M&A #24: Large Mango

Large Mango has been a resident at Grandma Groove since the playful disco night started. He's built a reputation as a guaranteed-good-time selector, filling his sets with disco and house fizzers to set any Revs room alight. In his mix for us, he brings out a more chilled tone. His luscious blend of jazzy chords, tight, clean basslines and classic synth sounds warbles us through this hour of relaxed yet grooving house music. His outstanding selection and mixing gives the mix an identity as a whole, more than simply a collection of individual tracks, and the seamless flow will leave you melting in places, bopping throughout and grinning from ear to ear by the time an old favourite plays us out. 

How did you record the mix?

With a DDJ-400 running through Rekordbox,

What were you trying to do with it?

Essentially tried to give a sort of ‘journey’ through all the music I’ve been getting into mixing over the past year in a way that maintains decent continuity between tracks. It kind of starts of with a funk/disco vibe that progresses into some jazzy ambient house, then some more groovy dancey house bangers and a touch of tech house towards the end. I haven’t gone for the obscurest stuff but I tried to pick tracks that I thought generally had more interesting/jazzy grooves and chords to them. I also really wanted to finish on Inspector Norse as although it doesn’t really fit that well with the rest of the track selection and might be a bit overplayed, I think it’s a real marvel in dance music production and manages to perfectly build up this sort of really nice drawn-out sense of anticipation for an awesome climax.

That jazzy sound is really clear throughout, a very cool way of combining a chilled ‘non-club-mix’ sound to higher energy beats in the back. I suppose the instrumentation of jazz fits really nicely with disco. Would you say a lot of the stuff you play/listen to has that theme? Kinda Brassy, clean bass guitar sounds, warbly rhodes piano that kind of thing? How did you get into this kind of thing? 

Yeah I think disco is a prime example of how some of the interesting musicality from jazz can meet dance music, and a cleanly produced disco track can really help bring out all the layers that make up the groove, particularly the bassline, so you can really appreciate its complexity. The whole sort of rhodes/organ sounds coming about in the middle of the mix just seemed to be a good way to link all the tracks together despite transition across genres of house, like the background organ layer coming through in the Tribe track leads on nicely to the deep house organ in the Dan Shake and the Sunlightsquare before you get the more subtle organ under the piano in the Crowd Control. In terms of how I got into this sort of music, I think because of listening to a lot of jazz and neo-soul before meant I was interested in playing tracks that had that musicality and interesting chords so it made sense to start with disco. Then when I first gigged I played at House of House in Fez which introduced me to playing stuff with slightly heavier beats so I began trying to find tracks that merged the two things. I also went through a bit of a tech house phase after that but I think there’s loads of big artists on the scene now who are still bringing jazz instrumentation to house like bellaire, detroit swindle, real j etc so I’m keen to keep playing this sort of stuff.

You’re a resident at the Grandma Groove nights, which have a pretty set theme musically, that kind of disco-y banger vibe. How do you approach your sets there? Do you stick with a winning formula once you’ve found it, or do you try to push the boat out?

It generally depends on whether I’m upstairs or downstairs to be honest. If I’m in the club room I’ll generally try to stick to more classic disco tunes but if I’m upstairs I’ll try to push the boat a bit and experiment with some heavier stuff if I can get away with it. I used to plan out my sets much more meticulously at the start and tried really hard to mix in key and stuff but now I’ll more just play whatever I think will go down well at that time even if that means doing quicker transitions.

GG have some exciting plans coming up this term, do you have anything planned for the upcoming night yourself? What can we look forward to?

I think I want to try and branch out a bit with the music I’m playing more and put in some of the stuff that I’ve been listening to more recently. I’ve been getting into some cool Afro-beat and African disco over the last couple of months so might try and put taste of that in if the vibe’s right but I’ll see what happens.

How do you find new music? And how do you categorise the new stuff you add to your library?

I actually think the spotify discover weekly playlist is really good at knowing what I want to hear and has exposed me to a load of new stuff that I wouldn’t have found otherwise. Soundcloud is also cool for finding some of the more obscure artists. I generally group new tracks with genre just because most sets I do are generally geared towards a certain type of music.

What’s your musical guilty pleasure?

John Mayer, it used to be for his guitar playing but it’s become a real problem now.

What’s the last song you listened to?

Straight lines by Nubiyan twist.

Who is your favourite producer/performer at the moment?

I think Crackazat have got some really cool music out, I’ve found that they’re really good at combining interesting chords and grooves with something you can dance to.

What is your go to tune to bring a party up/banger?

Mystic Dub’s remix of Lola’s Theme by the Shapeshifters, such a banger.

What was the best party you’ve played?

When Grandma Groove took over the top room at turf summer all nighter there was a great atmosphere. Although I’d probably rethink some of the tracks I played if I did it again- not sure a tech house remix of just a lil’ bit by fifty cent was the best idea at the time.

What’s coming up for you in the future?

Been trying to get into some production at the moment with some pretty catastrophic results but I’m just getting to grips with the software and stuff so will hopefully be able to slip a track of mine into a set sometime in the near future.

Fin’s Tracklist:

Heavy on the bacon - Fouk

Every minute - Slug Father

Buy Urself friends - Lucky Charmz

Paradise Row (Richard Earnshaw revision) - Spiritchaser

The Hop (B-Squit edit) - Tribe called quest

3am Jazz club - Dan Shake

A Celebration of Oggun - Sunlightsquare

If you like - Crowd Control

Got to be real (Lotrax edit) - Cheryl Lynn

Like that - Proudly People

Inspector Norse - Todd Terje