The 80ies had it all. Great cars, great fashion, great movies, GREAT music.
The megamix emerged in the late 1970s as DJs and producers began experimenting with blending multiple tracks into one seamless, extended piece. Rooted in disco and early hip-hop DJ culture, the goal was simple: take the energy of the dancefloor and distill it into a single, continuous experience.
Early innovators like Grandmaster Flash and The Latin Rascals perfected tape-edit techniques—cutting, splicing, and looping reels by hand to create rapid-fire collages of beats and hooks. By the mid-1980s, the megamix had become a recognizable format, especially in Europe, where labels like DMC (Disco Mix Club) and Mastermix pushed it into the mainstream. DMC’s competition mixes and commercially released megamixes brought a new level of technical polish and global exposure.
In Denmark particularly one man was responsible for bringing the megamixes to the masses: Kim Schumacher. He had continuously worked on freelance basis on Danish national radio P3 beginning with Studio 82, which ran until his way too early death in 1990. He called them layer cake mixes and they were never mentioned by name. During those days monopoly ruled the airwaves in Denmark with only DR, Danish national radio broadcasting. So millions were listening. They never knew what hit them!
I began collecting them when I discovered Max Mix and later Bolero Mix. I wasn’t able to afford the cool DMC megamixes or Mastermix’s amazing releases, but through the 2000s I began picking them up. Lately several groups have been invaluable sources to finding out what those old megamix I heard on the radio were called, and one by one I have been finding them.
I apologize for the varying sound quality in this episode, but I’m sure you’ll appreciate this incredible craft despite that. In the words of the almighty MartinMax: Eeeeeeeenjoy!
