There are mix series and then there are artefacts. The X-Mix series, released between 1993 and 1998 on the Berlin-based Stud!o K7 label, belongs firmly in the second category. Alongside Global Underground and the Renaissance series, it stands as one of the most important and enduring DJ mix documents of the nineties: a ten-volume catalogue that mapped the contours of techno and electronic music at the precise moment those contours were still being drawn. To listen back to it now is to understand just how serious this music was, and how seriously the people making it took their craft.
To understand why X-Mix mattered, you have to…
