Meet our July Mix of the Month Winner – Barnowsky

Ask Zoltan Barnoczki about his approach to mixing and you quickly realise he thinks about it the way he thinks about everything else. Our July Mix of the Month winner is Hungarian, based close to the Austrian border, and by day he works as a Cost Engineer for an automotive technology company across the frontier in Austria. That precision does not switch off when he gets home. It shapes the way he assembles a mix, every transition weighed, every choice deliberate, and he is entirely at peace with that.

He has been at this for more than twenty years. Back in the earlier days he held a residency on TranceTream.FM, Hungary’s first trance streaming station, cutting his teeth in a scene that was still finding its feet online. More recently he took the top spot in the UK’s Saturo Sounds DJ Competition, which earned him a quarterly slot as a guest resident. As he wryly points out, a quarterly slot is about the right pace for someone who takes as long as he does to finish a mix.

The club booth has never really pulled at him. He is happier behind a DAW than in front of a crowd, and he will happily disappear into a single mix for weeks, sometimes months, until it sits exactly where he wants it. That patience is why so few of them ever surface. He would rather release something finished than something on time.

He still steps out to play live now and then, but the real satisfaction has always been in the building. For Zoltan, the pleasure is in crafting the journey, and July’s winning mix is proof of what that quiet, unhurried obsession sounds like.

Find out more how to enter our Mix of the Month DJ Competition

How did you approach your mix from a creative and technical standpoint – what story were you aiming to tell, and how did that influence your selection, sequencing, and transitions?

Every mix I make starts with an idea. In this case, it actually started with my previous submission, which also explored the deeper, ambient, dubby end of the techno spectrum.

I liked the atmosphere of that mix, but I felt there was still more to discover. The new mix naturally became a continuation of the same musical world rather than a completely new project. The idea came from something I’ve always found fascinating about dreams: we rarely notice when we’ve moved from one dream into another. I wanted the mix to feel like moving through different states, so I chose tracks that felt connected, almost as if they belonged to the same place. The transitions were there to blur the boundaries between tracks, so the listener could almost forget where one ended and the next began.

Finishing the mix with Marvin Gaye’s Inner City Blues was my way of bringing the listener back to reality, where the realisation is that some of the things we fear in our dreams have always existed in the real world.

Were there any particular production or mixing techniques you used to maintain cohesion or enhance dynamics across the mix?

Compared to many of my earlier progressive and melodic house mixes, this one relies on much longer transitions. Some of them last three or even four minutes because I wanted tracks to coexist rather than simply replace each other, making the whole mix feel like one continuous journey.

Harmonic mixing was also an important part of the mix, helping every transition feel as natural as possible. Before I start arranging a mix, I usually collect far more music than I need and spend a lot of time experimenting with the order of the tracks until the journey feels right. I also edit tracks whenever necessary, sometimes simply by restructuring parts of a track to make the flow feel more natural.

Maybe it’s the Engineer in me, but I also keep an Excel sheet with all the technical details of the tracks. It probably sounds a bit obsessive, but it helps me focus on the overall journey.

How have your musical experiences and influences shaped your sound?

I grew up in the ’90s, so electronic music has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. Like many music lovers, I’ve explored many different styles over the years. I spent years listening to trance, later melodic and progressive house, and I’m still discovering new directions today.

Armin van Buuren’s 2006 ASOT Yearmix had a huge impact on me. Hearing more than 80 tracks blended together so seamlessly through harmonic mixing completely changed the way I thought about what a DJ mix could be. I still love progressive and melodic house, as well as breaks, and I enjoy creating mixes in those styles. For a long time, most of my one-hour mixes featured 30 or more tracks. It became something of a trademark for me, and progressive and melodic house naturally lend themselves to that style of mixing.

Over time, I’ve become increasingly drawn to more atmospheric and introspective music, and this mix grew naturally out of that curiosity. I don’t like limiting myself to a single genre. I simply enjoy finding music that moves me and building a journey around it.

Tracklisting

1. Ben Kaczor, Niculin Barandun – The Equilibrium in Transition [Dial]
2. Andrea Ferlin – Daniele’s Morning Machine [Dial]
3. Kettenkarussell – Walk With Me [Giegling]
4. Lb Honne – Deeper [Smallville Records]
5. Will You – Tellisford Loop [Oleeva]
6. Prince of Denmark – 88888888 [FORUM V]
7. Verlake – The Future (Ben Kaczor Remix) [The Rose Island]
8. Bas Dobbelaer – Irregular (Ben Kaczor Remix) [Something Happening Somewhere]
9. Martinou – Exhilaration [Turbo Recordings]
10. Philipp Priebe – The Danish Villa [Paradijs Boogie]
11. Andy Stott – She’s Gone Wrong [Modern Love]
12. Dialog – Respect (feat. Benji) [DOT]
13. Tren – Positivism [Not Meant To Happen]
14. Leafar Legov – Hidden Treasure [Giegling]
    w/ Deepchord Presents Echospace – Untitled 11 [Modern Love]
15. Marvin Gaye – Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) [Motown Records]

Follow Barnowsky at:

• SoundCloud: @barnowsky
• YouTube: @itsbarnowsky

About the Decoded Magazine Mix of the Month

Our Mix of the Month competition is open to DJs worldwide, regardless of profile or experience.

For more information, including rules of entry and where to submit, head here.

by Damion Pell

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