Alan James - Producer/DJ

18/01/2025

Time to say… thank you! For making “Time To Say Goodbye” my first ever track to hit 5k streams on my SoundCloud.

Inspired by the 2000-ish DJ Visage version, and wanting to maintain an English language version of the vocal, I produced this in 2022 as the climax of my Bounce Times 4 production mix. I then added the vocal chops and a mix out section, ready for release on Excite Digital, where it quickly hit #1 in the chart.

Fast forward to sometime last year and I heard another bounce version. The other producer had every right to do it, but I was surprised in the comments on their version by people saying that “only he” would think of remixing this.

I then realised I’d never put a radio edit up on my SoundCloud. And here we are 8 months later, and it’s the first time anything I’ve uploaded has hit 5k streams.

Tracks I’ve made have hit these numbers before; this exact track is on 7.6k on the Donk House Records YouTube channel, and Doctor Jones is on 67k (!!!) over on the DNZ SoundCloud.

But this is a first on my own page. And, while I try not to focus on streaming stats (as they don’t make tracks better), it does feel like some sort of milestone and it’s awesome to know it’s been played so much from my page.

Also, this happens to coincide with Excite doing a promotion – so if anyone still wishes to buy the track, use code excite15 for 15% discount until Friday 24th.

Cheers for making it happen!

31/12/2024

30/12/2024

Short version: oops!

Full version: so, I was experimenting with little tweaks to a near-finished remix. I saw something online about automating reverb to gently remove a sound, so I tried it on my kickdrum when the snare roll kicks in. It sounded awful, so I removed the reverb plugin from the mixer channel and deleted the automation clip. Then, when I tried to play the track, I got an error about Decapitator (which wasn't on that particular channel, and was fine previously).

I closed FL, reopened the project and got this error. I'm not sure what Fruity Wrapper is? I restarted my PC, but the same thing happened. I don't think I have automatic backups (none in the default location, and in the settings it says to use the project data folder, but there isn't one).

It's not a major loss; I did a manual backup last night. So I've only lost about 45 minutes of doing risers, snare rolls and swapping out a lead on the intro/outro.

But make sure you're taking backups one way of another; I was lucky I had the one from last night!

13/12/2024

Freebies! A lot of people struggle with money in December, so here's a reminder I've got 21 free DJ-friendly* downloads in a Playlist.

https://soundcloud.com/8bit-alan-james/sets/full-length-bounce-downloads

* note that some are 16 bar intros, some are 32. So it's worth checking before you play them.

08/12/2024

Bytesize Bounce 4 is here! I've hardly uploaded any mixes this year, but all of a sudden I've been sent some outstanding promos so I dusted off my RX and this was the result.

The Bytesize series focuses on shorter bounce mixes, normally around 30 mins (though this one's a little longer), for when you want some bounce but don't have a full hour to spare.

https://soundcloud.com/8bit-alan-james/bytesize-bounce-4

29/11/2024

Guyver - Alien On Earth (Alan James Remix)

New 2024 update to my 2018 bounce remix of Guy's hard trance masterpiece.

The full track is a freebie (released on Black Friday).

29/11/2024

Black Friday Freebie!

In 2018 I did a bounce remix of Guyver's hard trance track "Alien On Earth" and was allowed to give it away as a freebie. 6½ years later I thought I'd give it a fresh mix down and ended up changing the kick, bass, riser, one of the leads... There's lots of subtle upgrades in this version.

The tune won't be everyone's cup of tea; a 32 bar intro (new bounce DJs, set your cue point to bar 17 🤣), a very long first breakdown and a big hard trance lead. But, if you're a fan of both hard trance and bounce, you might just love it. And hey, it's free!

https://soundcloud.com/8bit-alan-james/alien_on_earth_2024

10/11/2024

Some music producers like to colour code and label everything in their tracks. If that helps you, do it. But everyone's brain works differently; if you find it simpler to always put your kick on track one, your clap on track two, then your percussion loops, then your crash, then your bass, then your leads... then labelling everything may be a massive waste of time and actually hold you back.

Here's something I'm currently working on; I have a pretty good idea what each sound is just by looking at this picture.

09/10/2024

Thanks for all the interest in "Wild Ones" from myself and Big Ric. We've agreed to stagger the release, putting it out two days early exclusively on the Excite store - meaning if you like original bounce music you can go and pick it up from today! It'll be out on other stores in a couple of days.

We didn't write the vocal, which is from a site which sells original vocals. But the tune is original in the sense that it isn't a remix/cover of anything, plus we wrote the lead riff from scratch.

Huge thanks to Rik Shaw and DurkDawg for persisting with the distributor, who falsely accused us of sampling another track. I understand they had to write some strongly worded emails, but we got there in the end! It's ironic that the most copyright issues I've had on a tune are on one which is 100% legitimate 🤣

Not to be confused with Marc Burridge's completely unrelated tune with the same name, which is also out now on Excite - it'd be funny if someone gets a screenshot with both tunes in the chart at the same time :D

05/10/2024

I've just seen from facebook memories that it is 2 years since my Bounce Times 4 CDs started arriving in the post. Coincidentally, I was listening to this last week and I'm still proud of it - it was also my first CD where I'd produced 100% of the tracks (BT3 was 94.7% mine). Big thanks to everyone who supported it at the time or has listened since, or has supported the individual tracks.

Out of interest, what's everyone's favourite track in this mix? I think "Danger Zone" is the one which people mention to me the most (utter cheese, haha!), but "Time To Say Goodbye" is doing superbly well since I uploaded a radio edit to SoundCloud.

18/09/2024

Thanks so much for all the support on "Return To Earth"; it was great this morning to wake up to a message from my mate Richard Lynsky with a screenshot showing the tune was #1 on juno's Scouse House new releases chart! I hadn't even been following the juno chart as I assumed most people would get it from Excite's page (it's the first time I've been released on both sites simultaneously), so it's an awesome surprise to see you wonderful people have put me and Adam Taylor at #1. Cheers!

By the time I woke up it was #2, overtaken by a compilation album, so even if I had checked I'd never have known it was briefly #1 had Ric not messaged me 🤣

Note that it won't be in the Scouse House tracks chart, as juno have decided to classify the track as "Uplifting Trance", despite the release being "Scouse House". It's #5 in the Uplifting Trance tracks chart. But was, briefly, #1 on Scouse House releases.

And if you followed that this early without multiple coffees to wake up, well done!

13/09/2024

"Return To Earth" (with Adam Taylor) is out now!

https://excite-digital.co.uk/product/adam-taylor-alan-james-return-to-earth/

09/09/2024

"I only wanted to be part of something..."

So, here's something a bit different from me. On Friday I heard the new Linkin Park song, with the new vocalist, and I was blown away. It's one of my favourite songs of the year, and one of my favourite Linkin Park songs. But I was curious what a bounce version might sound like...

I don't normally remix anything current. And, when I do remix songs, I normally swap out everything other than the vocal for my own synths. To that end, this is more of a "donkover" than a full remix, as I've kept parts of the guitar and piano as well as preserving the original track structure, so I've labelled it as an "edit".

There's also no 8bit in sight. So, like I said, it's a bit different to what I normally do 🤣

But I think it's fun. I hope you like it!

26/08/2024

"Lost Generation", my collab with NIXY & DeV1Se, is out today on Bounce Heaven!

Spread the love

25/08/2024

Brand new, 100% original music! This trancy bounce tune with Adam Taylor is coming to Excite on Friday 13th September 2024.

23/08/2024

Felt cute. Might delete later 🤣

Something for hard bounce fans. I don't think I'll be able to release it, so it's just for my sets/mixes - but here's a little teaser clip.

06/08/2024

Accurate.