Despite being a highly prolific and innovative DJ, remixer, engineer and producer for the last two decades, Ben Liebrand still seems rather under heard outside of his native country of The Netherlands. His 1983 radio show “In The Mix,” on local station Radio Veronica is often cited as the first radio shows to feature non-stop mixing/beat-matching, and the station also exclusively featured Liebrand’s own remixes and re-edits throughout the 80s.

From this he went on to produce the yearly “Grandmix,” for Veronica from 1983-992, which was an amazing mix of 100 of the years beat dance tracks whittled down to an hour. Sure, this idea of the “megamix” has practically become cliche over the years, but if you’ve ever been lucky to hear one of Ben’s grandmixes (they were never released, although radio copies are often bootlegged and traded) it’s an amazing thrill to hear how he well he can perfectly blend thirty second snippets of underground disco, italo, house, and hi-nrg with such mainstream hits by George Michael and INXS. Trevor Jackson (aka Playgroup) recently tried to something similar with his erratic “Party Mix” from a couple of years back, but lacks the sheer minute focus of Liebrand’s mixes, which, over the course of the hour, can really paint a uniform picture of what that year sounded like. There’s a highly detailed Dutch fansite which has a listing of most of his playlists from back when.

Nowadays, he has finally dipped into the world of commercially available mix CDs, and is selling them through his own website. Ironically, one of my favorites is his unmixed “Grand 12 Inches” series, a great primer of disco classics and obscurities in their full-length versions. I also love the obsessive technical details he keeps about the recording of his mixes: “If nothing else was available, vinyl copies were used which were recorded into the DD1500 from a Technics SL1200mkII turntable fitted with a new Stanton 681EEE stylus, running through a Studer turntable preamplifier.” It’s certainly an interesting site to wander around in.

[Michael F. Gill]