TuneLab
Jody Wisternoff & James Grant - Anjunadeep 09
Compilation CDs might seem like a relic, but when it’s Jody Wisternoff & James Grant mixing Anjunadeep 09, it’s a sacred text. This is the sound of the label’s ethos distilled into a continuous mix, perfect for long drives or pretending your commute is a journey to a sun-drenched festival. The vibe is introspective expansion, a headphone masterpiece that paints vast, emotional landscapes in your mind. Technically, this is deep and progressive house with incredible range, from ambient passages at 113 BPM to peak-time moments at 167, but it’s masterfully held together by the recurring, hopeful tonality of 12A, with 8B and 4B providing darker, more mysterious counterpoints. The energy is overwhelmingly smooth, with a deep, cushioning low-end (0.63 avg) allowing complex mid-range textures (0.36) to shine, and almost no abrasive highs (0.008).
Wisternoff and Grant’s programming is a narrative art form, each track selected to advance a story of dawn, day, and dusk. The mixing is seamless and deeply harmonic, creating a single, hour-long piece of music. The tracklist is a curator’s dream. Opening with boerd’s ambient ‘Void’ is a bold, quiet statement. Lycoriscoris’s ‘Flight’ is a beautiful, floating interlude.
The Anjunadeep 09 Mix of Dusky’s ‘Square Miso’ is a driving, tech-tinged highlight, and the 14-minute epic remix of Xinobi’s ‘Far Away Place’ is the sprawling, emotional core of the journey. Their own original ‘Branches’ feels like a heartfelt, personal signature. The journey begins in the atmospheric ‘Void’, climbs through the progressive peak of the Xinobi remix, and gently concludes with their own serene ‘Night Lights’—a deep house mix that defines an era.