WARMER MIXTAPES #1115 | by Daniel Thomas Ikegami [Gami]

1. Booker T. & The M.G.s | Green Onions
This tune has always hit me really deep down. I was born and raised in the suburbs of Detroit, grew up listening to Motown, Funk, & Classic Rock. However, I really became attached to the song while playing in my Middle School Jazz band. I was the drummer in the band and this was one of the most fun tunes we ever got to play. Green Onions will always be an anthem for my soul!

2. OutKast | Rosa Parks
This song brings back a lot of memories of working on cars with my father. We would spend hours in the garage tinkering on all sorts of mechanical goodies. I specifically remember this being the first song on a brand new Stereo my Dad and I installed on a 1978 Camero that we had been working on for years during High School. I remember sitting in the cramped backseat of the car watching these Kenwood 6x9’s mounted above the trunk under the rear window pushing air from the kicking bass of the song. I couldn’t stop watching the material in the speakers weren’t breaking from moving so far up and down in a repeated motion. From that point on it was my goal to know more about the way Sound worked.

3. Roots Manuva | Witness (1 Hope)
During my last two years of High School I started creating Hip-Hop instrumentals for a close friend Amir Pakray who performed under the name Amirror, while also having an underground alias, Sir Ninja. Together we put out our first EP released on via CD titled The Freeze and Witness (1 Hope) by Roots Manuva was a song that Amir had shown me during our time working on music. Years later, the song continues to stick with me while producing Gami tracks. This tune also brings me back to cut & paste style Production, which I only new at the time via Apple's GarageBand. This cut & paste style for me consisted of recording vocals through the microphone of my laptop in the front seats of my car, while driving around our neighborhoods playing back the recordings with the volume on max and windows down. Creating Music and performing it had felt so innocent at this time and amazing moments of the past to think back on.


4. Kid Sister | Pro Nails (feat. Kanye West) (Rusko Remix)
I was first influenced to Dubstep by a friend I went to School with who went by the name DJ K@Dog. When his Production company Cirque Du Womp toured to my College for a concert this was one of the first times I wanted to take DJ’ing and Event Planning seriously. I found this song one of the first to really get stuck in my live performance Digital Music crate very quickly.

 5. Fatboy Slim | The Rockafeller Skank
This song does not have one specific memory for me; yet, it has always been a window down and sunshine type of driving tune for me. Most of all, this tune just reminds me of Happiness and Summer time with friends. It is truly an anthem in my book.

6. Gorillaz | Dirty Harry (feat. Bootie Brown, The Pharcyde, Children's Choir San Fernandez Youth Chorus 2003-2004 season)
This song really brings me back to early College years, as well as the start of what would later become a career as a DJ. At the time I would have never know that Music would be my pathway for work, but this song really sticks out to me on moments of playing what I wanted to hear rather than pleasing the crowd. I started out playing on Virtual DJ and a mouse, 2 terrible MTX 12” loud speakers that I underpowered through a home surround sound amplifier. Quite the ghetto rig setup, but it got the job done. The feeling this song reminds me of was me rocking out to a jam I really loved and having everyone in the room frozen staring at me wondering why I changed it from songs that everyone could dance to.

7. Two Fresh | Du Du Du
This tune really brought me into discovering a whole new world of Music in which many know as beats. While throwing parties through my company Gami Entertainment, I had heard this song being played by a couple friends who I would book for concert events. DukTap, Nunca Duerma and DJ GK were among these friends and were people I believed to be highly influential and the leaders of Future Music. After having been influenced by a Two Fresh track, I later had the honor of meeting and opening up for Two Fresh at a performance hosted by a local Music venue, The Globe Theatre.



8. Pretty Lights | Finally Moving (Remix)
Finally Moving (Remix) was an anthem for me when I first started performing in venues in 2010. A small underground concert venue called Papa Pete’s became my home base of Electronic Music performances and learning the ways of nightlife. The manager and booking agent of the bar, Yorgos, was the person who first booked me at the venue and showed me this song. Little did I know that it would change my life and career pathway in such a positive way.

9. Nas | You Owe Me (feat. Ginuwine) (Sango Edit)
In the fall of 2012, my homie Karnage introduced me to his old roommate who created Music under the name Sango. After meeting Sango, I was honored to have him perform in my studio for a live video performance feed my crew LayerCake Presents was hosting. Meeting Sango and being exposed to his music and the label he was signed with, called Soulection Records, opened me to a whole new world of Music. You Owe Me was the tune that really marked a new experience in Music and influenced me in many ways when I started learning how to properly produce on Ableton Live. The inspiration behind the track and learning to produce quickly transcended into receiving my Ableton Certification through Point Blank University.

10. Gami | Dump Squad (Mark Starr Remix)
During the spring and summer of 2013 I studied for 6 months through Point Blank University’s online courses and received my Ableton Live Certification. This was the best education experience I have had thus far in my life. I created a song in a class lead by Ableton certified instructor Fredric Cuin aka Freddy Froggs. The track titled Dump Squad later became a part of my first EP titled Every Other Kind. I was contacted not long after by an artist by the name of Mark Starr who was interested in remixing the song. I was honored to have a random artist contact me for remixing, being that I was quite unexposed to anything like this before the fact. At the time I was unaware of the level of work he was involved with, but upon finding out it was quite a shocking. Having releases through Skrillex’s Oslwa Records and being the newest member of Claude VonStroke’s DirtyBird Records definitely was a jaw dropper. Having a fellow producer with superior experience and all-around ability remixing one of my tracks meant to me more than words could describe and in my mind is the a benchmark for my accomplishments I made through the University. Although this song is still unreleased you can hear in a few mixtapes around the Internet. The most exciting feature the song has received was blogged on A-Trak’s Fools Gold Records Blogspot in which the artist Sinden opened up a video feed mixtape with the remix which aired on London’s Just Jam aka Don’t Watch That TV.