Before I give my attempt at constructive criticism, I should say my background is mostly in fringe electronic dance parties where a lot of the crowd either at least dabbles in mixing or dates someone who does. Based on your selection, I assume that you're targeting slightly more mainstream club demographics so I'll try to keep that in mind
I think it's a solid selection. Real upfront with the dutch/electro house feel consistent between tracks. There's a little too much beat juggling and stutter-looping for my taste but I must say there's a few parts where you hit the cuts cleanly and it definitely works! I would recommend maybe just picking a few parts to do this where it sounds the best, and leaving the rest of each track to play straight because too much stuttering tends to throw me off when I'm dancing. Another approach would be to use longer (2, 4...?) beat loops in some of the parts where you want to play around; it's easier to stay in sync with the overall 4/16 beat-chunk structure of most tracks. Short Loop rolls would be another option; keep the stutter but snap back to where the track would have been otherwise. Substituting echoes / flanges / filters might add more variety. To be honest even when spinning a underground-style party I try not to go overboard with effects but everybody gets different mileage on this issue, it's a central decision in what you want your mixing to sound like, and it seems you want a bit more of a scratching & hip-hop feel.
To touch on the transitions point mentioned by Houston above, I would suggest a few things also...
1- I own a VCI-300 but if the Itch interface is the same as what I've used, the software lacks the individual gain for each deck (see Scratch Live for comparison) which means your level matching needs to happen at the controller. Again, I don't know firsthand about your gear but I always found it tricky to match levels on the VCI's meters, which don't have enough resolution in my opinion. Your ears will be more accurate if you compare the peak part of your incoming track with the louder bits of what's playing already, and set the gain until they sound about the same when switching the cue back and forth in your headphones. I believe Itch has some kind of auto gain set, which will help you find starting points for sure, but Houston might be able to recommend a better piece of software for that purpose. I've had mixed results with SSL's auto-gain and always get the best results when I adjust manually. Hopefully the NS7 has more LEDs on your channel meters.
2- I encourage you to play around with 4/8/16 bar loops. A lot of these new dance tracks for the radio start with a long fade in, and don't hit a steady kick drum beat until there's a full vocal going. Sometimes there's a part in there that can be looped and mixed in for a long time without clashing against the current track, then you can drop the loop at an appropriate time and hit the point of no return in the transition. This will keep the beat continuous and the energy high. Nothing against a sudden dramatic drop to a recognizable "omg it's that track" intro, though - that generates a different kind of energy than a continuous groove.
3- As an alternative to 2, you could look for (or create) remixes/re-edits of these tracks that are more DJ friendly, meaning that they have longer intros/outros which can be mixed without clashing vocals. There's a huge range out there, though. A mainstream club might not dig anything longer than 32 beats or so without vocals, so search for what will work for your crowd and/or don't feel locked into playing each track from the very first beat...
Damn, sorry - that was a lot longer than I meant it to be! Too much caffeine as I prepare to work a few hours tonight, I'm afraid. Thanks for reading, I'm always excited to talk about mixing styles, particularly when there's different target crowds involved because it gives me fresh perspective on what I do... I have some mixes up on Soundcloud as well.
http://soundcloud.com/mr-alexander They won't really serve as 'do it like this' examples because of the different selection, but they'll give you a feel for some stuff I'm into. Krafty Kuts is putting out mixes (i.e. Datatransmissions) that I can listen to on repeat, again a fringe-oriented but that guy can scratch and mix up a storm and hits a few different genres of electronic stuff with a lot of hip-hop vocals in the mix. Feel free to comment on my stuff, and especially please let me know if I was off the mark on what you're trying to do!
Cheers,
Lane
