I have no idea what it’s like for any of these DJs, how they see what they do, what the process is like, where their heads are at when they’re in the mix. Maybe, maybe, it’s all a great big struggle for Mark Rae, maybe it's blood, sweat and trainwrecks polished off through hours of laborious practice. But man, he sure makes it look easy.
And I mean all of it. The selecting – he seems to have an unending wellspring of records that are perfect Mark Rae records, records no one else would have recognized as funky or thought to insert into his sets. The sequencing – planned or improvised, I’ve never seen a DJ quite as good with call-and-response mixing. He makes the records talk to each other. And the trickery – the scratching, the cutting, the surprise stops and segues, he’s clearly a natural with it.
The first time I saw him play live, I was genuinely surprised by how light on his feet he seemed back there, totally into what he was doing but not betraying any need for concentration or effort, just bouncing through clever mixing and scratching and anthemic drops like a kid doing cartwheels on a playground. I’ve had my share of DJ heroes (you may have noticed), but I don’t think I’ve ever been jealous of a DJ other than Mark Rae. He’s the natural.
https://soundcloud.com/mark-rae/rae-radio-mix
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