Midwinter Mixes

It's almost Christmas, so why not.

In December 2000, The Big Chill hosted one of the most memorable concerts I've had the pleasure of being involved with. Tom Middleton, our resident DJ through the years and now an esteemed club and yoga session DJ, composer and sleep therapist, fulfilled an ambition: he got to score and perform two tracks from the seminal album 76:14 by Global Communication, his project at the time with Mark Pritchard. Tom invited me to play the DJ warm-up set for him, which I really enjoyed doing, along with Muffled Visions images on the night.

The resulting mix, Deep and Crisp and Even, has remained popular since its inception, and has already received several thousand downloads from a variety of sites. It's one of my most loved mixes, and seems to suit a variety of occasions. I made it for my children, Ella and Joey.

To mark the 20th anniversary, I revisited the Deep and Crisp and Even mix I created for that iconic night, and put some DIY visuals to it — something I'd always wanted to do. Enforced lockdown here on Paros gave me a few days' spare time to essentially create a film of slides around the mix (original photos by myself, as well as found footage on the web). It clocks in at 62 minutes — a sound and visionscape through choral, classical, electronica, piano music and more.

We watched it during our solstice dinner, still beautiful. We also listen to it every Christmas day morning, a tradition born out of something that, at the time, wasn't a tradition... but now is so ingrained in our family's Christmas it absolutely is. 25 years...Kate Kinsella

And two more seasonal mixes thrown into the stocking, with love

Torches and Let The Winter Come and Go — you can hear Torches on SoundCloud, and Let The Winter Come and Go on Mixcloud.

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