Tomora Essential Mix - May 1, 2026

[actionjackson780]

Essential Mix tonight! Pre-requesting a recording if anyone is able to help a brother out

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Essential Mix site

Listen live

[WhiteNoise]

Three Tomora DJ mixes so far? Good eating.

[Enjoyed]

Pre-requesting a recording if anyone is able to help a brother out

I'm at work otherwise I'd do this. Sorry

Would also love a recording when we get one. Please & thank you.

[Enjoyed]

EBW version of Somewhere Else?

[Wolkenkrabber]

Ooh! Unreleased track from last year's Chemical Brothers sets at 1hr18 to 1hr21. The "We Get High" track which was my fave of the new unreleased stuff.
It gets mixed into Ring The Alarm sooner than I wanted. I guess Tom is "protecting" it a bit.
Could this be the EBW that we never got?


EDIT, This (from about 0:30, though it's mixing in before that):

BRISTOL 3
Please log in to view this attachment. The vocal from about 0:47 here is from My Beat by Blaze Ft Palmer Brown (1998). The acapella has been sampled by lots of people including Tiesto and FISHER as recently as 2022. Looking at my own comments from the Amnesia Ibiza 2023 thread, it seems this track got played that night as well...

There's also an un-shazamable track that we hear briefly in the Chems insta stories ... After the track pauses, it comes back in sounding a bit like EML Ritual IMHO. Could this be EBW13? The reverb-y lyrics seem to say "we get high..."

It's listed on the BBC tracklist as "Natives" by ID. Well I think we can safely say that ID = Tom/Chems.
Perhaps the "Natives" title means it isn't the elusive FTBF era EBW after all. But they've been playing it since 2023...

[Enjoyed]

Sure sounds like it!

Also, fans of the live IN A MINUTE rejoice!

Sure hope we get a little EP with these extended/EBW versions!

[Enjoyed]

So... I did manage to squirrel myself away in the office and record it. Gimme a shout if you want a copy

[hstn]

So... I did manage to squirrel myself away in the office and record it. Gimme a shout if you want a copy

YES requesting a recording!! Need something to listen to on the ride home!

[Wolkenkrabber]

Immediately before the "Natives" track we have The Hallelujah Acid (1:14ish to 1:18) - also credited to "ID".
Another Tom track? Quite full-on. I imagine Plastikman might like this! I don't think we've heard this before, have we?

Then immediately after Ring The Alarm we get: Music Is All We've Got (or Miawg) by TR at 1hr26. The production is fun although the vocal isn''t really my cup of tea. I get the feeling I should be able to ID that vocal - it kinda feels like Daft Punk territory. Could we have an instrumental of this please, Tom?

Immediately after Miawg we get "Symbol (TR Unofficial RMX)" by Adrianne Lenker at 1hr30. When I was listening almost-live I thought this might be an unreleased Tomora track but nope; the original has been around since 2018. It's a pretty radical "remix" by Tom though. Really like his production on this one. Banging.

Original is mellow.

[actionjackson780]

Gimme a shout if you want a copy

Me please!

[feedmevinyls]

[inchemwetrust]

I'll take one please Mr Enjoyed!

All these TR unreleased stuff is finally coming out, or has this this material been out already ( maybe they went pass my ear at the last DJ set or others before it)

[Nekcore]

So... I did manage to squirrel myself away in the office and record it. Gimme a shout if you want a copy

If you are sharing copies, I would be very grateful to receive one. Thank you kindly Mr Enjoyed!  

[Stefan]

So... I did manage to squirrel myself away in the office and record it. Gimme a shout if you want a copy

Yes please!

[Csar]

So... I did manage to squirrel myself away in the office and record it. Gimme a shout if you want a copy

[whitelabel84]

I'd love a copy too Enjoyed if one is going. 
Thank you 🙏 in advance 😀 

[Bosco]

I don't know if some of these tracks have staled on me already, but the first 3/5ths  of this essential mix is pretty boring.

It felt like an endurance test.

I do like what Tom is playing around with his "The Village" edit as we previously saw in the other mini mix. Curious if that becomes the new segue builder or fusion piece for a Chems live show.

Some interesting bits that @Wolkenkrabber has pointed out already. Not sure I'll be revisiting this mix a whole lot.

[Wolkenkrabber]

I don't know if some of these tracks have staled on me already, but the first 3/5ths  of this essential mix is pretty boring.

It felt like an endurance test.

Appreciate your honest views on the mix. I got told off (by a Brother) for my comments on the Odd Bod Distress mix back in late 2020. Probably because I said "It's not exactly the Essential Mix". But the good news here is that this actually IS the Essential Mix! And I am pleased.

Having had no mixes to coincide with the release of FTBF, I was pleasantly surprised by the sudden appearance of (1) a half-hour mix for 6 Music, then (2) a full hour mix for Apple Music, and then (3) a two hour Essential Mix. Hallelujah!

Back in 1993 Pete Tong (whose Essential Selection show I was already a fan of) announced the start of the Essential Mix and told us that it would be a two hour mix from big name DJs - like you would get in a club. No one else was doing this at the time - and I was very excited.
Ever since then, I have always expected an Essential Mix to sound like a proper club DJ Set. So that tends to be what I automatically look for in these things -for better or for worse.

Does this mix feel like a full-on club DJ mix? Well some of it does, but maybe not all of it. And maybe it takes a while to get going - but not as much as 3/5's into the mix, IMHO.

We start with Somewhere Else - a quirky pop-dance thing, then we got Tom's re-edit of Ghosts which I really like. That's followed by What's A Girl To Do? by Fatima Yamaha which quite frankly feels like background music. That in turn is followed by Roman Flügel's Tippex In My Eye which is a good track but doesn't really feel "main room" for me.
Peter Dundov's Oasis feels like a track we've heard in Chemical sets before, but I can't say where or when (besides the Tomora Apple Mix obvs). It almost feels like something that could fit with the Late Night Psychtronic mix, But does it feel right here? I'm not sure.
I can see why Tom follows up the Dundov track with Reflexion. I wonder if one track may be an influence on the other?
Peripheral by Eartheater then seems to be a step back into some sort of psychedelic un-danceable weirdness, but fortunately it is quickly mixed into the eternally brilliant Papua New Guinea.

Somewhere on the forum I previously suggested that PNG may have influenced early Chems by sampling Dead Can Dance (Lisa Gerrard) - which the Chems did on both Her Jazz and STTS.
But in addition PNG samples drums from Meat Beat Manifesto, and so does STTS. So PNG does seem to be a really important record in T&E's early 90s influences. And yes, Her Jazz feels like a pale facsimile of this masterpiece IMHO.
I would almost suggest that the mix really gets going with PNG, but then it takes a step back into world music with Soul Lam Plearn by Phet Phin Thong. This feels like an after hours track rather than a main room kicker.
So it is with one of my least favourite Tom/Chemical productions that this Essential Mix finally gets motoring; track 12's We Are Nothing. That's around 53 mins into the thing.
From track 12 to 22 we get a consistent run of tracks that I think I could dance to in a club/rave/whatever. 

Track 14 is Tom's New Order re-edit

I do like what Tom is playing around with his "The Village" edit as we previously saw in the other mini mix.

Me too, I just wish it was a little longer. I think it mixes into the Felix Da Housecat track better here than it did when mixed into the Peter Dundov track in the Apple mix.

Tracks 16 and 17 are The Hallelujah Acid and Natives. The former still feels like Tom's take on Plastikman, and the latter still feels like the EBW we never got. My feeling on Natives is that it maybe needs a top line hook to really finish it off; everything else about the track is great. I suspect we won't get any additional production on the track though because they've been playing it since 2023, so I think it's "finished". One day this will get a release.

Track 19, MIAWG again feels like Tom spreading his wings into non-Chemical dance music. And I guess that's what this Essential Mix allows; it lets him throw in some tracks he made that wouldn't be released under the Chemical name.
Tom's re-edit or "unofficial remix" of Adrianne Lenker's Symbol seems to have two different effects on me. When I'm in a so-so mood, it feels a little too sweet for my tastes but when I'm in a good mood it feels quite euphoric, almost as though someone dropped an E into my ears.

After In A Minute, things start to wind down with Brownstein's Geography poem and Tomora's Wavelengths.
I don't mind a "wind down" at the end of the mix, and so Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain..." and Tom's 'remix' of it as The Wave are actually a nice way to end the mix, though personally I wouldn't have bothered with Wavelengths.
Incidentally track 27, "2026 intro" by AZYR & Vido is actually the opening track of the next radio show, so it shouldn't be listed here at all, as y'all may have already surmised.

@Stefan referred to the Apple Mix as an "absolute unit of a killer mix", and I guess we could look at this as a two -hour extended version of that mix. I must admit that my "dancefloor expectations" for the 6 Music and Apple mixes were lower because... they weren't the Essential Mix.

As someone who regularly checks the BBC Sounds app on a Saturday morning to see who has done this weeks' Essential Mix, it was a pleasure to get a Tomora/Chemical mix pop up at the start of May. The BBC actually extended the run for that mix on the Sounds website & app, so it finally expires tonight at 2am BST. I've given it six full plays, so that's 12 hours of listening time. It's not a perfect Essential Mix, but it's good.

[Bosco]

Appreciate you always pulling all your thoughts and insight together like this, @Wolkenkrabber.

I do wonder how Ed feels about the selection on this essential mix and the output by Tomora.