It's always a pleasure to get a Phil Mison mix at Test Pressing and he's going to do us a few which is a lovely thing. We asked Phil a few questions on the mix....

So thank you for doing this mix. The mix is what we would call a sunset mix. You’re probably best placed out of anyone I know out there to do this now as you got it from the source aka Jose Padilla from the Café Del Mar. What were the key things you learnt from Jose when it come to playing music to a sunset?

I think the most important thing is to never just play flat and always make it interesting. Don’t stick to one level. Be that tempo or genre - just make it exciting and with emotion.

The emotion really comes through this mix...

That’s a really important part of the music. It must have this feeling. You don’t want a soundtrack that no-one is really engaging with.

Do you remember the first few times you played records as the sun disappeared over the sea at the Café Del Mar? What were they?

That was in April 1993. I think the first thing was the b side of ‘Real World House’ which is a cover of Paco De Lucia's ‘Entre Dos Aguas’ and also ‘Red Sun’ which was a CD I’d bought from Ambient Soho earlier that year.

Was there a specific way to time that?

I remember when I first started doing it in Spring of ’93 that the Café owners had told me that two English guys had done it the previous summer (no idea who they were) and they had an alarm clock set that would ring just before the sun was setting. I just followed the sun tbh and sometimes it worked perfectly. You got the hang of it pretty quickly after a few tries.

The mix has some modern music in it from the likes of Nautic and Suzanne Kraft. What is it that you hear in these sort of records that makes them fit within this sound?

It’s just the feeling that they fit perfectly with. It’s back to the emotion again really…

How much does this style of DJing influence your music with Cantoma?

To me they are two separate things. I hear melody in a different way with Cantoma. I don’t consider the music in a sunset fashion as its just what I hear in my mind whereas for example with this mix every record has a different energy and every track marks a passing of time before and post sunset.

Lastly what’s the dream DJ booth to do this from - past and present?

I loved the booth at the Café with the upright mixer and facing out to sea so you get the sea air and the sun but more recently there was an incredible place in Japan that I loved playing at called Kurosaki Beach which is in Ishikawa in Japan. It overlooked the sea and was a bar on a cliff. A really incredible place. It just had the feeling and the crowd were so responsive it had that feeling.