Miles Maeda Mixtapes

A collection of mixes from one of Chicago's most distinctive voices of the early 1990s underground, a DJ whose path from Hawaii to Indiana to the Chicago house scene is as unconventional as the music he made.

Born and raised in Hawaii, Miles Maeda moved to the Midwest to attend Indiana University in Bloomington, where he began working at the university radio station and got deeply into the early Chicago house and Detroit techno that were coming to light at the time. In pursuit of his newfound musical interests he made regular trips to Chicago to visit Gramophone Records — where Derrick Carter worked at the time — before eventually relocating to the city, where he co-founded the Material and Atmospheric Audio Chair club nights. Working alongside Derrick Carter, Mark Farina, and Spencer Kincey as a purveyor of the new electronic dance music coming out of Chicago, he brought a classically trained musician's ear and a unique perspective to a scene that was already producing some of the most vital house music in the country. He eventually held an 11-year residency at Smartbar, one of the longest and most respected in the club's history, before moving to San Diego and later spending seven years in Tokyo, where he launched the eclectic ZenDaze party series.