

:: Listen to Seth Troxler's Essential Mix (from 0300 on Saturday the 7th of May 2011)