James Zabiela - Renaissance: The Masters Series Part 12 (2009)

I spent a month walking around with a microtrak recorder in order to make this CD a snapshot of life through my ears. I practically live in headphones, they're permanently super glued to my head and I'm not often seen without them, whether it's going to the shop to buy a pint of milk or flying to some far flung island, city or town for a gig, so the constant use of the microtrak wasn't a massive change to my outward appearance — lol!

Occasionally you'll hear me remove my cans in order to soak up some the sounds of the places I'm lucky to visit: an eccentric preaches on the streets of Washington DC; fireworks explode as the world famous QE2 ship leaves my hometown of Southampton and the sounds of the eye scanner machine at Heathrow, to name but a few...

You'll also hear that I'm sometimes forced to take off my headphones by killjoy air stewards, frowning at me and pointing toward illuminated seatbelt signs (I'm not sure an iPod has ever caused turbulance on a plane but I degress...).

For this mix I also enrolled a good friend of mine, Joel Einhorn, whose Hollywood accent is used to convey some random thoughts that might pop into one's head after so much time alone on the road.

So, the music of the first disk is what's accompanied me in my headphones as I live my insignificant life, constantly going from one city to the next, traveling to amazing places and spaces to play the music I love for people to dance to. Disk 2 is what I play when I arrive and finally get into the club!

Enjoy listening as I have enjoyed making.

This CD is dedicated to my Grandad, I hope you get better soon.

James Zabiela