When an artist gets asked to do a revered Essential mix, not only is there the highly daunting and challenging task in choosing a selection of tracks you’ll be happy to look back on in the future, but also finding the certain right tracks that will open and close the first and last ten minutes of your mix. You want to capture and engage the listener from the start and end on a high that only succeeds in wanting them to repeatedly bash the replay button harder than a game of whack a mole. One debut essential mix from 2011 which we believe captured this was Pearson Sound. It isn’t Pearson Sound himself, however, whom we’d like to talk about today, even though we’d happily do that on the regular. It’s the second to last tune played in the Essential Mix by an artist called Josh Sixty that sparked our interest and set us on a wild goose chase in finding anything remotely about the guy. A few soundcloud message exchanges led us to discover that he wants to keep things on the down low for the time being and he’d eventually reach out to us when he felt the time was right. A real case of just letting the music do the talking. For the moment there seems to be only four tracks in circulation; the three on his soundcloud and and an old track from a year old Boxcutter Bloc promo mix. Despite his tracks tracks being upped to his soundcloud a fair while ago they all have criminally less than a thousand views between them.
Josh Sixty – Break a Mirrored Leg by Josh Sixty
What seems to be the standout favourite and incidentally also the one featured in the Pearson Sound mix is “Break A Mirrored Leg”. A 4.44 minute track of building elation that scurries in and out of ambient and bleepy atmospherics into a full blown crowd meltdown of synths. His other two tracks “GT6 and Sixty Twos” and “Good Morning June” don’t reach the dizzy heights of the first track yet stand out when not compared. Josh Sixty opts for a a glitch-esque mix of vocal samples and and off beat percussion that glides at a comfortably slower pace. The decision to keep off the press for the time being may have to do with still finding his sound and whether he decides to keep these tracks on his soundcloud or rework them in to something newer is something we can look forward to in 2012. Mystery aside, this another talented producer to keep your eyes on.
