try out the freebie compressors (and other plugs) posted by our very own KitC in this forum. the link is stickied and updated regularly so there should be enough there to keep you busy.
the cure for "patay" drums is hard because you really do have to experiment and see how things work for YOUR tracks. kaskade and other house people often try layering different drum samples to give the kick, snare or tom passage on a song a bit more dimension. you could also lift samples off records and sample those kicks if you don't want to use sample CDs. people using MPCs these days still do that. but here is a caveat: the problem with using single kicks (i think) is that you can only EQ so much of it and most samples either have a particular accent or frequency emphasized on it that may not exactly fit in with the rest of your song. there are a lot of "layering" tutorials for drums online so I suggest you go look those up. also, read up on frequency edits in music. every instrument has a niche that sound engineers use (exploit) to arrange the different elements of a song so the resulting mix sounds cohesive and well laid out. drums kicks for example are low freq by nature so edits for EQing them properly focus anywhere between 28Hz to 35hz or so. other instruments occupy a similar niche along the frequency band at different points so it would be best if you you read up on that so you have a better idea of what you have to deal with when mixing your songs.
Kaskade is from Arizona, i think, but like the other OM and Naked Music people, he frequents SF and SD. Deep house music is everywhere these days - the bay area, chicago, the east coast. the nice thing about the variety in house, and for other dance music actually, is that each region has its own take on it. West coast dance is much laid back, midwest house is much more traditionally disco oriented while east coast house is a bit more abrasive sounding and very much like techno. All in all, the variety is great and the people that make them are a great bunch of forward thinking people that release amazing records. My favorite labels are Naked Music, OM, Soulfuric, Subliminal, Buzzinfly, and Solu Music. I started spinning in the heyday of the Chicago house-rave scene so the offshoot of that movement brought a lot of excitement because more and more people were bringing things to the existing music scene. Moreover, most of the people who were originally from Chicago and helped launch house to the masses like Derek Carter, Mark Farina, Angel Alanis, Collette and, of course, Mr Fingers among others, are either moving back to Chicago or playing in the city through their club residences.
