Most of our lives will be spent missing amazing stuff. Hopefully because we’re too preoccupied with the other wonders around us.

Despite being aware of Mark Instinct’s existence, his talents haphazardly eluded my specific interest until alarmingly recently. That’s very unfortunate, because his remix of City Lights could have been a near-perfect anthem for Burning Man 2010, given the festival’s Metropolis theme.

Method Man & Redman feat. Bun B – City Lights (Mark Instinct & Symbl Bootleg)

The tenacious summon of Black Rock City has finally hit me. I don’t know if it was the facebook invite or the nostalgic perusal of Rockstar Librarian’s 2010 Music Guide, but something did it. I would have no qualms about returning to that frustratingly-magical moonscape, but it’s a commitment of a couple weeks and a couple grand. Which is a Brobdingnagian hurdle when I can’t even make my way out of my parents’ basement.

Although that’s not strictly true. I’m typing this in the basement, but I live in a room upstairs like a civilized member of the family. I say I live in the basement because it establishes a certain standard of intrigue. Basement dwellers might imagine themselves to be Dwarves or CHUDs. But, alas, it is a lie. I am not so mysterious. I’m just a dude who wants to get functionally drunk—or drunktional—in an enveloping dust while leering at sweat-polished hippie chicks.

That’s not the entirety, or even primary substance, of The Burn’s allure, though. It’s not in what you experience, or what you may likely experience again, but mostly what you don’t experience. The eponymous Burning Man, for example, was lit ablaze while themelondecoratif and I were having coffee with a crack team of hairstyling ninjas from Reno. And I have no regrets, because that surreal happenstance can never be replicated.

But another man will burn. I plan to see it, unless something else comes up. And I’m sure it will. I ignorantly missed R/D while committing myself to the merciless heckling of cyclists. Those hypocritical motherfuckers jump at the chance to be as inconsiderate of pedestrians on the playa as motorists are of them on public roads. Thankfully, this information superhighway accommodates us all, and it’s headlined my iPod with mixes from artists I missed in the desert.

Eastern Sun & Oscure – Third Eye High (R/D Remix)

I first encountered this sublime remix on Kraddy’s Dirty Got Soul, but due to the fact that it is woefully underlabelled in the track listing, I wasn’t able to correctly identify it until it showed up in R/D’s Forward Slash. Both mixes are superb, yet this track towers up out of them like, I don’t know, a gigantic burning man in the middle of a desert.  It’s definitely not to be missed. Trust the guy who missed the burning man and every set Jody Wisternoff played at the festival. He probably played this track, which I later discovered as the highlight of his Burning Man Mix:

Oliver Koletzki & Fran – Arrow & Bow (Marek Hemmann Remix)

The bassline gives the impression that you’ve been caught inside a wormhole and shrunk down to an infinitesimal point cycling back and forth through time along the release of an actual bowstring. Even though I could, I wouldn’t make it my mission to disagree with you if you posited the bassline as the track’s only innovative ace. But I wouldn’t need to, because the purpose of a good progressive track is not so much to surprise as it is to delight, and this one does so with supreme ease. Savour it long after your graduate-level reading skills have blown you past my closing thoughts.

As I move forward with this feature, I hope to remain entertaining while consistently presenting badass beats. While I am secretly confident in my ability to fail miserably at the former, I am—contrary to my initial fears—building a generous backlog of the latter.

Failing to share most of the world’s beauty with you, dear readers, will be my pleasure.