Music has ruled Mark Farina’s every step, since his vibrant youth: days spent marching routines with a trumpet in his Chicago high school’s band blurred into wild nights stomping around hardcore and punk shows. Eventually persuading his parents to allow him to ditch the brass bugle and bring a drum set into the house, Mark held the beat down for a New Wave alternative cover band (reworking The The, The Smiths, The Cure, Front 242, Ministry and the like) that tore through countless garages, gymnasiums, churches and Battle of the Bands.

As Mark’s musical tastes took a turn for the electronic, he dove head-first into the luscious world of turntables and nightclubs, a shift reflected by his band becoming the high school’s first to incorporate a drum machine in its setup. Zealously weaving in and out of late-night teen clubs in-between his electronic band’s shows, Mark celebrated his first solo DJ gig at the Chicagoan underage mecca, Medusa’s, at the age of 16.

Fusing the laid-back vibes of San Francisco and the jackin’ sounds of Chicago, bringing the Midwest and West Coast to some kind of smooth, sunny middle ground, Mark Farina takes Fabric 40 by the helm and steers it down an astonishing, picturesque route. Mixed lovingly by hand, this buoyant, essential summer soundtrack swells and melds with the head-nodding sounds of Derrick Carter, JT Donaldson & Uneaq, DJ Sneak and King Kooba.

“When making the mix, I played a sort of fictitious set at fabric on a night that doesn’t exist. Musically, I tried to capture the techy, jackin’ Chicago/SF side of the house spectrum – dubby, chunky tracks. I tried to pick tunes from all over the world. I picked a good variation of underground goodies, a lot of which are unreleased or hopefully not on any other compilations. Tracks that have a good “shelf life” but that aren’t proven hits; hidden gems that might go over looked in this fast paced music era.”