House Is A Feeling

THIS BLOG HAS MOVED

2007-01-10T10:05:00.000-08:00

Please update your links, and bear with me while I add Feedburner and similar stuff to the new site, should be a better looking blog overall. See you there!

Further into the haze of the jungle....

2007-01-07T08:34:00.000-08:00

So 2007 has kicked off, and already a new Mobilee by Marcin Czibula, new Liebe Detail by Ripperton/Lars Behrenroth, and some other neat stuff are doing the promo rounds. I'm really enjoying Minilogue's Birdsong forthcoming later this year on Wagon Repair. If minimal is to become more deep and I guess, organic sounding, then gimme this over the "soulful" Buttrich bargrooves any day of the week (sorry but "Cloudy Bay" sucked), incorporating older house sounds shouldn't mean losing all the dub, and thankfully Minilogue provide a good example of how it should be done on this 12. I often feel like I'm giving too much mention to this style anyway, the reality is there is still plenty of non US sounding minimal coming out, just a lot of the bigger releases are starting to sound a bit more like deep house. However what will separate the wheat from the chaff ultimately is the dubby/druggy elements in the sound....when these are lost there's nothing original whatsoever about deep electronic house, it just loses the vitality and originality of "minimal" and becomes "TECH HOUSE" or something equally boring.

"Birdsong" is a seriously dense record, so tropical and otherworldly, if you liked Kemi and Amox's "Natas" and Marc Antona's release on Freak N Chic last year which I blogged about here, then you'll like this too. These records are submerged underneath a deep misty haze. But the melodies which come into "Birdsong" after 4 or 5 minutes of groove are just so lonely and forlorn, the stuff of amazing house music. This weird nature vibe (did this begin with poppier incarnations like "The Whistler" and "Kookaburra") can only do good things for house, or a new genre perhaps "beardinal" (minibeard anyone?). It's like the nightclub is a jungle and the listener is on a solo mission through the trees, and it's no surprise that "Birdsong" clocks in at 10 minutes. Also, can you tell these records make me want to do drugs again? They do!

All of the above brings us nicely to one of my favourite house records of all time, and one which I think may be THE best Chicago house tune. It also should give my recent obsession with this weird sub sub genre of tropical/dub/nature house sounds some context....maybe this was the original tropical house tune....I hope you all like it as much as I do...enjoy

Tags: minimal, house music, downloads

Could this be 2006's final YSI?

2006-12-29T03:23:00.000-08:00

Probably, but I'm really enjoying these two records in particular, both released in the week before Christmas. The first is My My's remix of Duoteque's My My's remix of Duoteque's "Amarcord" on Boxer. If you've heard the My My LP you know what to expect hear, if not, check this out, what starts off quite agitated gives way to some of those Detroit style melodies that have been popping up a bit more commonly in the last few months. While this is great, there really is a fine line between minimal meeting Detroit and just becoming boring electronic house. I've never been into labels like Galaktika or Déssous, apart from when the latter drafts in a decent remixer, and there are a slew of producers making vaguely US tinged Euro-house for the last few years and plodding along with production after production, none of which are ever great, these guys are probably just waiting for a chance to inflict their lounge compilation grooves on the world! So not too heavy on the US sounds please Germans, and the rest of the world...a little lushness is a dangerous thing.

The second track I'm linking dovetails nicely with this last point, it's by Marc Antona whom I've not heard of before, and is no Freak N Chic. I find myself checking Freak N Chic pretty regularly these days, having at one stage thought of it as sort of quaint acid house revivalism. This is the third record of 2006 I've really enjoyed on the label and that's better than many labels manage.

Perhaps the time is just right for Freak N Chic, aswell as lushness like My My seeping into minimal there's also been a return of more abrasive jacking rhythms, like the Jamie Jones release I recently blogged about, and of course Samim/Haze and co.

However I've also noticed a lot of tracks incorporating some of that weirdly organic feeling you get from certain early Chicago records. I mean organic in the sense of the music sounding sort of tropical or tribal. Kemi and Amox's "Natas" was a perfect example of this which I linked to a while back. "Happy Martians" by Antona also has this vibe, just listen to that bassline, so primal, you can practically see the steam rising from the trees. Of course it still sounds quite trendy and minimal and "now", but can the return of the bongo be far ahead of us? Beardo house?

And is this all just part of an endless process of recycling? Perhaps the future of house and techno is just continuing unfinished ideas from various points in the past, sometimes several at a time.

(As always if you like the above try and pick up the 12s or give the labels and producers some money in the future...)

Tags: minimal, house music, downloads

2006 almost over...

2006-12-28T15:41:00.000-08:00

A bizarre year trundles to an end: I was sick for this entire year, but despite some of the darker times in recent years there have been a number of highlights, which I won't detail too much, mostly writing and DJing really, if I've felt isolated this year I like to think I've used what's been a weirdly bare bones existence (at least in terms of you know, leaving the house) to spend more time taking stock of things and deciding what I want to do with my career, what kind of person I want to be, what parts of my self are worth retaining for the day when I might feel better. It's been a serious 2006 for me, not much frivolity I'm afraid, quite a lot of introspection, I mean, what else do you think about but the serious when you're feeling sick all the time.

In that vein, one thing which has struck me in the last week, is the sheer invincibility of a good family life. I realise this sounds a bit like Fr Ronan's Christmas homily, but most people probably don't get a snapshot of what it's like to depend on their family and really value the time spent with them until they're elderly. And of course plenty don't have a family they get along with. A good family care enough to understand when things are going badly and know you well enough not to care. I don't mean to suggest friendships are worthless or false, just that it's not humanly possible for most friends to help us when things are bad...

I've never been anti-Christmas anyhow, but Christmas this year has been particularly great because it's su\h an easy thing to engage in. I have a lot of great friends but the downright normality of family at Christmas is something chronic illness can't really take away, a good feeling, all too rare. This craving for normality actually feels kind of abnormal.

As for 2007, I hope to keep posting music and mixes here, and have a few career plans up my sleeve which could be interesting. I hope people have enjoyed reading this revived blog the last few months, I've really enjoyed writing it particularly as I've noticed a few more people reading in the last month or two. Or at least downloading the mp3s and thinking "wtf" at the illness monologues....

Anyway expect plenty of updates including a huge backlog of radio shows, lots of nice mp3s as usual, some interviews, and as much else about this wonderful music as I can fit in. Oh and I hope you all had a great Christmas, and that 2007 is a fantastic year...

Extra Extra: Minimal now meets Moodymann

2006-12-22T16:39:00.000-08:00

I don't know whether to eulogise about this, or complain about lack of originality, I guess I can do a bit of both. Rejoice, because Lee Jones' (he of My My) re-working of Philly Soundworks "Sideshow", on Aus Music, is the quintessential deep house tune, an amazing melancholic late night tune. How does some house music just seem so utterly irrevocably tied to the night time? It's 1am now and even sitting at home at a computer, this record sounds like it could only have been made for night time, for silence, for that reflective atmosphere that covers everything in the morning hours. Night music is such a glorious term. And yet I can imagine this track (and others like it) being great in a club too.

Why is it that some of the most amazing electronic music we listen to while on euphoria inducing drugs is simultaneously so melancholy, so serious. Perhaps electronic music just illuminates what is actually a fine line between sadness and euphoria, between the present and the nostalgia that is soon to come. I just can't think of anything else which seems to evoke such seemingly opposite feelings, is it just projection on my part? Do we eventually just project our feelings onto the music we listen to? Is dance music a more blank canvas? Or maybe this is what "house is a feeling" really means; regardless of how often we go out to clubs or how many records we buy, once we've loved dance music once, even for a short time, like anything else, it retains a real power over us. "Those who know" about electronic music can never stop knowing.

Check it out

(Please buy some records sometimes, it's not hard! I bought this one!)

Funboi

2006-12-19T13:55:00.000-08:00

Here's a mix from Funboi, one of my co-DJs at Backlash...it's pretty poor but he needs all the exposure he can get, he is the breadwinner in a large family and DJing pays pretty badly. Seriously tho this is a nice mix on an electro/minimal tip, check it out below....

01. Misc - Silhouette
02. Yellow - Oh Yeah (Bodzin & Huntemann Mix)
03. Chloe & Sascha Funke - Point Final
04. Angelo Battilani - Empty
05. SLG - Caffeine
06. Pan-Pot - Black Dog (Jesse Rose Mix)
07. Kaliber 7.3
08. Lutzencraft - Amplify
09. Pig & Dan - On The Beat
10. Thomas Schumacher - Kickschool 79
11. John Acquaviva & Madox - Feedback (Oliver Koletzki Mix)

download it here

A Christmas Surprise

2006-12-16T10:04:00.000-08:00

Enjoy

NOMINATED FOR AWARDS

2006-12-14T09:44:00.000-08:00

Get Physical/Traum/Jay Haze/Michal Ho/Ripperton/Ewan Pearson/Pascal FEOS

2006-12-14T08:59:00.000-08:00

I'll be playing all of the above and more on Raidíó Na Life from 21.00 to 22.30 tonight...including the new Jesse Rose track on Get Physical I mentioned here this week, Ewan Pearson remixing the Pet Shop Boys, two new tracks on Junion from Michal Ho and Jay Haze, a whole heap of Traum/Trapez releases from the likes of Gabriel Ananda, Extrawelt, and Florian Meindl, new Stil Vor Talent...etc etc etc!

Feed You

2006-12-13T09:09:00.000-08:00

Just a little admin note to say, if anyone wants to let me know how the feed is working, or that it's working ok, that'd be great. I had a little bit of confusion with feedburner where they asked me if I wanted to podcast and I thought "yes if I knew how" , I hope it assuming I am a podcast isn't fucking things up for you guys...if so let me know in the comments box below...and if anyone knows an easy way to set up a podcast where I upload my radio show somewhere and it then goes out to you guys, also let me know, I'm not an expert on these things.

Thanks a lot, and hope the 4 people signed up for the feed are getting some enjoyment out of it...

Late Contenders...

2006-12-13T08:38:00.000-08:00

I wish I hadn't made my best of 2006 list a week or two ago, because good records keep coming out, even one or two which would probably make a top 10.

Principle among these is Jackmate's jawdropping rework of Solomun and Gebr Ton's "Taggeschau", another great release on the up and coming Diynamic. What to say about a record like this, stabbing melodies interlock to create an 8 minute epic which is laden with drama, to the point where Anja Schneider seems to have posted in Word and Sound that it might be that bit too dramatic for some DJs. I'm thinking for fans and most DJs (including Schneider I assume, she has still playlisted this in her chart which I posted here earlier this month) this record is going to be very special. It doesn't hurt that the other two tracks on the 12 are both great too, so far it seems Diynamic really have a good thing going, like a lot of current stuff this release has a sort of timeless appeal, when you play stuff like this it's like the crowd are familiar with the tunes since they are such classical examples of good house or techno. So just as with Solomun's last release you feel this record will go down a storm the first time you play it...

Check it out here

tags: minimal house, diynamic, techno, dance music, solomun

Jesse Does Jermany

2006-12-12T11:49:00.000-08:00

Or perhaps it's vice versa? Jesse Rose's debut for Get Physical "Didn't I" explores the emerging middleground (or minimalground?) between some of the more US styled minimal that's been coming out(though I wouldn't say dominating, in terms of creativity or prevalence) and the techier Euro sounds we're more used to from Get Physical. The result is a track which sounds like Tuning Spork gone hi-fi...with Henrik Schwarz a good stylistic point of reference. The 12 has two mixes by Jesse Rose, the first is a sprawling 8 minutes of not quite 4/4 early morning minimal. It's by far the most Euro thing I've heard from Jesse Rose, who flirted with this concept on his recent remix of Pan-Pot on Mobilee...however that was nowhere near as deep and well, downright Germanic as "Didn't I". There's also a "Made To Play" mix which is a little more bumping and closer to Rose's original style, though it's not too close (which for this writer is a good thing!).

Finally you get a strong remix from Audion, who keeps things quite melodic and accessible which I suppose is the name of the game when recording for Get Physical. All in all it's the best release on GPM for some time, in my opinion. That's not to say that recent releases were bad, just they felt more like the end of the 2006 outbox. This, along with the recent news that Dixon will mix "Body Language IV-The Housening", certainly seems to put down a marker for the label's direction in 2007.

tags: Minimal House, Jesse Rose, Dance Music, Get Physical

BLOGPONY

2006-12-11T11:26:00.000-08:00

Signed up to Technorati today as part of the general upgrade of the blog I've been doing lately (RSS feed now on the right, be sure and tell me if it ain't working, I'm learning this still)...saw that I had been linked by Samim having mentioned him in the post about Swiss artists.

It's a really nice blog he has there, showcasing his work and lots of cool videos too, and it's always welcome to get a link from someone making the music. Samim, if you're wondering, records for labels like Tuning Spork/Circus Company/Moon Harbour (to name a few), but you'll probably know him best as one half of the Get Physical act Fuckpony. If you still haven't heard the awesome acid drenched bible-funk of their "Switch On The Light/Pee On Me" release from this year (and it sank a little too quickly), then you're in luck cos it's getting a re-release on the mighty Cocoon recordings. It really is one of the best releases this year and definitely the most original (a must for anyone thinking they want to ditch all this minimal and hear some US sounds again)

The other half of Fuckpony is of course, Jay Haze whom I recently interviewed for the online magazine Flavorpill. That interview is forthcoming and I'll link to it here when it's published..it's a very interesting chat with some strong views from Jay, a book/movie recommendation, and an interesting scoop on Timbaland...

Tags: Minimal House, Samim, Dance Music

An older radio show

2006-12-11T03:40:00.000-08:00

Part One
Part Two

Check it out...can't find the exact tracklist for this but it's got Shonky/Cardini on Mobilee, Ruede Hagelstein remixing Axel Bartsch on Sportclub, Radioslave's mix of Agoria's "Baboul Haircuttin", Sebastian Roya's "Compression" on Connaisseur etc....check it out. Last week's show on the way and hopefully can resume normal service of shows every Friday again soon.

If you'd prefer the above show as one complete file, in a better quality 220kbps, clocking in at about 140 megabytes...click here

tags:Minimal House, Gaeilge, Radio, Irish, Dance Music

They like pop (but it's ok, a MAN is making it really)

2006-12-08T07:23:00.000-08:00

Notice The Ticket, the weekly music section of the Irish Times leads with a piece on Pop Justice and "good pop music" this week, cue if ever there was one to lock the doors and turn on some fucked up screaming music or the most deranged CD in your collection , that is if you don't think liking pop music is big and clever and new.

This came up over on ILM recently (unfortunately the archive is down so can't link to the thread), a place where words like "popism" have been part of the casual lexicon for a couple of years now, since at least 2001 anyway. I feel now, as I did then, that the Pop Justice CD is just a desperate lunge by a site whose aesthetic is on its last legs. It's often the case in culture that acceptance and death or irrelevence go hand in hand, if you don't believe me then take note that most of the tracks on the Pop Justice CD are ancient, particularly with a genre like pop, where the sands shift quickly.

Couple that with the fact that some never were successful in the first place, and you're left wondering; whose definition of pop is this? Certainly not one vindicated by the charts anyhow...

As for the article, if you can get past the front cover of the Irish Times, a broadsheet newspaper with the usual casually rockist music section, billing this piece as "THE BATTLE TO KEEP POP MUSIC ALIVE" then that's an achievement in itself. I mean seriously, if Pop Justice ever fought any battles, it was against the constant assertion implicit in music journalism that the fleeting is worthless, that the term "style over substance" actually has any substance to it itself, that the general public are force fed this awful chicken feed music rather than choosing pop over its so often drab counterparts....

The piece opens by describing Pop Justice as approaching pop music with "ironic detachment", this despite the fact that two paragraphs later, the site's founder says, and I quote "I don't do this with any ironic detachment at all". How does one contradict the interviewee so blithely and then INCLUDE this contradiction in the final piece?

And this is is the only irony I see here, that even when posthumously fiddling with the corpse of a movement which sites like Freaky Trigger had locked down years ago, literally years ago, the IT still is full of the usual prejudices. Liking pop is "trivial", and has an "inbuilt sarcastic get out clause". Well damn those oily popists hides!

But worse is to come. Why is it that every male music fan saying they like pop must qualify this with praise for another male? Is it just in case we thought they liked Nelly Furtado? Phew close one guys, they like Timbaland not the vacuous plug in doll that is Nelly Furtado. "She's a woman for fuck sake!" CF Boyd's ludicrous (and utterly misinformed) paragraph here:

The other huge difference between the decades is in the role of the producer. Whereas before the producer would simply put a pop sheen on recordings - with the emphasis always being more on the image of the act - today's producer is an all-stop shop for the aspiring pop act. Where would Rihanna be without Stargate, or Christine Aguilera without Linda Perry? But the one person almost single-handedly responsible for the ascendancy of the pop producer is Timbaland

Erm....where would Patsy Kline be without Willie Nelson? Donna Summer without Moroder? Elvis without....whoever wrote Elvis's songs! The history of producer and diva/divo is pretty long and detailed, to suggest otherwise is just utterly idiotic. And the final sucker punch of establishing Timbaland as the male auteur behind the phony make up masks, well, if I knew the tune to that I could sing it. And who's to say what contribution Madonna makes to her work? Why can we assume she doesn't work with Stuart Price or Mirwais? Why can we assume this of Rihanna? Or whoever Linda Perry produces, how can we give her all the credit, let's not forget Linda Perry's solo career was a short affair, like many many other successful pop song writers. There's an inherent sexism to suggesting any of these acts named don't deserve their success or aren't an integral part of it. Even if they couldn't sing a note (eg Bob Dylan, the Sex Pistols) Image IS a talent.

Also can't help but mention Boyd's assertion that "a band like Steps would never make it today", at the same time as Westlife probably gear up to top the Xmas charts all over again. There's a curious failure to mention them in the piece, but then, when writing about sanitised pop music a la Pop Justice, I guess the golden rule is you must be sure not to mention the rakes and rakes of shit music people buy more of than Annie/Robyn. You know, popular pop!

While I accept it's always tempting to treat things as a "phenomenon" as a journalist, this is fatal when the "movement" in question was around long before the writer had a Constantinian revelation that "LIKING POP IS OK, SOME POP IS BETTER THAN NU ROCK". That said, in this case it's more likely the assignment just fell on the desk of the writer.

I wouldn't even bother bringing this up on this, a mostly dance blog, except that it's so symptomatic of the continuing pomp and ceremony with which the IT embraces the new, months after the horse has bolted(see also the recent lip serv...supplement on "that internet". They may have an older or aging readership, but they'll continue to age with nobody replacing them until the paper can accomodate some more credible culture/lifestyle/technology writing...from some young writers at the cutting edge...when was the last time a non news piece in the Irish papers was interesting? Answers on a postcard. Even with personal opinions aside, the above piece is pretty poorly realised, with some awfully illogical conclusions

Tags: Irish Times, Popjustice, Music Journalism, Ireland

Tonight...

2006-12-07T09:26:00.000-08:00

Check out my radio show, tonight on Raidío Na Life 106.4FM at 21.00 until 22.30...on the web at www.rnl106.com

Featuring tonight...new Claude Vonstroke remixing Mikael Weill, Robag Wruhme with an amazing jacking re-work of Jean Paul-Bondy on Compost, Tuning Spork and Fuckpony star Samim brings his bumping minimal sound to Circus Company with a pretty unhinged release, Oliver Koletzki teams up with Florian Meindl for "Stunde Null", some nice driving trance, Philadelphia's Miskate comes with a weird release on Roman Photo entitled "Techno Fur Die Kinder" which I guess means "Techno For The Kids", newcomer from Nagano Mitsuki Konamura with a trippy bleepy piece of acid house played by DJ T/Laurent Garnier/Jennifer Cardini etc, new Swiss minimal from Agnes on Plak, new Excercise One on Num, Douglas Greed on Combination (played by Anja Schneider) and last of all is ISOLEE, the genius takes on Mixmag hack Gavin Herlihy's new single on Mood Music.....and wins, with the usual submerged melody and individual Isoléé magic...

All of the above and whatever I manage to fit in from what I promised on last week's cancelled (due to illness) show!

Chocolate, Cheese, and Techno (LINK BELOW FIXED)

2006-12-06T07:27:00.000-08:00

Can you guess which one of the above products, the production of which the Swiss excel at, is not allegedly bad for my health?

There's a wealth of great Swiss producers at the moment, it really makes you wonder what goes wrong for a country like Ireland, with a handful of producers but few labels and very little impact on the current wave of dance music apart from via Donnacha Costello's releases. I guess it's a problem with being an island, and of course the archaic licensing laws requiring all venues to close at 3 have made sure dance music never fully permeated the living rooms (and producer bedrooms) of the middle classes as much as in other countries.

I've been a fan of Plak Records for some time, Num is also a great label. Producers like Agnes, Ripperton (correct me if he's not Swiss but I think so!), Samim, Chaton/Hopen, Nhar are all doing great stuff and I'm sure I'm forgetting some others of note here. It must be a great little scene over there....Plak in particular is a great operation tho not so well known. I think Nhar could be a producer to watch in 2007 too, he's already been on Mobilee this year and I think he may have another Mobilee on the way (memory of a footnote on an email here, could be wrong)...here's one side of Agnes's new 12 on Plak, very dark clanking stuff...good groove tho...i fixed this link on 12/12 so check it out if you missed out last week...the old link just didn't work...

Agnes-The Break (Plak Recordings)

Put some music on to lighten the mood

2006-12-02T15:28:00.000-08:00

Here's Plasmik's new track on Connaisseur, "Eight To Nine", it's got that classic Berlin channeling Chicago feel to it...so warm, early morning house music, perfect 303 lines which are used nice and sparingly...for fans of Mobilee. Gotta hand it to Connaisseur, they've come up with 3 brilliant releases in very close succession at the end of the year. So go buy some if you like it

Radio No

2006-12-02T10:04:00.000-08:00

Distinct lack of radio shows lately, disaster struck this week as I was unable to do the show due to illness. Thursday was a really bad day as I had to play at Backlash's third birthday that night also and had to choose one thing to do as I didn't have the health to do both. Apparently I am allergic to winter (or heating or fucking something), which is great as I am heartily looking forward to a Christmas of sitting inside, feeling weak, (on the days I'm not working) struggling for breath and trying to bore my finger into my left ethmoid sinus.

So what all this means is.....a doubly good show this week, which I will strive hard to make. Also had to cancel playing at the Space Camp night at Rogue, which is intensely annoying given I practised all week for a slightly different set to usual with some weirder tunes than usual. Guess I'll keep that set for the New Year when hopefully I'll feel a little better.

Not to go all Xmas guilt here but it actually is boggling how much we take our health for granted, and what the body is capable of (or incapable of) when not functioning correctly. What a worthless shell it can be, and yet from the outside everything still looks the same. I don't know what kind of damage having to force yourself to act normal when you feel not just bad, but so bad that you can't listen to what someone is saying properly, that you begin to think you need to sit down instead, does to your psyche. Probably not a lot, though you genuinely feel WEIRD, in the truest sense of the word. Still, if anything I've also learned how resilient the mind is, through all this. But you know, the bizarre thing is anyone can get struck down with a long term illness, and yes I know of course others are dying and terminally ill and far worse off than me, but it still is so utterly......I can't even say UNLUCKY cos it's not unlucky it's just the reality of a world on which we are actually just animals aswell....things happen to us which we can't control, and that is a fact that sometimes life makes you realise with blunt conviction.

I think in a situation where things are going really badly, for whatever reason, and seem utterly fucking hopeless, you actually realise how when things are going well people believe, if not necessarily in god or faith (tho some do) that their life is on some sort of course, that there is something guiding it. What I mean is that when things are going well, bad things can seem like a blip. How many times has someone said "oh it'll be ok" as a response to something bad? And most of the time, 99.9999999 percent of the time, they're right. It is ok, because things resolves themselves, the problem goes away, you meet the person a week later and something else is the problem, you progress, and everyone is happy.

But life doesn't go this way for everyone, it simply doesn't. Things happen which refuse to be resolved, which linger, which force people into daily confrontation, which mean you meet that person a week later, or a month later, or 6 months later and you want to lie about what your little story is. Why? Because it's the exact same story, nothing has resolved itself, nothing has changed, you haven't changed. And nobody knows how to deal with the stubborness of this impasse, least of all yourself. Feeling contented is normality, resolution is normality, closure is normality, all else is deviation. It sometimes feels like the world around you tugs you towards this resolution even when it just can't happen. Like when you watch the news and they end a story about a missing person in that false sombre tone that says "we may never know what happened to.........". But why may we never know? What they're really saying is "if we never find out what happened to this person, that's ok, because we're putting this in the mystery box, and that means it's over". Every story must have an end otherwise it's no good is it?

It's almost like we've come to believe, because most of what happens to is so joyously minor, that things naturally just work themselves out. "Things naturally just work themselves out", it sounds so perfect and sensible and plausible. But it's just our way of explaining the fact that nothing happens to us for the vast majority of our lives.

When things go wrong and just won't go right, whether health or whatever else, this veneer of optimism is just destroyed. You realise that there is no plan! There is no consistency except an illusory one. Nothing is protecting you from the abyss that in theory is around the next corner. Happiness really is fleeting, contentedness, normality....just the same.

Right now I can't actually remember what it physically feels like to feel normal, to feel like going somewhere, to breath deeply without worrying about the breath, to think thoughts for any length of time not filtered through bodily malfunction (and imagine what a genuine terminal illness or one of the thousands of conditions ten times more debilitating than mine, a trifle, must be like)

I don't know which is sadder, when you first stop doing things like drinking or going out and feel disappointed, or when a year down the line you realise that you no longer even entertain the notion of doing these things, that you have almost succeeded in killing off the part of you that used to be excited by them, that wants to do them, life can change so quickly and so dramatically.

Even within something terrible happening to you, and I suspect this is even true of people going through really fucking awful soul destroying tragedies which dwarf mine (which is basically a life consuming nuisance), even within whatever awful shit happens I think we find footholds of control and cling on to them. We find ways to think we are back in control again, rather than just floating in the wind at the whim of circumstance...we find a hope to cling on to or something to make us believe it isn't all that bad...but what do we know? It's just a fucking stab in the dark. Imagine how people who suffer multiple deaths in a family must feel, it must cause a total lack of faith in "life", in everything about normality and living and being a human being. They must see then that we are none of us in control. Illness or accident or death, the phrase "these things happen" is quite apt, happen being a passive verb, they happen, we suffer, there is no perpetrator. So we hope that they never happen to us, ironically without any idea of what we're afraid of, anyway mostly they don't happen to us.

The more I think about it the more I think that everyone has this underlying faith...even the most hardened atheist, subconsciously at least. To live every day and to enjoy life is to believe in the myth that we are actually in control. It's funny...I spent most of my late teens and early 20s going out and making every effort to lose control...and now it's lost completely well, it's not the same loss is it....back then I was 19...now I feel 90.

Mobilee DJ Charts

2006-12-01T07:42:00.000-08:00

I assume others find these interesting, I know I do. I am sad like this tho....

Anja Schneider (mobilee)
1 - Samim / Do You See The Light / Circus Company
2 - Daniel Stefanik / The Bells - Anja Schneider Mix / mobilee 018
3 - Jamie Jones / The Capsule / Freak N Chic
4 - Cosmic Sandwich / Battle Twig / MBF
5 - Solomun & Gebrüder Ton / Tagesschau - Jackmate Remix / Diynamic
6 - Johnny Wagner / Innercity - Daniel Stefanik Mix / Trenton
7 - Jennifer Cardini & Shonky / August In Paris / mobilee
8 - Agnes / Personal Dub / Plak
9 - Efdemin / Dial 34
10 - Jahcoozi / Cassy Mix / Careless

Sebo K (mobilee)

1) hot chip "no fit state" (audion mix)
2) ray valioso "get the strings?"
3) miso "learn to pray" (charles webster dub)
4) larry heard "the sun can't compare"
5) pier bucci "hay consuelo" (samim mix)
6) gabriel ananda "doppel whipper" (dominik eulberg mix)
7) efdemin (dial 34)
8) ambivalent "boite diabolique" (heartthrob remix)
9) zander vt "dig your own rave"
10) square one "vesuvius" (justin martin mix)

Ralf Kollmann (mobilee)

1) Samim / Radiative / Moon Harbour
2) Cosmic Sandwich / Battle Twig / MBF
3) DJ Fame / Name It X / Dubsided
4) Dan Curtin / This Was Tomorrow / Tuningspork
5) Todd Sines / Thick Satin / Frankie 17
6) 2000 And One / Freak That, Funk That / Intacto
7) The Mole / Jing Over / Wagon Repair 20
8) Sasse / Up To You - Anja Schneider Remix / Moodmusic
9) Guido Schneider / Transmission / Pokerflat
10) Serafin / Vallemaggia Tool / Mountain People

Pan-Pot (mobilee)

Butane - Burger Boy EP - Dumb Unit
Tanzmann & Stefanik - Basic Needs - Moon Harbour
Florian Meindl - Glitchy Katie - Resopal
Bloody Mary - Appearance EP - Sender
Mark Verbos - Big Brother - CSM 011
H-Man - 51 Poland Street - Giant Weel
Belgrano - Don't talk - Neutonmusic
Jon Savoretti - 150 Razones - Esperanza
Naudio - The Fickle Heart ep - Relay
Christian Smith & jon selway - Silver Bullet - Ovum

GummiHz (mobilee)

1. AUDIO WERNER - Just wanna get down rmx (Trapez ltd)
2. GUIDO SCHNEIDER - Transmission (Pokerflat)
3. MIKE SHANNON - The hang up EP (Wagon Repair)
4. DANIEL STEFANIK/ EXERCISE ONE - Mobilee back to back remix series 04
5. ALEXI DELANO & XPANSUL - Swimming in a fish bowl (Truesoul)
6. TANZMANN & STEFANIK - Basic Needs (Moon Harbour)
7. VARIOUS ARTISTS - MV06 (Multivitamins)
8. STAFFAN LINZATTI - Monikers (STOCKHOLM LTD)
9. EXPO 2000 - Abe Duque remixes (ASAP)
10. JAMES HOLDEN - The idiots are winning (Border Community)

Miss Jools (Sleeper Thief)

1. SCAREY GRANT & DADABLEEP – CRASH/ALMOST CRASH – LOFI STEREO

2. ALEJANDRO LOPEZ – POLIGONO DE FRECUENCIAS EP – PARITER

3. LOCODICE – RAINDROPS ON MY WINDOW – CDR

4. EYEYER & CHOPSTICK – HAUNTING (SLEEPER THIEF REMIX) – CDR

5. JENNIFER CARDINI & SHONKY – AUGUST IN PARIS – MOBILEE

6. MARTIN BUTTRICH – SNAP SHOTS – POKERFLAT

7. LUCIANO – 430 U – FOR DISCO ONLY

8. 3 CHANNELS – SHI SHI EP – CROSSTOWNREBELS

9. RIPPERTON – TAINTED WORDS – CONNAISEUR

10. JAMIE JONES – PANIC – CROSSTOWNREBELS

Shonky (Paris)

Osvaldo: No More Vampires (Underline)
Friendly People: Music is improper(Apnea)
Selway:Slide into your space(CSM)
S.Linzatti:Monikers(Stockholm LTD)
Jay Haze Berlin Pimpin Number 2(Tuning spork)
Mule: Mousecode Ep(Resopal Red)
Shonky: Olympia(Freak n'Chic)
Lee van dowski,Quenum: The Torque Machine(Defrag)
Jamie Jones:Panic(Crosstown Rebels)
Jesper Dahlbäck: The Persuader(Svek)

Checklist

2006-12-01T07:32:00.000-08:00

1. Mindless nagging repetetive riff
2. Protracted hissing breakdown
3. Brilliant for fading in slowly in the mix
4. A little spazziness never hurts, this is big dumb acid.

Solomun-Hanseknaller (Diynamic)

What a brilliant track.

RADIO TONIGHT

2006-11-30T09:22:00.000-08:00

So if you want to listen live to my show tonight, here's what's in store, from 21.00 to 22.30 GMT...on Raidio Na Life.

New Connaisseur from Plasmik plus Anja Schneider remix, new Deadbeat/Monolake on Cynosure (these are ace, one nice minimal Chicago and the Monolake a huge dubby monster), a good Minilogue remix of some electronica dudes called Kritical Audio which is very Booka Shade, the new Pablo Akaros on Karmarouge Noir (normally not into Karmarouge apart from THE GLUCKSMELODIE but this is cool almost quirky chopped up electronic house). On Diynamic the new 12 from H.O.S.H. and Solomun, Marcel Dettmann's new tune on the Ostgut label, Woody's amazing Ame-esque remix of Autotune on Fumakilla, Agnes on Einmaleins, another Greek bearing gifts on Gumption, Sleeper Thief's remix of the new Phonique 12 on Tiefschwarz's Souvenir label, and last but perhaps best of all, an utterly storming, trippy, Carl Craig style remix from Daniel Stefanik on Trenton.

Whew...and a download of all this tomorrow if you miss out on the live show...but try and check it out. Two downloads hopefully this week as last week's show is still in the works!

Finally to the Dubliners amongst you, come down to Backlash tonight if you're around the city, where it's our third birthday, three years of madness in an electrohouse style....all the residents will be playing tonight even resident invalid ME.

ENGLISHNESS

2006-11-30T02:10:00.000-08:00

"Chris Duckenfield
The Monolake mix is like being in the engine room of an unterwasserboot taking a bath in warm toffee"

I'm sure Chris is a nice person but seriously, why the need for this idiotic wackiness with English people? (especially bad in dance music circles). Somebody from England tell me, is this instilled in you in school or something? I mean, yes English comedy is funny but not in this mode where it simply runs adjectives and nouns together until something ZANY comes up. Absolutely moronic...and people wonder why there are so few good English producers, possibly cos the vast majority can't stop guffawing for long enough to actually make a piece of work that's good enough that they don't have to preface it with comedy...

And the worst part is living in a country where people are influenced by this fucking maddening trait!

Here's an even worse one. Zero idea who HOWIE MANNGLE is, tho presumably he organises School Disco or something, I'm going to stick my neck out and say he has to be English tho, or Australian at the least...feast your eyes on this monstrosity...

"Could be the best thing since sliced bread or the slinky... comes close to being better than edible underwear! Playing this record is like riding an unbridled colt through a mid summer medow, feeling the morning dew on your face whilst unleashing Thunder upon those listening around you. Stunningly Beautiful, yet horrifically exciting all the same time."

And the record they were both talking about? A Monolake/Deadbeat release on Cynosure, "OO-ER I HAVE NOTHING INTERESTING TO SAY IT'S BENNY HILL TIME".

2006-11-29T12:40:00.000-08:00

Here's my list of 30 singles for Hot Press, whom I seldom write for lately but since they asked I duly obliged. I know I have forgotten tons of great tracks, it's impossible to narrow things down since I am probably playing 15-18 new tunes on the radio weekly for the last 6 months....so many great records this year, and I'm sure I've missed out on some, but you know, maybe the ones that instantly spring to mind are somehow the definitive ones....post away with your addendums below! (I might try and do a recap and YSI some of these next month, it's a long Xmas and I feel so bad that I won't be drinking much, so sharing might feel good!)

Mr Kemi and Amox-Natas (Opossum)
Michael Ho-Econoclast (Tuning Spork)
Loco Dice-Seeing Through Shadows (M_Nus)
Duoteque-Adyra (Boxer)
Pascal FEOS-Timeless (Synaptic)
Steadycam-Knock Kneed (K2)
Gummihz-The First Time (Mobilee)
Claude Vonstroke-The Whistler (Dirty Bird)
Booka Shade-In White Rooms (Get Physical)
Fuckaponydelic-Switch On The Light (Ineedasuperfreak)
Gabriel Ananda-Doppelwhipper (Platzhirsch)
Trickski-At Les (Sonar Kollektiv)
Gui Boratto-Sozinho (K2)
Hug-The Platform (K2)
Jamie Jones-It’s Scary Down Here (Freak and Chic)
Heckmann and Kaufeltt-Kookaburra (AFU Ltd)
DJ T Vs Booka Shade-Played Runner (Get Physical)
Exercise One-Debaya (Daniel Stefanik Mix)-(Mobilee)
Jochen Trappe-Blackout Barbados (Connaisseur)
Falco Brocksieper-Hardwired (Tuning Spork)
Shyza Minelli-To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (Substatic)
Lazy Fat People-Shinjuku (Wagon Repair)
Jurgens-Love It (Room Recordings)
Ripperton featuring She DJ Masaya-Long Distance (Num Ltd)
Donato Dozzy-Gol (Dimensions)
Saint I-Bot-White Night (TFE)
Kollektiv Turmstrasse-Disconnect Me (Ostwind)
Shonky-Solar (Substatic)
Martin Landsky-1000 Miles (Pokerflat)
Paul Nazca-Nice To Be Here (Bpitch Control

PS:Having a nightmare with uploading last week's radio show, File Factory has failed on me twice after hours of uploading...if anyone has any server space going begging that'd be great...but in the meantime I'll try again tomorrow, it's a decent show too with some nice tunes....so keep an eye here...

As December approaches...

2006-11-23T06:55:00.000-08:00

Still finding lots of good tunes...after successfully negotiating Beatport for the first time since buying CD-Js about 2 months ago, see my furious thread here

Really really feeling Mr Kemi and Amox's "Natas" on Opossu. I think I have a 12 of theirs on Tic Tac Toe or one of those good Scandinavian minimal labels. This is a brilliant Amazonian chirping piece of Henrik Schwarz style Detroit influenced dynamite. If it was Luciano or someone we'd probably have seen it on every msg board in the land by now. Also I presume this is what they play in countries where clubs open after 3am! Richard Brophy of DJ mag and Test Industries has been talking about this "Deepinal" thing, or deep house meets minimal, for a while I guess, in different places. I figured Tuning Spork and Mobilee were sort of doing this anyway, and it's always been going, but there is a definitely a certain type of new lushness to a lot of the really good records, particularly in the last month or so, where Nass and Efdemin and now Mr Kemi and Amox have come with some really dubbed up housey goodness. Anyway "Natas" is quality. Check it out, if you like it the 12 has two other nice tunes on it too, so try and buy it!

Also really like Sebastian Roya's new single on Connaisseur, they're back to the deeper style after Jochen Trappe's banger. There's a Rekleiner mix on the flip but surely I can't be the only one who is getting pretty sick of all these Audiofly/Rekleiner releases. They're all production skills, no creativity. It's the same syndrome as Bodzin lately, 100 varieties of "The Sky Was Pink" with jaw dropping cinematic final mastering. Use your powers for good guys and go and clean up some releases for younger more inexperienced producers with some new ideas!

To continue the whole US styled minimal thing, and thus further exaggerate its prevalence, I'm going to also give you guys Jamie Jones' "It's Scary Down Here". This is a nice piece of jacking house as Freak and Chic do nicely IMO, great breakdown, again, the other 2 tracks on this 12 are great too, so if you are into this go and buy it also...

It's Scary Down Here

Oh yes and before I forget, here's me, published today, doing one of my day jobs! You can't spell technology without "techno". Reckon I can only use that joke once...

Sinking Links

2006-11-22T14:08:00.000-08:00

Anyone know why the links on the right are sinking? Please help this small blog to survive the winter.

More Radio...

2006-11-19T04:38:00.000-08:00

Here we go

It's pretty good this week! Yes some weeks I think "that was shit".

I had some technical problems last week and didn't get an mp3, so I had 2 weeks worth of new stuff to play this time around, check out the great new Liebe Detail, both sides are really good, and very different from each other. The Efdemin is more of this Nass style Basic Channel dipping into deep house that's been cropping up again and again lately, while the flip is like Microfunk or something, very agitated and banging...

NOTE: After clicking the first link, scroll down to where it says "download for free with file factory basic" and click that.

Here is a tracklist

John Tejada-What Ever Happened to Manners (Palette)
Efdemin-Lohn and Brot (Liebe Detail)
Heinrichs and Hirtenfeller-Legends
Depeche Mode-Sinner In Me (Villalobos Mix) (Mute)
Jay Haze-Mofo
Woody-Hot Rod (Fumakilla)
Angelo Battilani-empty (Liebe Detail)
Cosmic Sandwich-Scatter Realm (My Best Friend)
Insect-Insect 03 (Insect)
Thomas P heckmann-tangents (bpitch)
Jochen Trappe-Crosstalk (Connaisseur)
Audiofly-Cold Light of Day (Get Physical)
Gui Boratto-Gate 7 (K2)
Jay Haze-Until You Fat (Tuning Spork)
Spencer Parker-Beautiful Noise (Ripperton's Return to Valparaiso Mix)-(Rekid)

Religious Driving Music

2006-11-15T06:25:00.000-08:00

I love to drive and listen to dance music, it's one of my favourite places to listen to music. Possibly cos with so much DJing, at home or on the radio, and of course the endless scanning of online stores and mp3s, you don't always get to sit back and listen to tunes. So the car is a good place to take stock, plus I always find driving is beautifully brain consuming, it uses up just enough concentration that you can think about nothing but the road in front of you and the music you have on, provided it suits that trance like state.

Last week I listened to Trickski's reworking of 69's "At Les", on the way home after doing the radio show. Great piece of music, with endless chiming chords that sound like techno church bells....

Trickski-At Les

Learning from lazy Russians

2006-11-14T02:48:00.000-08:00

Reading this at the moment.

Nervous Laughter Interruption

2006-11-12T08:19:00.000-08:00

I should also add, although I've been the one posting here the last while, this is still a group blog, if you think Andy/Jess/Vahid/Tim/Phil/Ethan/Mackro (is that everybody, more like a blog council!) should do a post, say their names 5 times in comments!

The desire for disconnection

2006-11-11T16:28:00.000-08:00

Sometimes people listen to music because it makes them feel part of something. Maybe even most of the time. Generally in life we connect, automatically, obliviously, with people around us. We find ways, interests, hobbies, art, music. Sharing CDs, going to gigs, blogging, DJing, all these ways of getting along with others, even if the joy of music as a shared experience sometimes feels like a Coca Cola adopted marketing scheme that somehow nobody realised was killing modern notions like "passion", "meaning", "sincerity" etc.

Shared musical experiences always left me cold, at least until I began going to see DJs every week in 2001 or so. Something about the authority of collectivism that always makes me doubt whether I have a choice in how to feel, whether it's sitting around the Christmas dinner table or just liking a CD that someone else likes. Sometimes I wonder if I trust people who feel differently. Not these days anyway.

Because other times, people listen to music to make them understand being alone. Again, the concept seems so clichéd, the popular way and rule of how we consume music and "how it makes us feel" seems so learned sometimes, it subsumes everything. You give it an inch and it takes a mile. So I'm not talking about listening to sad music because you feel sad. Films, ads, blogs, they murdered any meaning in this a long time ago, at least for me. Truly disconnected music is music which is hardcore, which doesn't compromise, which sounds utterly of its time, which does not care if you like it or not. Ok, so that sounds like bigtalk, alpha male techno cliché....it's not meant to.

When I think of uncompromising music, I think of truly avant garde sounds, repetition, wig outs, heavy dubs, noise, minimalism. Music which is heavy, which weighs on the senses, which can never be subsumed into neat boxes of human experience like the proverbial "and music made us have the best times of our lives dude!" of the Coke ad (which is way too prevalent in the music press, more's the pity).

Here's an example, you know when you put on a CD in a public place, perhaps when you're stupid enough to do so at 14 or something, and people or friends say "that's depressing", and this had never occurred to you? You never thought whatever CD it was was depressing, you probably thought it was happy. Maybe you were right. Is alternative music actually depressing or are people just depressed by music which doesn't allow them to empty it from their head instantly? Or which doesn't allow them to formulate whatever usual emotion they formulate when listening to music? Eg "happy", "sad", "dance", "rap". Sometimes I think people are like robots, you change the inputs and "DOES NOT COMPUTE" appears on their display screen. You deviate from the normal answers and "ERROR" appears.

Lately, in what is probably a death wish for someone who wants to write about music, at least in the commercial gravy train of reviews etc, I find myself seeking to hack off any connection my taste has with that of others, with consensus, with written reviews, with generally accepted opinions, existing genres. I don't know if I'm succeeding, someone may read this post and laugh. I am trying though.

What music is there when you don't want to connect with people, either by feeling sad or by feeling happy? When how you feel is more complex? When sometimes you feel dead, disconnected by circumstance, robotic. There is so much of it out there, and I suppose it's ignored to some extent. I listen to music now to make feeling alone have a soundtrack, I actively seek out records that seem to need seeking such are their poor social skills. Needless to say, all this minimal house has come at a good time. Of course, others probably rejoice in the same sounds, but such is the melancholy/euphoria split in dance music.

It's funny when, sometimes, people I know wonder what music I like, or if I like any at all, because in the last 18 months I've constantly been trying to sever all links with the taste of others, and even my own past taste. Self effacement I suppose. And yet I know there are plenty of people I share taste with, I guess the real beauty of music is the freedom to different interpretations, there are probably people out getting smashed to the tunes that I play on the radio, which to me just feel weird and disconnected, but mostly devoid of feeling, saying nothing but "here is sound".

Gathering the leaves...

2006-11-08T12:59:00.000-08:00

Loving Jochen Trappe's new single on Connaisseur. Of course a lot of you will be well on top of Connaisseur by now, they've been emerging as one of the coolest Berlin house labels for some time now. Trappe's EP comes out of leftfield tho, gone is the deepness of earlier releases, this is red hot techno. It's difficult to pick one clear winner on a very strong release, both "Bypass" and "Crosstalk" are instantly arresting, edit heavy lo-fi techno in the style of DJ Koze, a real change of pace for Connaisseur.

Also worth checking out is Sender's third great release in a row after what seemed like months of forgettable 12s, that's Jens Bond and Benno Blome's "Tentacular". Jens Bond had his debut on Highgrade records recently which found its way onto the radio show, loved "Rocket Queen" in particular.

A little disappointed by the new Heckmann/Zenker on AFU, the follow up to Heckmann and Kaufelt's "Kookaburra". Really loving the new Mobilee Back to Back 12s, even the Jesse Rose mix, I may have to break my irrational prejudice towards Jesse, not least since I hear on the blogvine that he is mixing the new Body Language CD on GPM.

Andre Kraml has done a great remix of "Sideways" by Miss Yeti, great skulking house music. And I'm really feeling "Edie 11" off the new Weatherall 12, dubby house with cut up acoustic guitar, has a different feel to it.

Also really feeling Nass's productions lately, his housey 12 on Firm is great, with a nice Basic Channel vibe to it. And his "Teil" release on Nummer is also brilliant (another stoic techno label which has been releasing great and surprisingly crossover smashes that would probably be a lot bigger if they weren't in such serious looking sleeves) Both of these are in recent radio shows linked below.

Since you read all that and hopefully feverishly took notes, here's the Weatherall and another little treat: Ripperton's majestic reworking of Bjork's Pagan Poetry, in all its unmixed glory. This is forthcoming on vinyl so if you really like it go out and buy it.

Oh yeah and a final word to say adios to Carbon Records, I worked in Carbon Dublin for 2 and a half years and learned a lot while I was there, sold a lot of records, sometimes I knew exactly how to help people get great stuff they liked, other times, say with funk and soul for the first year or so, I just bluffed and gave people records based on which other regulars had bought them. But hey it always worked!

I guess nowadays the "hub" of the record store is a thing of the past, people take control themselves and buy records online, and post on blogs and forums to meet like minded heads. So despite the sadness of these local stores closing, I'd argue that the acceleration of consumption in the dance scene in the last few years, while ruthless, breeds a more informed punter. There's a lot more power at the fingertips of the amateur DJ and fan, and the hegemony of big DJs being the ones in the loop has been kind of smashed.

If you're in tomorrow (Thursday evening), between 21.00 and 22.30 GMT, check out the radio show, if you're not in watch this space and I'll post an mp3 of the show up on Friday morning. Most of the above mentioned new tunes will be played, looking forward to it...

New Mobilee/Connaisseur/Tuning Spork/Rekid/Firm/Tiefschwarz/Solieb

2006-11-03T04:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.filefactory.com/file/af20f1/

NOTE: scroll down to where it says "Download for free with file factory basic. Should have webspace soon so no more nasty file factory links : )

Here's the tracklist...quite heavy on the Mobilee but then the second two remix 12s are pretty much faultless, with my favourite being Daniel Stefanik's awesome remix of Excercise One. Also love the Donato Dozzy....hope you enjoy this.

Daniel Stefanik-The Bells (Anja Schneider's Back from the Valley mix)-(Mobilee)
Nass-Einz-(Firm)
Glitches-Audio Carl (Defrag Sound Processing
Donato Dozzy-Gol (Dozzy Recordings)
Walter Ercolino-Trapped in a Rabbit Hole-Marek Hemann Remix (Meerestief)
Sami Koivikko-Pientare (Spectral Sound)
Adam Proll-Hummel (Cocoon)
Excercise One-Debaya (Daniel Stefanik Remix)-(Mobilee)
Jason Emsley-Sober (Platzhirsch)
Solieb-Integrale (Maschine)
Jay Haze-Boring Acid (Tuning Spork)
Pan-Pot-Black Dog (Jesse Rose Remix)-(Mobilee)
Luke Solomon-Ghouls (Claude Vonstroke Remix)-(Rekid)
Ichundu-Hey (Souvenir)
Sebo K and Prosumer-Horizons (Excercise One Mix)-(Mobilee)

Fun DJ tunes....

2006-10-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

Had good fun playing at Backlash last week, the club I play at over here in Dublin. It was a bit slow getting started but by 1.00 or so was pretty full, and a great atmosphere as usual. Started my set with And Again's "Thirty One Times", and then I took it from there. Finally played Pascal Feos's awesome "Timeless" to a full club, and the reaction was amazing. The fake buildup is great, the entire club cheers as the track hisses as if the bass is about to come back, and then there's 2 minutes more of waiting.

Also getting a great buzz was "Ephemera" from Paul Nazca's new 12 on Bpitch Control" It's a bit like Mayer/Voigt's "Transparenza" from earlier this year, big stomping trance with those really wet sounding drums, benefits alot from being pitched up though, I think I played it this way. Also finally got to play Puzique's "Chemie" on Boys Noize's label, which is a really great piece of techno in the style of Hardfloor, totally goes off at the end. Good fun though and maybe the best fun DJing at Backlash I've had since we moved to Rogue.

Last night's radio show...

2006-10-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

Download it here

Tracklist

luciano and eat-bla bla bla
ruede hagelstein-linguglietta wetterleuchen
dj koze-snauzi peitsch (kompakt)
the joint echo-ep-jeremy caulfield's remix (num)
someone else-water in mexicao (marek hemann)
bloody mary-emma part one (sender)
booka shade-darko (bookas air tube mix) (get physical)
sascha funke/chloe-point final (bpitch control)
chaton-precis (plak)
shonky-solar (substatic)
naas-teil (nummer)
audion-mouth to mouth (spectral)
microfunk-pecan (remote area)
alexis tyrell-rebecca loos (gui boratto mix) (weave music)

2006-10-16T10:08:00.000-07:00

Due to alot of chronic but not life threatening medical problems, I've had about 3 beers in the last 5 or 6 months, and I can't remember the last time I got drunk. As for drugs, I haven't done any in even longer, and probably never will again. The great irony of this is that I actually feel everything that the stereotypical anti-drugs pamphlet tells you drugs will do to you ten times more intensely now that I don't take any. Paranoia, depression, anti-social behaviour, none of these were problems when I was taking ecstasy every week. Makes me laugh really. (that's laugh internally, without any external registration of this laugh, eg smile, that would break the trance of self denial I have imposed)

Does this say something about me, or something about society? I don't know, perhaps a little of both. Or perhaps it just says that yes, using drugs expands or shrinks (depending on your opinions of them) your mind permanently, far beyond the days when you use them. Who knows? Perhaps the truly negative effects come in long after the dust has settled.

I do know that people really ask you about going out drinking and doing drugs quite often, you don't notice this when it's the basis for small talk, however when it becomes the basis for "no.......no" and conversation death then you do notice it. Whatever loop I was in, and I don't believe it was one of psychotic drug abuse, I am now out of it. Perhaps other people have a different loop, I don't know anyone who does though.

Saturday nights are interesting, I know they used to be exciting but now, the air of excitement around the city as I go home from work has a sort of surreal edge to it for me. I sometimes think I am not actually a human being because I don't feel it. This is not to say I am massively depressed, it actually just feels as I said it does, unreal. Like being on drugs constantly. I laugh at things that aren't funny, I watch myself serving a customer at work and think it's amusing that people are all out shopping, buying stuff, making small talk, going out on Saturday nights, LIVING.

LIVING is kind of absurd, it's something you never think about it until you are forced to by illness or perhaps by a tragic event. Now I think about every action, and analyse it. At first this was just because I was reminded that my body is not working correctly everytime I did something. But now I think about everything in a detached way, because many normal things have become sort of alien to me. Are some things we do and take for granted when living actually absurd? Is daily life just a sort of system we are all plugged into? I realise these aren't revolutionary thoughts, but being consumed with them is a rare feeling.

The urge to do something ridiculous and see if, perhaps, I might disrupt all this LIVING and cause something to happen is sometimes there for me.

Anyway I know well how these things shouldn't be discussed in public ; )

Here are the records I've been listening to that remind me of the above feeling.

Shonky-Fear The Cocos (Resopal Red)

Reynold-Over There (Donato Dozzy Mix) (Persona Recordings)

Have another mix....

2006-10-13T15:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.filefactory.com/file/dc5756/

thomas melchior-different places (perlon)
ed davenport-swantalk (liebe detail)
terry lee brown-our rhythm (matthias tanzmann mix)
my my-moneybowl
jens bond-rocket queen-(high grade)
excercise one-12 years (lan music)
saint ibot-tschakk (tfe)
booka shade-darko (booka's funk da funk mix)-get physical
and again-thirty one times (sender)
heckmann and kaufelt-kookaburra (knarz remix)-acid fuckers unite
alland byallo-buckets-(liebe detail)
stephan bodzin-papillon (herzblut)
reynold-over there (donato dozzy mix)
lazy fat people-shinjuku-wagon repair
isolée-hermelin-playhouse
bjork-pagan poetry (ripperton remix)-white

hope this is enjoyable, if it's not self congratulatory to pick a favourite part, I love the segue from "thirty one times" into "kookaburra (knarz mix)".

Minimal House and Irish

2006-10-10T12:11:00.000-07:00

Together at last, nó le chéile ar dheireadh??!?! I've been doing a weekly radio show in Irish here on Thursdays from 21.00 to 22.30 GMT, for a while now. Listen if you have a chance!

If you can't catch it, or did catch it and want to download it, here's last weeks show with a full tracklist. I'll post the shows up every week here.

loco dice-el gayo negro (ovum)
heidi vs riton-vejer (get physical)
samim and argenix-no no no (tuning spork family affair)
dan berkson and james what-systems
gummihz-isolate (sebo k mix)-mobilee
excercise one and donato dozzy-people of paprika-lan muzic
lazy fat people-shinjuku-(wagon repair)
shonky-zed's dead (resopal)
san lebowski-the reducer 02-nummer
marc romboy-model 1601 (fairmont remix)-systematic
the knife-like a pen (thomas schumacher mix)-brille
solieb-isotropy (lazy fat people mix)-maschine
pascal feos-timeless (synaptic)
juergens-love it (room recordings)

Enjoy!

Mobilee DJ Charts October 2006

2006-10-10T12:08:00.000-07:00

For those who are interested....

Anja Schneider (mobilee) DJ-Charts Oktober 2006

1.) GummiHz / Isolate Sebo K Remix / mobilee remix series vol. 1
2.) Audion / Mouth To Mouth / Spectral
3.) Selway / Solas / CSM
4.) Daniel Bell / Science Ficton - Lazy Fat People Remix
5.) Pascal FEOS / Out Of My Head / Level Non Zero
6.) Cobblestone Jazz / India In Me / Wagon Repair
7.) Renato Figoli / Milioni Di MIlioni / Trapez
8.) Plasmik / Eight To Nine - Anja Schneider Tabledance Mix / Conaisseur
9.) Solieb / Isotropy- Lazy Fat People Remix / Maschine
10.) Tanzmann & Stefanik / Basic Needs / Moonharbour

Sebo K (mobilee) DJ-Charts Oktober 2006

1) audion "mouth to mouth"
2) ferrer & sydenham "timbuktu" (âme remix)
3) latex "the porcupine"
4) gummihz "isolate" (sebo k remix)
5) efdemin "lohnbrot"
6) deetron "mr smooth"
7) alix alvarez "boom bip"
8) young seth (esperanza 04)
9) tadeo "motor"
10) robert owens vs. rob mello "the energy"

GummiHz (mobilee) DJ-Charts Oktober 2006

1.) PIKAYA/ANDOMAT 3000/JAN - Grüne Raufaser (Cadenza)

2.) ECLAT - Revolution (Morris Audio)

3.) STL - The Early Tracks (Perlon)

4.) GHENACIA/DAN & DAVID K - U&I (Freak n' chic)

5.) NICK HOLDEN - Erotic Illusions (Pokerflat)

6.) DAN CURTIN - Synaptic E.P. (Klang electronic)

7.) SLEEPER THIEF - Full Of You (Mobilee)

8.) GABRIEL ANANDA - Miracel Whop

9.) RECLOOSE - Dust (Induceve Remix) (Peacefrog)

10.) SWAT SQUAD - Escoria Rmx (Trapez limited)

Pan-Pot (mobilee) DJ-Charts Oktober 2006

1.) Bruno Pronsato - We Were / Philpot
2.) Microfunk - Remote Area / Remote
3.) Afternoon Coffee Boys - Busted Speaker Brew / Clink
4.) Donnacha Costello / Minimise 24
5.) SLG - 9 hours / Trapez
6.) Anja Schneider & Sebo K - Rancho Relaxo - Pan-Pot RMX / mobilee
7.) Cruz - Cougas Ep / Floppy Funk
8.) Matt Star - Art of M / Weave
9.) Swat Squad Rmx / Trapez ltd
10.) Agaric und Eidolon - Don't wake up / We Are Rec

Rediscovering Lost Highs...

2006-10-10T11:59:00.000-07:00

Ozgur Can and his Scandinavian buddies have made a good name for themselves in electro house circles, with some crossover hits, the best of which was Klikboxning's demented release on Plejour Audio, heavily chopped up techno, like Justice but actually good to dance to.

His new track, "On A White Day", on the other hand is straight back to the chart trance hits of the 90s, albeit without a vocal. Some nice post-Border Community cut up effects may have come to the party, but they don't spoil a prog tune which is the first record I've liked in a long time which really deserves the adjective "pumping". Normally when I hear music described as "pumping", I'm at work, and it usually prompts me to reach for bad 12s. There's a great melancholy to this though, I guess great prog-house will always make you think of those bombastic videos with lonely figures walking on beaches in raging wind. Did I imagine this or are there a few hundred of these in video history, for all music?

This is no different, a huge sweeping bassline keeps things melancholy, you've got to love the way there are sort of artless or at least faceless versions of the Kompakt/Border Community trendy trance sounds coming out ALL THE TIME now. They just sound like trance/prog! Still great tho, plus you don't have to read the "omg! mayer is so trance" reviews when it's someone like Ozgur Can. We KNOW Mayer is trance by now, we don't need to get excited by that, and something is lost in the knowing. "On A White Day" is definitely THE track to listen to on the beach this winter, preferably with a helicopter circling overhead.

On a similar but more arty tip is Kollektiv Turmstrasse's awesome "Musick Gewinnt Freunde" EP. Been keeping an eye on these guys since their brilliant "Disconnect Me" EP on Ostwind, they're a little like Booka Shade in that they have that big cinematic sound, but a bit more pure sounding, with lots of strings here. Check out "Freiflug" below.

Ozgur Can-On A White Day

Kollektiv Turmstrasse-Freiflug

I never saw this on Amp

2006-05-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

And that was April

2006-05-06T07:26:00.000-07:00

01 Louderbach - Reflected (Underline)
02 DJ Koze - My Grandmotha [Farben Remix] (Kompakt)
03 The Black Dog - Mental Ward Sleep Machine (Soma)
04 Tensnake - Around the House [Audision Remix] (Mirau)
05 NSI - Clara Ghavami Extended (Cadenza)
06 Douglas Greed - Hypnotize (Combination)
07 Giorgio Gigli - Circle (Elettronica Romana)
08 SCSI-9 - Woodman (Neuton)
09 Lazy Fat People - Big City (Border Community)
10 James T Cotton - T-Y-O-C Painkillers [2 AM FM Remix] (Spectral Sound)

Updates

2006-04-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

On and off, for the past several years, I've been dumping copies of tracks I like into folders assigned to each month. The objective is to take my favorite ten tracks from a given month (though it's impossible to be rigidly strict about release dates) and arrange them in a way that makes them listenable on my player. I tend to fall behind, but recently I was able to wrap up December '05-March '06. This is how I trick myself into thinking I'm on top of things. (Yes, these playlists are different from the informal charts that have been literally thrown up.)

March '06
01 Robert Babicz - My Blue Car (Barbarella)
02 Seidemann - Inbus (Echocord)
03 Dominik Eulberg & Gabriel Ananda - Schierker Kreisel (Traum)
04 Onur Özer - Twilight (Vakant)
05 Booka Shade - Mandarine Girl [Konrad Black & Troy Pierce Remix] (Get Physical)
06 Jackmate - Targa! (Milnor Modern)
07 Galoppierende Zuversicht - Erdschuber (Bruchstuecke)
08 Steadycam - Rotums Kanoner (K2)
09 Minilogue - The Girl from Botany Bay (WIR)
10 Ada - Sternhagel (Combination)

February '06
01 Dell + Flügel - Superstructure (Laboratory Instinct)
02 Phillippe Cam - Somewhere Between Here and There [Akufen Remix] (Musique Risquée)
03 Antonelli - Surrender (Kalk Pets)
04 Fairmont - Hotel Deauville (Playmade)
05 Sebo K - Horizons (Mobilee)
06 Sleeparchive - Transposition Reverse (Sleeparchive)
07 Richard H Kirk - Casa NC Dada (Dust Science)
08 Marek Hemmann - Ropy (Milnor Modern)
09 Lee Van Dowski & Tsack - Unicare (Defrag)
10 Chelonis R Jones - Deer in the Headlights [DJ Hell Remix] (Get Physical)

January '06
01 Mikkel Metal - Memories (Kompakt)
02 Claro Intelecto - New Dawn (Modern Love)
03 Pelle Buys - Tribute to Solitude (Italic)
04 Berg Nixon - New York Minute (Minus)
05 Nerk & Dirk Leyers - Monster One (My Best Friend)
06 Matthias Tanzmann - Bulldozer [Robag Wruhme Remix] (Moon Harbour)
07 Richard Davis - Common Sense [Gui.tar Remix] (Kitty-Cuts)
08 Water Lilly - Dissidance [Tomas Andersson Remix] (Lasergun)
09 Nico Purman - Resurgir (Onitor)
10 Electric Rescue - Rough Auss [Bastien Grine Remix] (Scandium)

December '05
01 Prins Thomas - Goettsching (Full Pupp)
02 Jonas Bering - Luna [Ari Bau Remix] (LessIzMo:r)
03 Syclops - The Fly (Tirk)
04 My My - Serpentine (Playhouse)
05 Kontrast - Lush Life (Kompakt)
06 Arp Aubert - Actress [Lawrence Remix] (Mirau)
07 Fairmont - Let's Stay Young Forever (Echocord)
08 Oliver Hacke - Fair Rance's Mid Atlantic Solutions (A Touch of Class)
09 Cassy - Night to Remember (Perlon)
10 Daso - Daybreak (My Best Friend)

April Chart

2006-04-02T08:50:00.000-07:00

Ada - Sternhagel (Combination)
Antonelli - Surrender (Kalk Pets)
Booka Shade - Mandarine Girl [Konrad Troy Hearthrob Remix] (Get Physical)
Duoteque - Amarcord (Boxer)
Minilogue - The Girl from Botany Bay (Wir)
Roger 23 - Ain't No Dirty Games (Playhouse)
SCSI-9 - Transsibirski Express (Neuton)
Sleeparchive - Bleep 03 (Sleeparchive)
2 AM/FM - Acid Planes (Spectral Sound)

...and the mystery bonus track at the end of the first disc of Idol Tryouts Two (Ghostly). If I were to say who's responsible for it, there would be a chance (however slim) that I'd wake up tomorrow with the head of Terry Farley in my bed. So I'll play it safe.

If there's a #1, it's the Lawrence-on-Perlon Antonelli track.

(Late) Mid-February Chart

2006-02-21T13:53:00.000-08:00

Philippe Cam - Somewhere Between Here and There [Akufen Remix] (Musique Risquée)
Ryan Crosson - Airborne (Telegraph)
Fairmont - Hotel Deauville (Playmade)
Oliver Hacke - Fair Rance's Mid Atlantic Solutions (A Touch of Class)
Isolée - Cite Grande Terre [Luciano's Luck of Lucien Edit] (Playhouse)
Mathias Kaden - Pentaton (Vakant)
Pantytec - Mariomelo (Perlon)
Nico Purman - Resurgir (Onitor)
Rhythm & Sound - Let We Go [Villalobos Remix] (Burial Mix)
Zwei Karakter - My Refresh (Playtracks)

Daft Comparisons and the impulse to make them

2006-02-14T11:15:00.000-08:00

On peoples dismissal of the Arctic Monkeys Simon says: "Whether it’s kingmaker/cud/wonderstuff, or ruts/members ,to me it's no different to someone saying 'Dizzee Rascal, Kano, that's just Derek B and Rebel MC all over again--more black blokes, boasting over beats, heard it all before.'"

One can't help but wonder: isn't this Simon's exact approach to almost everything house and techno has produced for oh, how many years now? Certainly as long as I've been reading and probably longer. Oddly, in the previous post he says "where are the vanguardist bastions on behalf of which one would launch one's volleys of indignation and disgust? dance music..has for the last half-decade or so been recycling its own history as assiduously as rock has"

If you accept that the final statement is true, then you're left with the question, why in that case dismiss one and embrace the latter? That is, if these Arctic Monkeys pieces really are more than 1000 word posts turning gut personal preferences into a grand genre dismissing theories.

When Simon compared the survival of indie-rock to that of metal, again you wonder, where does dance differ in this fairly straight up analysis of alternative genres that have survived the test of time? Either it's young and it's still going or it's old and it's still going! It's certainly as popular as metal if not moreso. How is electronic music somehow not, like metal and indie, "a fixture on the music culture menu now".

Another thing which strikes me is the extent to which Simon fails to see the relationship between indie and dance in the UK as it currently stands; it's surely more harmonious and close than ever before. If the Arctics, whatever I think of them, have a lyric about "banging tunes on the dancefloor" then if anything that's a sign that they are of the new generation of rock fans for whom dance music is anything but alien. We live in the age of Erol Alkan and Optimo (to name 2). There is more crossover between dance and rock than ever before, and the only way in which that's damning to dance music is if you believe it's tainted by association.

Now this may validate Simon's point about dance being "just another leisure pursuit" but not when you consider dance's alleged superior in this respect is indie! It may have been an acceptable point in praise of grime, but it's ridiculous when eulogising about NME rock music. At the very least (the very least) it's impossible to see one of the genres as a clear victor in such a comparison.

Also you would think, to read Blissblog, that there is some exact symmetry between "the generation who liked rave as it HURTLED FORWARD in the early 90s" and "the generation who now like the Arctic Monkeys". As if nobody now listens to dance music and that cultural space has been neatly filled by the Arctic Monkeys/Libertines generation. What a neat little switch!

I'm left with the impression which should probably have been blindingly obvious to begin with, that Simon is not a particularly big fan of certain genres and thus the revision of them does little for him. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, but why are some genres dismissed for being revisionist while simultaneously Blissblog complains about how narrow minded people can be when they dismiss music for being revisionist? Why are some genres dismissed for recycling themselves while Simon rightly points out that innovation is often undetected by those external to a particular scene?

Surely anyone can see that house and techno are far far more prone to the latter failure of the imagination than rock music. Also isn't this a major factor to consider when Simon asks why it is that indie allegedly outlived dance and es? Though I think "outsold" or "outmarketed" might be a better word, and I don't mean either in a negative sense.

My own personal opinion is that I think the Arctic Monkeys are aesthetically pretty off-putting, though I guess I'm in the camp of people who just can't support something that's such white bread rock and roll, or more accurately, I can't support something which seems to revive rock as music of the arrogant English bloke. Maybe there are similar attitudes in bands like the Specials, but I just don't see the social conscience in the Arctic Monkeys, not least because it's difficult to believe in socially conscious rock music selling thousands to a generation who aren't socially conscious.

I also feel, reading the sometimes nasty ILM threads, that Simon is the victim of just how readable and well written his posts are, and that this has contributed to a scenario where he holds forth on almost anything in the popular music sphere.

I don't think I'm wrong to point out that Blissblog sometimes can go out on too many limbs, because it does attempt to be more than simply the blog of one writer. Again there's nothing wrong with that and alot of us would love to be able to keep that up so determinedly. But is there a sort of eclecticism brought on in part by being a notable writer, or does someone in that scenario just feel shoehorned into having an opinion on everything, all at the same time? Maybe it's addictive knowing that whatever you're writing about, people give your contextualising and theorising on foreign pastures you once trod more credence.

Or is it just (and this is only intended as a minor jab) that if you removed the dismissals of other genres from Simon's Arctic Monkeys posts, (let's call these "his past"), that minus the controversy of the apparent about turn, they would read more like something in one of the broadsheets? Record collection rock criticism?

Dub(lin) Disco

2006-02-07T11:33:00.000-08:00

Here's a little mix I did, fairly rough around the edges and the sound quality isn't the best but it's a nice taster for my real mix which I'll post up here in a few days, even if it's about ten times more downtempo and more on a balearic dubby type tip.

Tip!

1. Prins Thomas-Goettsching
2. Stratus-Looking Glass (Reverso 68 Mix)
3. Jungle Wonz-The Jungle
4. Chicken Lips-Sweet Cow (Lindstrom Mix)
5. Greenman-Discotheque
6. Black Dice-Smiling Off (Luomo Mix)
7. Kohib-Truger
8 Sebastian Tellier-La Ritournelle (Jake Bullit Mix)

Above is what I look like while mixing, wearing a mask of neon.

A spin-off

2006-01-19T09:30:00.000-08:00

Back and Forth

dance music?

2006-01-18T15:19:00.000-08:00

The Necks' Hanging Gardens (one of the few of theirs I hadn't heard until today)...um, why did no one tell me this sounds like the breakdown on a '97 Metalheadz record stretched out for an hour? Deep bass and scrunched up hi-hats circling like spider's legs...a certain type of person (namely me) keeps wating for that BOOM-CLACK two-step to drop. Some of those watery moog chords and pensive Rhodes notes could be easily ripped off a 2004 Paradox record if they hadn't been layed down by three people in a room in Australia in 1999. An enterprising drumfunk DJ needs to get on this now and thank me later.

Mid-January Chart

2006-01-16T05:09:00.000-08:00

01. Water Lilly - "Dissidance [Tomas Andersson Remix]" (Lasergun)
02. Fairmont - "Let's Stay Young Forever" (Echocord)
03. Electric Rescue - "Rough Auss [Bastien Grine Remix]" (Scandium)
04. Jonas Bering - "Luna [Ari Bau Strawberry Fields Reprise]" (Less Iz More)
05. Chateau Flight - "Superflight [Maurice Fulton Remix]" (Versatile)
06. Arp Aubert - "Actress [Lawrence Remix]" (Mirau)
07. Bastien Grine - "Where R U?" (K2)
08. Omar-S - "In Side My Head" (Fxhe)
09. Matthias Tanzmann - "Bulldozer [Robag's Herbstmoosmutzel Mix]" (Moon Harbour)
10. Gaiser - "Pandrip" (Minus)

Everybody is a Tsar

2006-01-15T09:47:00.000-08:00

Now that we've cycled through half a dozen fads since Hypercity, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit the early 00s Force Tracks catalog. Everyone's got new crushes (James Holden I luv u boo). But I feel like FT, for a moment held up as being important as Kompakt by certain people, shouldn't go down in history as "Luomo's label." I'm gonna dedicate this one to my man Achim; keep yr head up homie, and everything will right itself eventually.

MRI - Rhythmogenesis: holds up surprisingly well, though after about the fortieth minute of itch and tickle and swirl I admit I had to switch on 92Q for a few songs just to remind myself what harmony was.

Crane AK - Pink Eyed Pony: as glassy and impenetrable as I remembered it, the equivalent of an Etch-a-Sketch being shaken back and forth at 130bpm, fine as DJ tools but sounding positively cavernous and blank now that everyone's all about the bongos and boogie basslines.

MRI - All That Glitters: much more varied than Rhythmogenesis, some of it sounding surprisingly wack now, though the best bits ("Deep Down South," "Tied to the 80s") are the spangliest, wooshiest moments in the catalog, house pieced together from each refraction of a mirror ball.

Data 80 - Data 80: is this forgotten enough already to call it a lost (minor....we're talkin topaz here, not a diamond) gem?--relistening to this made me fantasize about a parallel Nuggets-y universe where everyone flipped out over Discovery instead of the Yardbirds.

Dub Taylor - Detect: surprised by how vocal this was, rather deep house-esque (cue ILM conspiracy theory about this being why it didn't get much love from the blogs) but, if I hold myself to a certain standard of honesty, naught special really.

Benajmin Wild - With Compliments: ditto this, finely functional tech-house perfect for caulking the bathtub but not a mindblowing revelation...someone's gonna pop up in the comments box making a case for this and the Dub Taylor as the real FT gems in the now established, if hotly contested, HIAF style. (Vahid, call your office.)

But--and the reason for this post in the first place--the record I ended up enjoying the most is the one that has been erased in the great electro-house pogroms: SCSI-9 - Digital Russian. What a great record! Wholly unassuming dancefloor-pitched tech-house. No stylisitc deviations, cutesy vocoders, staring-into-the-eye-of-the-speaker minimalism, Nuphonic-cribbing drum patterns, or Italo. (Or, sorry, what are we calling it this week? Cosmic? Space disco? Bullshit?)

The sound of tracks like "Deep and Fax" bound up neatly in their titles: the swish of tech repetition married with the wombing glow of deep house. Not quite Blaze or Pepe Bradock, but c'mon...what do you expect from two cosmonauts transmitting from the tundra of the former USSR? SCSI-9 are doing the same thing today, right up to their excellent single on Kompakt last year, "Everything's Gone Green"-era New Order at modern club tempo.

Records like these are tough to write about. Someone like V. Delay obviously possesses some kinda "heightened awareness" to get all genius-not-scenius on yr asses. SCSI-9 would never try something like the smeared wax keytar solo on "The Present Lover," nor do they have Luomo's sense of texture, space, or ear for a pop hook. They're working from a basic set of assumptions about what should go into their records, basic enough to dare you to write about it without resorting to the cheap armor of other artist and label names.

I suppose here I should also mention the first Digital Disco comp, corralling nearly every leftfield house and techno move from 2000-2005: Data 80's cheeseball winking populism, Metro Area's classicist italo, Akufen's twitch-and-bump (remixed by Herbert), Luomo's proto K-house, Swayzak's wireframe minimalism, MRI's main room neo-trance, King Britt covering fuckin Nu Shooz for chrissakes. It's this unexpected multiplicity, especially on Digital Disco, that makes today's competing tribes (beardy space disco vs. goggle-eyed Germanic minimalism...fite!!) feel kinda deadlocked.

Hi-Phen Pile Up! Smash! Oh Noes!

2006-01-06T04:58:00.000-08:00

Bit behind the 8-ball on this one, an 05 mix of tracks largely from 04: picked up for a steal at the January sales, Hi-Phen Pile Up Volume 1: A Crash Course In Dance Sequences is like the perfect generic electro-house mix. It’s producer Mugwump AKA Geoffroy mixing tracks taken mostly from his Hi-Phen label, a “Belgian deep house” label its website sez, but it’s about as much deep house as, say, Playhouse or Music For Freaks (which it frequently resembles) are . Deep house may be in its blood to be sure, but this stuff couldn’t be more capitalist ploy electro-housey if it tried. And when I say electro-house I mean electro-HOUSE: monstrous sultry percussion on display at every turn, uniting the divergent trips through tracky Cajual-style US house, brazen italo revivalism, bracing Vitalic-style stomp, post-Jaxx cut-up Prince action, eerie space disco... It’s like early Get Physical with all the influences and sonic affectations yet to be digested and reconstituted, swirling round at the back of your throat with a crude and chewy flavoursomeness.

Too many highlights here: Mugwump’s remix of Jeff Bennett’s “Sitting Bull” (all bouncing electro bass and skanking synth chords) is like DJ T’s “Time Out” soaked in Jamaican rum. The Artifical Arm’s “Welcome To Planet Funk” is shamelessly monomaniacal italo-disco, closer to Mixed Up in the Hague populism than Metro Area precision. Optimus’s “Deadly Dub” delves into continental shelf bass rumbles to uncover the fossils of first wave Chicago house percussion. Mugwump’s “Mudcleaner” is an uptempo number in a musical starring two mainframe computers serenading each other in morse code. Abe Duque’s remix of Chloe’s “Take Care” can’t decide whether it wants to indulge in remorseless body pummelling or starry-eyed space exploration. Rob Mello’s remix of Silent Partner’s “Down By Dub” has no greater ambition than to bustle cheerfully in the magnificent shadow of Patrick Cowley’s remix of “I Feel Love”. And, fittingly enough, this drifts into Lindstrom’s stately, expansive “I Feel Space” (beloved of Elijah), sounding even more like a lonely windswept peak-time record than usual. Not a record for those who like their DJ mixes epochal, but highly recommended to everyone else.

Elijah's Year in Dance

2006-01-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

While on vacation over the holidays, a relative dragged us to an unnamed indie rock concert. We remained planted against the back wall until we noticed a Musik Krause logo on the chest of one of the smaller attendees. Suddenly alert, we approached the youngster, figuring he might speak the same language as us. The youngster turned out to be a man -- Elijah Wood, famous actor and voracious music fan, who claimed to be "enamored with dance music" of late. Later that night, he was gracious enough to sit down with us and discuss some of his favorite dance tracks of 2005.

I would have to start with something off the Isolée album. That's just tremendous stuff, really dense and tight with a lot of little details. They're like the Boards of Canada of dance music because you know it's them right off the bat and they have a distinct sound that nobody else has. I guess I'll go with "Schrapnell." There's something very pure and honest about it and it sort of reminds me of the Von Bondies or screwed and chopped Gas Huffer.

One of the songs later on in the Kelley Polar album, which I think is really amazing and heartfelt. "Black Hole" -- I think that's the one. He has a precious indie voice but it doesn't bug me, you know? It's not annoying, like Postal Service. I swear to god I will strangle the next person who plays that garbage in front of me [clenches fists]! And it sure as hell is not like Sean Lennon. Now I love the Beatles, and I love John Lennon, and even some of Julian's stuff -- and come on, some of Yoko's stuff is bananas -- but I'm certain Sean must've heard the Langley Schools stuff before making that Grand Royal album. He ruined Grand Royal for me. I can't even listen to Luscious Jackson because of him. So, yeah, anyway, where was I? I have to mention Kelley Polar.

And while we're talking about Kelley Polar, I have to mention Metro Area. Not many people got into the EP they put out this year, but I like it a whole lot. I think it's called "Honey Circuit." It's kind of quirky for them, but it's not like "Caught Up."

The Field, "Love vs. Distance," on Kompakt -- my new favorite label! This is so much more euphoric and exciting than that MFA track that everyone put in their year-end lists instead of this. Come on, people -- that MFA track is so wack, and it didn't even come out in 2005, and it's like this one old Moose song with a dance beat underneath it! Moose! "Love vs. Distance" is like the best Seefeel track ever being shot through the huge marshmallowy clouds!

Bringing up "I Feel Space" by Lindstrøm might be pretty obvious at this point but I can't deny that I must have played it a hundred times. [Checks.] Yep! It's my second most-played song after Kevin Ayers' "Stranger in Blue Shoes"! What's funny is that "I Feel Space" is basically a fast instrumental remix of this one song off a Mike Oldfield album from the late 1970s that Jeff Goldblum gave me while shooting Chain of Fools.

Jan Jelinek's not really dance, at least not the album he put out this year. It makes me think of a Black Forest Tortoise. There's a weird kinda-dance track with "disco" somewhere in the title, so I'll go with that one, whatever it is. I was playing it in my trailer the other day and Nick Cannon came in while scratching his nuts and said, "What the fuck is this -- crazy cracker computer shit?" Then he ran out.

For some reason that's all I can think about right now! Sorry! I've also been playing the hell out of this CDR of Sa-Ra Creative Partners that Woebot sent me. That's not really dance in the sense that we're talking about but I was playing it the other night for some friends and we were all getting down -- well, if you could call it that. They're so weird and out there. Laurence Fishburne told me it was alright and that what I really needed was this song by a group called Kleeer titled something like "Taste the Music." I don't know. I'll probably pick it up when I can, or get it off Soulseek.

Marketing Music

2005-12-06T07:20:00.000-08:00

So Marketing is a new label based in Paris which I think might be worth keeping an eye on. The first release "A Tribute To John Surman" featured a track each from respected dudes like I:Cube, Tekel, and Tim Paris, and seems to have been played by pretty much everybody. And it's great, Tekel's track makes with the Black Strobeisms as usual, panic electrohouse. The I:Cube is pretty cool too.

But the best of the lot is probably Tim Paris's epic contribution, timeless in the sense that to call it electrohouse would be a bit too easy. It is electrohouse in some ways but it doesn't feel like a record which couldn't have come out pre-electrohouse, with its big almost Detroit techno entrance, followed by cowbells galore and an almost post-punk bassline.

The second release hasn't quite hit the shelves yet, it's a joint project between Cosmo Vitelli and Julien Briffaz of Tekel. Once again it's fairly difficult to categorise, one side is a bit like an instrumental New Order track given a re-edit for the 00s, the other is like Metro Area or early Get Physical with the melancholy, glitz, and sleaze of the best Kill The DJ releases.

And that's it so far, two releases, but if they can continue releasing such downright different stuff then there's no reason Marketing won't be huge in 2006. Check it out!

This old (idea of) house

2005-11-10T10:17:00.000-08:00

"I like this old idea of house, not being a genre but a feeling." -- Matias Aguayo

House is a Feeling's Anti-Dance Top 10 of 2005

2005-11-07T08:49:00.000-08:00

Don’t believe the hype!

Kelley Polar - Love Songs for the Hanging Garden

It’s indie rock! So were the Junior Boys! You’ve been duped! We helped do the duping! Next you’ll be trying to sell us on Of Montreal’s inherent funk! Hoisted by our own petard!

0=0 – “Soul Hunter Testifies”

Drum & bass cats love to talk this one up to show off what tuff guys they are. (We know we do.) C’mon on tho…this is free jazz. Try dancing to it in front of a mirror and tell me if you haven’t just woken up in homeroom with no pants on.

Mr. Oizo - Moustache (Half a Scissor)

Pretty excited about this one at first. DUPED. This is IDM. Wah wah, baby wants his bottle!

Ricardo Villalobos

Poor Ricardo. Someone should call the boy’s mother. He’s in a bad way. At least buy him a cup of coffee and bus fare home. Hello? Ricardo? Hello? *snaps fingers*

Jackson & His Computer Band - Smash

See Mr. Oizo. The French! We shouldn’t have trusted them with nuclear weapons, either.

Grime

Which isn’t the only reason it’s terrible, but it’s a big one. Mine eyes have seen the glory, etc etc.

Richie Hawtin’s hair

Actually, we fear this is very dance.

Dubstep

A blindfolded horse with two asparagus stalks in his teeth would be funkier than this shit.

Punk-funk/Death Disco/Douche Dance

Stop!!

Breakcore

Back in my day we called it drill and bass and rightfully disdained it! Slipping standards are tearing our society apart.

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Instead of the long-awaited post from someone else

2005-10-09T08:25:00.000-07:00

Necromantic Behavior: almost the same as last time, but with mostly different people and labels. Two less mbs, several more umlauts. This one has a happy ending. (Make of that what you will.)

Also, in case you're feeling nostalgic: All Night Operator, featuring the necrohouse class of '03. Same mbs as last time. Gigolo Joe makes an appearance near the end.

(The cardinal aspect of necrohouse is that you can't kill it. It's already dead.)

[The mixes are now offline -- ed.]

For Starters #02: Kirk Degiorgio (’97-’04)

2005-10-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

(Degiorgio on stage with the reunited Eramus Hall at the Michigan State Fair, Detroit, 2005)

01. As One - “Away from All of This” (Mo Wax, 1997)
02. As One - “The Electric Hymn” (Clear, 1997)
03. As One - “Problems” (Ubiquity, 2001)
04. Super-a-Loof - “Covetous” (Obsessive, 2001)
05. As One - “The Path of Most Resistance” (Mo Wax, 1997)
06. As One - “If It Ain’t Broke” (Ubiquity, 2001)
07. Endemyk - “Mizellian Thoroughfare” (Wansel Wand, 1998)
08. Critical Phase - “The Phase Effect (Uptown Reshape)” (New Religion, 2002)
09. As One - “Hope” (Ubiquity, 2004)
10. Critical Phase - “The Voice of Phase (Maurice Fulton Remix)” (New Religion, 2004)

So let’s get this over with before the rest of the HIaF crew comes out of the deep-sleep spell cast by the last post. Degiorgio’s work pre-’97 deserves its own For Starters -- no lie -- and I suppose there’s something symbolic about the period covered here in that it involves an album -- the third-best album -- released on Mo Wax, meaning -- I think -- that Mo Wax is now the most mentioned label on this blog. So, yes, the last post was a gambit to incapacitate my fellow bloggers (except Vahid, of course) in order to ensure more mentions of Mo Wax. And now this post serves a greater purpose: to spring the anti-Mo Wax faction into posting more often, because I am positive they don’t want to be associated with a weblog about music – especially one called House Is a Feeling, with a motto of “100 BPM and Up” -- that has mentioned Mo Wax more than any other label (no Luomo).

01: Night sweats-inducing broken-beat prototype with Luca Santucci in a quiet storm role, much different from the one he played in Playgroup’s “Number One” (acoustic bass thrums, lapping stutter-shuffle breakbeat, humid swarming/prodding keyboard effects). 02. Graceful-yet-bluefaced breakbeat attack. 03: Fucking bizarre throwback to some lost late ‘70s/early ‘80s CTI record, though it’s sort of like a PT Cruiser with spinners and hydraulics, with Jinadu’s lead vocal treated to sound like a silky growl (his backing vocals are untreated, making it all the more unique/riveting). 04: Misty memory-triggering workout that incorporates Herbie’s “Raindance,” a co-production with the Weather Channel’s Ian O’Brien (it deserved to be an A-side, but it was unfortunately relegated to one of Degiorgio/O’Brien’s crate digging Soul of Science comps). 05: Similar in set-up to 02, if a little less dramatic, with jabs, sprinkles and flecks of Rhodes, synthesizer, etc. 06: ARPtacular, ultra-repetitive, slowly developing 21st Century Soul track (vinyl version only), sort of like Titonton Duvante screwed ‘n’ chopped (only somewhat fast), which should’ve taken the place of the 2-step mishap on the CD version of the album. 08: Not currently fresh in memory, but recall enjoying it quite a bit. 09: Intricately-shaped nine-eight swings into spring-boarding four-four, our hero at his most anthemic and uplifting. 10: A Maurice Fulton remix, so it’s very percussive and duly ornery.

Parents and future parents should also know that Degiorgio has scattered a handful of gorgeous lullabies throughout the past few years, including “Music Box,” “Reunion,” “In the Arms of You,” “The Daisy Picker” and “Luca’s Smile.”

Instead of the long-awaited Kirk Degiorgio For Starters

2005-09-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

Romance Is for Solids: ten tracks, all from this year, mostly moody and sparse (86mb). Minor crossfading, no beatmatching. More useful on an operating table than a dancefloor. It should actually be titled Necromantic Behavior, or maybe "Is That a Knot in Your Shoulder or Are You Just Frightened to See Me?." [The mix is now offline -- ed.]

Ivan Smagghe on Berlin

2005-09-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

"I might move to London next year, I've considered it loads of times, but not Berlin. There are too many creative-hobo-DJ-web-designer-party people types. I like cities where you have to fight a bit, cities with edge. Berlin is so cheap everyone can afford not to have a real job, to slack around a lot and party til Tuesday afternoon. I like it as a visitor but it's not real enough for me."

(He's partly right, you know.)

The Most Ecstacy Soaked Recent German Records

2005-08-25T14:20:00.000-07:00

To probe a potentially interesting topic raised by Tim, I think the most ecstacy soaked recent German record is the mighty Thomas/Mayer remix of "Welcome Back Kotter" by Tonetraeger. There's something magical about it for me, the huge mounting excitement and impermeable optimism, it reminds me of tracks like "The Future Is The Future" by Deep Dish, ones that were always really good while getting ready to go out but also amazing in club context. If ever you wanted to make a case for the quality of really pristine booming tech-house then this track would be the key piece of evidence.

Just that crackling buzzing beat in the intro, then those huge chiming synths, like cathedral bells that just keep on looping, and perhaps best of all the miniscule pause (after an eternity of the same loop) just before the bass drum eventually explodes back into life. An anthem!

"AND YOUR EARLY 90S TECHNO FEELINGS WILL NEVER DIE, ECSTACY WILL NEVER STOP WORKING FOR YOU, NOR DID YOU EVER DO ANYTHING EMBARASSING AT OSTGUT. WITH THIS RECORD YOU REMEMBER FONDLY A CERTAIN FEELINGS THAT WERE RIFE AMONG US ALL BACK IN THOSE WILD TRANSGRESSIVE DAYS. FOR MANY IT WAS NOT UNLIKE THE FINAL EPISODES OF "FRIENDS". TIP!"

Other nominations for most e-soaked recent German (or German style) records are surely welcome in the comments box. Perhaps a few other candidates to get the ball rolling.

M83-Run Into Flowers (Jackson Remix)
Le Dust Sucker-Mandate My Ass
Booka Shade-Mandarine Girl

Moonbootica and the Rule of Law

2005-08-24T01:12:00.000-07:00

The Moonbootica remix of Luomo’s “Tessio” is one I always return to with a sense of wonder: having had such a deep and abiding love for the original for so long, the fact of the remix having slowly but surely superceded it in my affections seems unreal, the product of some conjurer’s trick? How did they do it? And furthermore, how did they divine within Luomo’s gentle, labyrinthine torch song the makings of the paradigmatic electro-house stomper? For, let’s make no mistake about it, “Tessio (Moonbootica Remix)” is precisely that – electro-house’s ultimate distilment: the sexily syncopated house beat going to war with synth riffs as murderous and all-consuming as Black Strobe at their most extreme; a heartbreaking love story struggling to emerge from a groove of stentorian physicality.

Given their success so early in their career, it’s either surprising or fitting that since then Moonbootica have set about systematically failing to be the paradigmatic electro-house act. But what have they become instead?

On the “DJ’s Theme/Bulldog Beats” from early last year, the duo provided one potential answer: they would fly the flag for German house trying to be French house. “Bulldog Beats” in particular was a stunning advertisement for the potential of this identity crisis, marrying sharp synthetic spurs to the amniotic warmth of French house’s EQ dazzle. Along with Superpitcher’s remix of The MFA, it’s probably the most ecstasy-soaked record the German house scene has produced in recent years.

But, as much as I would have liked to hear more tracks in this vein, Moonbootica evidentally felt restless: judging from their subsequent output, I can only assume that they listened to “Bulldog Beats” and thought, “It’s just not… populist enough!” And since then they’ve decided on a number of ever-more lowbrow hats in a bid to distance themselves from German electro-house’s associations with refinement. Their remix of Planet Funk’s “The Switch” is neurotic chart-prog, drifting from widescreen atmospherics and whiny rock vocals to assaultive bleeps and a bizarre actual-prog-rock keyboard solo on what sounds like a harpsichord assembled from duplo. “June” is a breakdown masquerading as a track: syncopated (verging on 2-step) percussion, dirty live bass, echoing background sighs and an endless succession of hype-inducing morse code riffs diving into anthemic four-to-the-floor cruise control. “Mustang 86” switches between ruff’n’ready crunchy bass riffs and, bright, sparkling synth melodies that DJ Sammy would be proud of.

All of this is merely a prelude, though, to the aim-for-the-jugular feel of the duo’s DJ Sounds Good mix. I’ve said before that if Tiefschwarz are the Chemical Bros of electro-house (simultaneously popular and credible; so obsessed with dynamics that their tunes feel like show-off Olympic competitors), with this mix Moonbootica hold themselves out as the scene’s Fatboy Slim (esp. the Fatboy Slim of “Right Here, Right Now”), or even (more dubiously) its The Crystal Method.

DJ Sounds Good's unassuming party vibe has the paradoxical effect of making the record a grower: it's so relentlessly cheerful that it's easy to underestimate it at first, to smile bemusedly at each tacky hook without becoming deeply involved. But, as is frequently the case with such things, the tacky hooks conceal an often devastating capacity for groove science; or, more precisely, the tacky hooks are the groove science embodied, their zany populism itself a poisonous barb. There are few cheap tricks that don't make their way onto this record: not just big electro riffs, but also ostentatious bongo percussion, melodramatic diva wails, tense breakdowns, trance-like trebly keyboards, and lots of layered breakbeats.

If anything, it's precisely because Moonbootica and their producer friends recognise the physical effect of these hooks that they take on the veneer of tackiness: rather than attempt to create a sense of structural unity (let alone the appearance of actual songfulness), the "best bits" are deployed in often jarring succession, leaving the tracks sounding like the equivalent of trailers for Hollywood comedies (and if that sounds like a put-down, it's worth keeping in mind that such trailers are often far better than the films they advertise). But the precedent closer to home is early nineties dance music, italo-house, nu-beat, etc – at times I’m reminded of Black Box's "Ride On Time", Technotronic's "Pump Up The Jam", Sonz of a Loop Da Loop Era's "Far Out" and K-Klass's "Let Me Show You Love"… and yet this remains incontrovertibly an electro-house mix.

Every track seems to want to revive its own mercenary dance floor killer maneuver: Skai’s “Mir Geht’s Gut” marries a tic-toc breakbeat groove with a diva declaring “This is flirty music!” and bongos that sound like they were ripped from a Safri Duo record. Markus Gardeweg’s “25 Years” is ridiculous gay house, all sleazy electro burbles over which a falsetto male vocalist conflates a relationship with a loveless man with a jail sentence, pleading to be allowed to “go home and spend my life working on the land!” Groove Rebels’ “Loose Yourself” subjects its high-pitched female diva to a “Violently Happy” style cut-up, her “lose your life by my side” strobing over tense breakbeats. Best of all is Timo Di Roy’s “Don’t Stop”, whose spiraling synth riffs are EQ’d in and out with kamikaze-bomber destructive grace, and whose vocal hook (“the deeper your love and the higher emotion, DON’T STOP”) constantly haunts me with its meaningless addictiveness.

Moonbootica's own "Roll The Dice" is exemplary, and indeed takes proceedings to a logical conclusion: stealing liberally from The Flirts' "Passion" (all the bits Felix Da Housecat didn't use in "Silver Screen Shower Scene"), the duo splice the percolating italo-disco groove with a stuttering breakbeat and euro-rap chorus that is both repulsive and the awesomest thing ever (“what the fuck! We do rock!” is the least of its sins), before bringing back that oddly trancey synth break from “Passion” (surely one of the most forward-thinking tunes ever???) for a ridiculously overblown climax. At various points I half-expect to suddenly hear a saxaphone solo and whispered “Nineteen nineties…time for the Guru…” Even without it the result is a bit like the Bomfunk MCs crashing a Get Physical party.

Neither of Moonbootica’s other contributions go quite so far as “Roll The Dice”, but it nonetheless forms a sort of pinnacle to which they relate: “We 1, 2, Rock” (note the meaningless, superfluous-seeming pun in the title) is straightforward but melodramatic “mersh” electro-house, its big string riffs, clattering percussion and declaratory chant vocals reminiscent of The Eternals’ “Wrath of Zeus” (that cataclysmic apotheosis of delirious French house) but different in one crucial sense: “Wrath of Zeus” constituted an intensification of French house’s exceptional qualities, such that, despite the global permeation of the French house sound by the end of the last decade, it was impossible to imagine this track coming from anywhere other than France itself. “We 1, 2 Rock” by contrast could easily belong to that privileged jet-setting community of “mersh” electro-house tracks such as Paris Avenue’s “I Want You”, Midnight Star’s “Midas Touch” or Quesh’s “Candy Girl”: tracks which are neither culturally/geographically blank, nor entirely rooted in a particular sound or scene, but float instead, the supreme radio-play realization of formerly underground ideas and impulses (all of them, too, flaunt their hard-edged, brittle grooves as if they were an irresistible pop weapon; which they sort of are).

The challenge of enjoying Moonbootica is learning to appreciate their lack of romantic consistency, their cynical commercialism, their appalling lapses in taste, to see all these things as not merely regrettable-but-forgivable, but rather a core component of the peculiar enjoyment their work can provide. The challenge is to understand their multi-stylistic pluralism, which is decidedly not pluralism-in-theory: the properly groundbreaking and impliedly tasteful confluence of sonic techniques whose corollary in politics is multiculturalism-in-theory. The corollary of Moonbootica is globalization: an ignoble, unpredictable mish-mash of the universal and the particular which follows no particular ethic except that of a basic functional effectiveness.

I cannot claim to have fully reach this desired state of appreciation: my favourite Moonbootica moments tend to be their most (relatively) genteel efforts: the throbbing French sparkle of “Bulldog Beats”, the metallic churn of their 2003 remix of Karotte’s “As It Comes”, most of all the Luomo remix. The question then becomes: what do Moonbootica know that I don’t? Is there a masterplan as such behind their increasing trend towards prole enthusiasm – or is “prole enthusiasm” precisely the masterplan in effect?

Perhaps what forms a barrier to embracing Moonbootica wholeheartedly is the fact that their transgressions are conceived and presented as unproblematic, even unremarkable. For the very reason that nothing is forbidden, there is no “transgression” as such in their music, except a host of minor infractions of electro-house codes of tastefulness. This is a strength and weakness in equal measure: Moonbootica may be the exception to several rules, but they never ultimately acquire an ontological consistency as a rule in and of themselves.

This is a dialectical distinction: the only transgression which we recognize as being such is in the foundation of a new rule, one which overturns the previous existing order. An example of this in dance music is with regard to eclecticism: we only recognize an eclectic approach insofar as it achieves some underlying legislative consistency – the positive injunction “play what you like!” needs to be supported by an implicit “(but not that!)” to have any meaning. The eclecticism of the DFA, of 2 Many DJs and so on, is attractive to us only to that extent that it is not really all-embracing – when we enthuse about an artist playing “simply great music with no stylistic barriers” we also impliedly mean “they have pinpointed what should not be played with greater precision than anyone else!”

(Detour: perhaps, when we express disapproval over another’s taste in music, it is not the positive statements of taste but rather the existence of an unreadable bracketed subtext that threatens us. Far from deploring the uncontrolled anarchy of their listening habits, we are propelled by a fear of what underlies this apparent anarchy: a fear that, were we to live in their world, we would be ceaselessly harassed by an undecipherable, radically external (and thus totalitarian) rule of law, whose stern “not that!” would evade our powers of reason)

The curiousness of Moonbootica is that they resist being assigned any particular legislative quality: their lapses in taste never go quite so far as to become a concrete aesthetic we could rely on, which we could identify as marking them out as “important” – perhaps their problem is that they remain too tasteful, too much the Moonbootica of “Bulldog Beats” rather than “Roll the Dice”. There is as of yet no Rule of Law that is discernible in Moonbootica’s work, beyond that which they have inherited from “pure” electro-house, and which they continue to contravene in a host of minor offences.

When people complain about the ultra-restrictive stylistic dictates of electro-house, they are silent about Moonbootica. The boringly prosaic “real” reason for this is that they probably haven’t heard them (not being electro-house fans), but the deeper “truth” at work is that Moonbootica and their friends, for all their breakbeats and bad rapping and French house affectations, are merely the exception which proves the rule (the petty criminals who give shape to the Law as such), rather than the revolutionary founders of a new Law which said complainants might embrace wholeheartedly. Their exceptional status only gives shape to electro-house’s nominal protocol, and as merely unreliable followers they are officially designated as unexceptional. This makes writing about them an oddly difficult task: excessive hyperbole and words like “innovation” just feel wrong. But unless you’re someone who only flirts with lawmakers, this sense of inbetweenness, this misdemeanour-aesthetic, makes for very addictive listening.

cologne is approaching.

2005-08-15T04:43:00.000-07:00

I'm heading to Cologne in less than two weeks for C/O Pop, a German "music conference" (basically a week-long party) that proved to be mighty last summer. As with last year, the Kompakt night (last year it was called the Kompakt 100 Festival; this year it's Kompakt Total 6 Night)--featuring live sets by Reinhard Voigt, Rex the Dog, and Justus Kohncke, plus DJ sets courtesy of Michael Mayer, Koze, Superpitcher, and more--looks like the highlight of the weekend. Last summer Triple R DJed at the Kompakt party, but this year he's running his own competing MBF Night at a different club, which will include, of course, Triple R on the decks plus live sets from Steve Barnes and Break 3000.

But good grief, there´s more. So much more.

As with last year, the real challenge of being a good C/O Pop ahem, "conference attendee" is stamina.

The next night--Saturday--it's all about choices, choices. So many choices. Last year the choice was clear: Saturday night belonged to Ada and the Areal party at Kunstwerk. But this year we not only have an Areal/Freude am Tanzen party (with Basteroid, Metope, Jan-Eric Kaiser, and the Wighnomy Bros.) but we ALSO have what looks to be a great Trapez party (with Dominik Eulberg, Triple R, and Alex Smoke.) Lest you get bored, there's also the Firm party, featuring Schaeben and Voss, Andre Kraml, and a whole lot more.

Now it's Sunday and you're totally fucking exhausted from having not slept for 48 hours. What better than to dance the day away under the sun with Ricardo Villalobos and Richie Hawtin in a children's park facing the lovely Rhine river? It lasts all day (and all night), and it's a wonderfully surreal endcap to three solid days of clubbing mayhem. Cologne, I raise my glass to you.

Bonus Beats (Read The Post Below Before You Read This)

2005-08-13T07:19:00.000-07:00

I threw in the comments box for the post below after Vahid reminded me, but each of the Strictly Hardcore discs ends with an "ad" for other Strictly Hardcore comps. The one on Illegal Pirate Radio II is for Sonic Experience: Def Til Dawn, featuring (as Vahid discovered) "dictaphone recordings from illegal raves" (crowd noise, MC's hyping, someone talking about a judge pushing bakc a "court injunction") megamixed with various breakbeat hardcore tunes and capped off with a painful, twenty second blast of air horns and rave whistles (if you looped it, it'd be a Merzbow record). It sounds like the DJ Wrongspeed album ten years before the fact.

Strictly Hardcore Info mp3

I realize using the word "crap" repeatedly in the post below leads me into some very dodgy territory I potentially don't intend. This was hammered home by the tiny inscription on Illegal Pirate Radio II that "artwork by Scooter." You know, no one wants to read that something they poured their heart into (even half-assedly or on less than ideal equipment) is "crap" and they probably especially don't want to hear it used as a praise term. I am cursed with some conception of what "good" design entails (you know...Perlon sleeves, emo covers by guys who own a silkscreen machine and think they're Neville Brody, the aforementioned Wookie cover) and am applying really patronising "trash culture" aesthetics to this stuff. It deserves better than that.

But it's hard not to sound patronising when you're praising something for being "raw for the streets." Even though that's what this stuff was. Stray too far and you end up in rap blog territory, middle class white dudes praising crack dealing trap tales detailing the sort of mentality that's destroying lives as "the realest". It's times like this that so much of the music I love deals in the non-verbal. It's a cop-out - or at least an dodge - but one I can deal with. It's also easier to deal with an idealized drug culture from ten years ago which no longer exists, rather than, say, the current plague of crystal meth that's clear cutting right through the gay club scene.

And yet, and yet...the best rule of thumb remains that, when it comes to mixes and compilations of "street" dance scenes, the "cheesier" the cover, the better the record is likely to be. This applies as much to rap mixtapes as to reggaeton comps and dancehall yard recordings featuring dropped bottoms in barely restrained bikini sets. (Like that Bong-Ra mix with Junglist! in huge letters drapped over a giant butt shot baking in the summer sun.) Reggaeton and other latin street musics take this to the extreme, where even the stuff released under the banner of Universal or Sony looks like it was knocked out in someone's bedroom in a few hours on a cracked copy of Photoshop 4.0.

So I guess a better term (maybe?) might not be "real" so much as "honest." Reggaeton artists with access to that Sony and Universal money should be able to knock out "respectable" looking covers, right? So the only possible explanation is that, of course, this what they want their records to look like because this is what they and their audience want to see on a cover: thonged asses, pot leaves and E tablets, Puerto Rican and Dominican flags, skulls with backwards baseball caps, big fat guys in white tees holding pitbulls with Photoshopped glowing red eyeballs and their city skyline aflame.

And these covers are fun! Racism (or at least patronising behavior) rears up when you assume the people making these covers aren't also enjoying the silliness of their imagery, that they're not in on whatever "joke" you're ascribing to it because they also take their culture seriously. Unfortunately "we" (white folks, rock fans, aesthetes, whoeveer) also judge "seriousness" in the most shallow way possible: by the image. It's not necessarily a sign of encroaching debility when artiness creeps into design, but it defnitely signifies a shift in how the artist views themsleves, their audience, and their ambitions. Compare the covers of Daddy Yankee's Barrio Fino, the Wookie album, and Slim Thug's Already Platinum with releases by Baby Rasta y Gringo, Public Demand garage comps, or all those No Limit and Cash Money covers.

I have been thinking about this kind of thing a lot vis a vis moving to Baltimore. I can't say I know much, if anything, about Baltimore breakbeat, outside of the little bits I've heard of it in the last year or two. But having spent a lot of time driving around Baltimore in the last weekm while I still won't pretend to know much of anything about the city, it's starting to make a lot of sense at least on an instinctual level. The media - especially with its most well-known representations being The Wire and Homocide - would probably make a big play about urban blight, drug destruction (crystal meth use up 500% in the greater Bmore area according to Newsweek for whatever that's worth), and general social collapse.

And yeah, there are plenty of boarded up buildings, sketchy street corners, and hard looks from people. But there's also a lot of beauty, a lot of beauty in residual, non-gentrified neighborhoods, a lot of people who are happy to make it their home. Like Philly - which is further along in the gentrification game and thus has more neighborhoods where people breathe a sigh of "oh, a few years ago I was scared to go visit him up there" relief - there's a lot of working people, people hauling trash or driving buses or working fast food or running bodegas or operating their own little take out joints or working for the city. Drugs and crime may fix certain perameters of their lives, but they're not the defining narrative.

At the end of the day, dancing is still about blowing off steam, trying to flush the toxins built up during the work week (or on the grind) through sweating your ass off on the floor. It should hardly be inconcievable that sometimes people want a fast, rough, straightforward music that reflects (but not exacerbates) the conditions of their lives. Not everyone wants Theo Parrish and not everyone wants "Pop That Pussy", but sometimes, in my more delusional utopian moments, I still feel like the dancefloor is one of the few social spaces where boundaries can melt in the mix. That's probably the old taint of raving in my bloodstream; maybe current social and economic conditions do preclude it; maybe I'm just fooling myself that class, race, and status considerations can evaporate under the heat of a beat. But if I stopped believing it I might as well start going to indie rock shows again.

None Of That Commercial Bullshit

2005-08-12T20:31:00.000-07:00

In Princeton today to see Maura, so of course I had to go to the Record Exchange. I left $17 poorer, not bad at all (could have been much more painful to my already bleeding wallet), but infinitely richer because of two "omg wtf" finds in the "Budget Electronica" (ha ha) section: Illegal Pirate Radio II & III on Strictly Hardcore/Underground records from picturesque Romford, Essex.

I don't even really want to review the music. (Which is easy, because I've barely digested half of it.) The packaging alone was worth the $1.99 for II and the $7.99 for the double-disc III. II has stuff like "In Effect", "Alright Wit Me", the original "London Someting", as well as no names like the amazingly monikered Mole The Dipper (?!) with "Eye of the Dinosour" (btw from here on out most of the mispellings in the titles and names should be pre-sic'd) and Hackney Hardcore (you know the score) with "Rave Scene '94" (which sounds more like rave scene '92 but who's counting?). So you know what's up: looped breaks just starting to be chopped up enough to be junglized, boombastic (more often than not sine wave) bass, retarded scratching, chipmunk voices, 303 acid noises, sound FX straight out of the Warner Bros playbook, and mentasms. III is broken up into one disc of jungle and one disc of "happy hardcore", which sounds mostly like regular old hardcore to me. The jungle half has stuff like Aphrodite's "Beat Booyaa" (TUNE), a fractured Steve Gurley remix of "The Sound of F.X." by (duh) F.X. (who is not, I don't think, Shy FX), and more unknowns like Sub Sequence with the artlessly masterful title of "Long Sex".

So, yeah, woo, more jungle. But the packaging...oh man. II is all black and white with a fuzzy skull and bones (complete with eyepatch) sporting headphones flanked by two turntables. The insert claims "Strictly Hardcore Records accepts no responsibility for speaker damage caused by this CD." Inside there are ads for other Strictly Hardcore comps, including Illegal Rave! The Compilation and Sonic Experience: Def Til Dawn ("The True Rave Scene") with (what I can only assume from the tiny reproduction) a badly painted cover shot of one of those hangar-sized outdoor raves. By III they could afford two colors, red and yellow. A grinning skull with yellow eyes and backwards red baseball cap leers from the front over, while a similar gurning noggin boggles on the back.

Apparently in the 12 month interim S.U. must have come up with some decent cash because the insert is hawking no less than 17 compilations, including two volumes of Jungle Soundclash and two volumes of Hardcore Junglistic Fever (featuring the Thundercats logo), Ravealation Live At Wembley (a keepsake memento of "The Best of this 11 Hour Event"), another two volumes of Illegal Rave, and something billing itself as Intelligent Drum & Bass (despite featuring the same shitty "graffitti" art and lettering as everything else) (everything else that wasn't done on an Apple IIe). I wish I could fully get across the charming crapness of it all without you actually holding the CD's in your hands, how this music which has been retroactively renovated as the Superfresh Art Pop Of The Future is housed in these ugly, mispelled, silly, pandering sleeves. (All that's missing are some pot leaves or tablets.)

They take a whole page to tell us how they were voted number one rave compilation label in the country but they cant even manage to print it straight, cropping a bunch of the words out. They tell us that "any poor sound quality is in the original recording supplied by each record label"...they mastered these things from 12"s! And yet, without wanting to get all misty eyed and indefensibly patronising vis a vis the "realness" of this crapness...it's kind of undeniable that this stuff does feel realer presented like this. Steve Gurley is shaken free from the cold dead hand of auteurism to sit alongside Slipmatt as Just Good Dance Music. Photek (as Studio Pressure) is on even footing with Mad Dog (?) whose "My God" - oozing noir menace with a restrained groove and without a hint of camp - is actually the better tune.

And that's the real lesson amongst the Crap Graphics Democracy of comps like these: canon building can't be avoided entirely. When the Manix and Code071 tunes appear, they are very audibly "better" than 90% of the other tracks, even without acknowledging the Godlike Genius of 4Hero. Ditto the Aphrodite tune on III. Even in a blind taste test you can distinguish cream from milk. But labels like Strictly Hardcore, consciously or not, don't allow producers who've developed a rep (especially here in the "future") to use that to mask a lack of flavor. The joy of these comps, the reason you keep one eye fixed on the used bins wherever you go, is the moment when a Mad Dog or a Hackney Hardcore stands tall (if not towers) next to yr 4Heros and Photeks.

The other dance record I snagged is from the exact opposite of the spectrum, the Wookie album from 2000. (Hey, it was $1.99.) These graphics are of course far more slick, with lots of sumptuous black and white (out of a sense of aesthetics rather than a money saver) photographs of the artiste (sporting a conspiciously visible diamond ring) and text that doesn't run off the page by accident. Wookie, like Photek, has taken a bit of a critical beating from the strictly hardcore contingent, and, like Mr. Parkes, his interview quotes, album graphics, and occasionally even the music itself has done a lot to foster that feeling of resentment. But it seems kind of unfair to me because this is at least 3/4ths of a good album. (Think of the Hidden Camera EP and less Modus Operandi.)

Maybe it's the fact that five years later I am much more comfortable with things like broken beat and downtempo. (Christ, say one or two nice things about Sa-Ra on your blog and suddenly you start getting every jazz remix comp released sent to you directly. "Time Sensetive Materials" my ass, Universal...your Telefon Tel Aviv remix of Oliver Nelson goes to the bottom of the pile.) (On the plus side I did get sent a copy of the new Spacek LP.) Maybe it's my mother's influence and all those Anita Baker and Luther records surfacing after years of screeching punk and crashing rap. But even the much derided "Battle" sounds okay to me. (From the vomitous reaction this provoked in some people I expected some ghastly, over-orchestrated soul boner, but instead I got a fairly restrained neo-soul song with some swinging, garagey snares.)

And of course "Scrappy" is probably in my top 10 garage tunes, like, ever. It is an object lesson in what good dance music is supposed to be, the drums and the bass in conversation with each other. It is positively teetering with little fills and catchy drum riffs. Like, say, "Renegade Snares," "Scrappy" is one of those records where you want to begin beatboxing the drums as the hook, rather than the barely there organ licks or the "cuh-cuh-cuh-come on" vocal. This sort of texture-rhythm-hook interchangability (texturhythm, to steal a word from Kodwo Eshun, himself a Wookie fan) is a sign of (musical) maturity, no doubt. It involves wanting to construct grooves, rather than simply provide propulsion (as on Illegal Pirate Radio II) or show off in a wildstyle uh style (as with many of the tracks on III, noticably the Aphrodite). "Scrappy" is minimal because it has extreme faith in its ability to do what it sets out to do. A lot of early hardcore is maximal because it's terrified of boring its audience. Both are pretty valid approaches. You just run a bigger risk of failing with the former, and get fewer skulls in backwards baseball caps to boot.

guten tag.

2005-08-12T14:03:00.000-07:00

I thought it might be nice to introduce myself. My name is Geeta, and I'm the latest recruit for the mighty House is a Feeling. I have a blog called The Original Soundtrack. I used to live in New York City, but I've moved to Berlin for a while. Things I love about Berlin: Minimal techno and house music galore, beautiful clubs with good sound, cheap food, great public transportation, awesome art scene, raging nightlife. Thing I hate about Berlin: You can't find decent peanut butter anywhere in this city. There's this strange stuff called 'Erdnussmus American Style,' but it really doesn't compete with anything you could find in an average American supermarket.

Sascha Funke, Ewan Pearson, and Jacques Lu Cont are all spinning in this fine city tonight. Sadly, none of them have peanut butter. I think.

A mix, by me, for you

2005-08-09T04:20:00.000-07:00

Just 33 minutes

Hope you all enjoy this. It's fairly poppy electrohouse with the odd dark bit. Be sure and comment if the link isn't working right. Here's a tracklist. I actually did this one by hand but don't think there are many mistakes, except one notably poor 10 seconds or so between Tiefschwarz and the Psychonauts!

1. Juan Maclean-Tito's Way (Reverso 68 Mix) (DFA)
2. The Glass-Hear The Music (Mylo Remix) (Plant)
3. Silver City-Another Dimension (Spirit Catcher Mix) (20/20 Vision)
4. Freeform Five-Electromagnetic (Tiefschwarz Dub) (Fine)
5. The Psychonauts-The World Keeps Turning (Highfish and Zander Remix) (Gigolo)
6. Michael Mayer-Heiden (Kompakt)
7. International Pony-Our House (Colombia)

AUGUST CATCH-UP TIPS PT. 1

2005-08-08T11:19:00.000-07:00

DUMB UNIT/JEREMY P. CAULFIELD/WRECKROOM
DONT ALLOW THE AGREEABLE RIPPLES TO FOOL YOU. CANADIAN GUY CAULFIELD PLAYS FATAL MATCH OF VIDEO TABLE TENNIS AND WINS AGAIN. FINISH HIM! BREAK OUT THE COLEMAN AND TAKE OFF!

FLORA UND FAUNA/HUNDARNA FRAN SODER/NEMO
SENSORY JACKALS HUNDARNA MASSAGE FRAYED CRANIAL NERVES WITH THIS. NOT A DIRECT LIFT FROM DETTINGERS SMASHERFOLG BLOND 12" BUT RATHER CLOSE. GOOD WARMING UP.

GET PHYSICAL/CHELONIS R. JONES/VULTURES
CHELONIS WITH HARUM SCARUM ROCKWELL AND SEXUELLES HARASSMENT STYLE PARANOID MINIMALISM. QUIET BUT A LITTLE DISTURBING AS WELL. DONT FORGET TO WEAR YOUR HELMET.

SPECTRAL SOUND/HIEROGLYPHIC BEING/JE SUIS MUSIQUE
OSUNLADE INTERFACES WITH A TECHNO ANIMAL AND COMES OUT SOUNDING JUST LIKE JAMAL MOSS! THE NOSE CONE OF THIS AFRICAN WARHEAD WILL BEHEAD JOE CLAUSSELL.

3RD FLOOR/TRENTEMOELLER/KINK
MATHEW JONSON PERIL BOOGIE AND KIND OF CRO-ROBAG AFTER STARTING OFF WITH STEALTH HOVERING SLINGSHOT DRIVE. SOMETHING LIKE THIS GUYS 13TH STRAIGHT MONSTER TRACK.

KOMPAKT/SCARF/WOLFGANG VOIGT
YES ITS OUR MOST STYLISH TECHNO TCHOTCHKE AVAILABLE ONLY IN RED FOR NOW. CHOOSE YOUR FAVORITE WOLFGANG ALIAS AND HE WILL SIGN IT FOR YOU FREE OF CHARGE. GLAD TIDINGS TO THE RUSTLING LEAVES OF AUTUMN.

P.S.

2005-08-07T07:14:00.000-07:00

How exciting is it (if you're me) to read in XLR8R this month (by cub reporter and phantom HIAF correspondant Phil Sherburne) that current tech-trance (be honest) poster-boy Mathew Jonson wants to "get back to his junglist roots," specifically the V/Metalheadz/Full Cycle axis. Take that Michael Mayer, you big snooty-puss.

The HIAF Rough Guide To: Micro-D&B

2005-08-06T16:29:00.000-07:00

01. Eight Miles High – “Flow Chart” (Klang; 1996)
02. Tundra – “Sprouts (Omni Trio Remix)” (Offshore; 2005)
03. Ezekiel Honig – “Love Session (Graphic DnB Remix)” (Microcosm; 2004)
04. Sileni – “Twitchy Droid Leg” (Offshore; 2004)
05. Squarepusher – “Venus No. 17” (Warp; 2004)
06. Hidden Agenda – “Fish Eggs” (Reinforced; 1998)
07. Something Else – “Ploosh (Morgan Packard Remix)” (Microcosm; 2004)
08. Actual Proof – “Maybe We’ll Stay (Sileni Remix)” (Offshore; 2004)

Number one is, yes, that Eight Miles High, and the tune that kicked all this off for me. Number two has flickers of keyboard streaking by like cars from a hilltop, a fitting end to the Omni Trio name (if nothing like the stuff everyone reveres him for). Number three is Pantytec remxing “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” with added tape speed issues. Number four everyone knows by now (right?), alternate title: “Spastic Crunk Leg.” Number five is surprisingly focused, suprisingly rolling. Number six I have no idea where you’d play this, then or now (still weirdest d&b tune I have ever heard). Number seven spooks-out on an analogue tip. Number eight sounds squishy, reversed, alive (and vaguely like the Tunda Klap riddim), proof that there’s still life in the old two-step pattern with a textural palette expansion. If anyone knows of anything else in this vein, plz add to comments box as it will be greatly appreciated.

ritual damage

2005-08-05T04:51:00.000-07:00

i heard some noises in the distance as i was leaving tower records tonight. stopped midway to my car in the parking lot. was that explosions? a moment later, it came to me: nightly fireworks at 9:45 pm, for the tourists at sea world. this sort of thing ... well, it's sort of fucked, cause sea world is just across the bay from the marine corps training depot, right? there's a war on, right? does anybody even think about this sort of thing? it reminded me of something an old man had said to me, earlier in the year, when i'd asked him if he enjoyed the 4th of july fireworks. "not really," he'd said, "these days they'll set 'em off over any old thing. when i was young it was ... special"

so as i was getting on the freeway i said to myself, fuck it, i'll do it tonight. i'll write about the urban tribe album. i'm in a state, won't be getting to sleep til 2 or 3 anyway. i'll blow off some steam, get sort of stupid. i was thinking of carl craig and juan atkins, taking solitary detroit freeway night drives soundtracked by e2e4 and radio activity. were those drives comforting? was the car like a glass and steel womb? the purr of the motor and the pulse of bass, was it maternal? were they insulated, but still connected, electricifying mojo tuning them into the city-wide network of nocturnal travelers?

this was not comforting. we have these huge freeway on-ramps where i live, big circular rollercoaster ramps that spin you around 270 degrees at a steep grade, like you're tilted on some fairground machine and the world is spinning around you at 80 mph. these expensive european cars i'll never be able to afford, they surround you on the freeway with these new school headlights that throw pixilated glare like digital projectors on the cars next to you. they have LED brake lights - if you have trouble with trails at night you'll see ghostly clusters of dots, strobing across your vision. i'd just had my car washed after letting it build a three-month coat of dirt (we had record rainfall up until may) and that just added to the whole videogame hyperreality of the thing. this was not comforting at all. i didn't want to be driving, traveling - i wanted to be home.

where does techno go, when it needs to turn inward?

when i was in college i was a bit more excited about dance music. i was a bit more excitable, in general, you know? bad little kids, doing bad little things. people, things, responsibilites tended to float in and out of my life, willy-nilly. around 96-99 my grip was getting positively slippery. with growth and rapid change, things were getting diffuse at the core. so i was glomming pretty firmly onto dance music. it was getting pretty diffuse out there, too, but you could see things happening. it was spreading, like an oil slick, like a cancer, metastasizing, throwing off new styles and scenes on a monthly basis. directions sketched out on remixes and split EPs and one-off tracks were quickly mapped out onto artist albums and label compilations. there was no shortage of things dance could be, no end of places dance could go. if you were paying close enough attention, you could see it happening.

i was keeping tabs on a lot of things from 96-99: reinforced / metalheadz, basic channel / chain reaction, japan's sublime records, emissions audio output, clear, tresor, warp / schematic. but more than anything, i was keeping tabs on mo'wax. say what you want - from 95 on to when the whole thing collapsed, lavelle was a positively visionary A&R. lavelle gets slammed, often, the perception being that he's more concerned with his role as tastemaker and networker than with the music. well, newsflash: pretty much everywhere except the producer-obsessed world of dance, that's how it works. and lavelle's leftfield techno dream-team of 96-99 (carl craig, kirk degiorgio, andrea parker, urban tribe, dj assault, mark broom, baby ford) is an object lesson on letting your fingers do the walking. i have no idea how it went down, but it may have been like this: nightmares on wax hooks lavelle up w/ warp records, who hooks him up w/ richie hawtin via hawtin's FUSE project. hawtin teams up with craig for la funk mob's breaking down boundaries, messing up heads EP. craig releases his innerzone orchestra EP on lavelle's label, introduces lavelle to buddy sherard ingram, ingram gets aboard lavelle's monolithic headz 2 comp w/ his fittingly-titled track "covert action".

hopefully, you'll forgive me for making such a fuss over sherard ingram, when i admit i didn't even notice him the first time i heard one of his tracks. there's quite a bit to take in over 4 cds. you've got UNKLE and luke vibert showing the shambolic, lo-fi way forward for the apres-garde andy votel / broadcast axis, ILS inventing nu-skool breaks on "the force", tortoise rendering themselves obsolete w/ "the source of uncertainty", photek's 13-minute dark tribal house "trilogy" forecasting digweed's 00s renaissance, peshay and degiorgio sketching the next 10 years of west london sound w/ "the real thing (90 bpm mix)" and "the counterpoint". and quite a bit of ye olde boom-bap-scratch-crackle-creak-hiss for the trip hop faithful. a few minutes of glitchy 909 breaks, plucked bass and muted, heat-hazy synths, coming late in the anticlimactic first disc, didn't make too heavy an impression on my already-soft brains. fast forward from spring of 96 to early winter 98. two and a half years on, down to my last $20-, just dumped by my girlfriend, about to flunk out of school, my pavlovian training is still in full enough effect that i grab this just because it's filed in the mo'wax section ...

the album cover resembles nothing so much as a warning sign. dangerous radiations within. quite appropriate, if you ask me. this album is a time capsule, a time machine, a time trap. just holding it in my hands, i feel myself drifting off in thought ... i'm flashing on other times and places ...

september 2004. after a thoroughly frustrating morning attending a graduate seminar - haven't got the proper vocabulary to follow the lecture, though i know the concepts front and back - i've lost my keys, so i decide to walk home along the beach. it's only about ten miles, right? the first half-hour, i'm cursing under my breath the whole way. by the first hour, as i gradually see fewer and fewer joggers, i'm decompressing. 90 minutes in, i'm between public beaches, on a long stretch of inaccessible beach beneath high sandstone cliffs, places i've never seen before, a little spooked by the desertion and the prehistoric plants. i round a corner, and there's this ... thing, something the ocean spit it up and left on the beach to dry. i can't tell if it's plant or animal. i can't tell if it was this color when it was alive or not. did it live on the surface, or deep beneath? for a minute, my problems, my thoughts, my self is forgotten as i wonder on a new, utterly vexing problem: ... if i try to tell somebody about this, will they know what i'm talking about?

sometime earlier. i'm rummaging through an old box of toys in the garage. towards the bottom i spy something that looks familiar. it's a tiny toy gun, an accessory to an action figure. i take it out of the box and hold it up to the light, overcome by sudden waves of emotion. it doesn't fit any of the figures. it's too big for star wars, too big for transformers. too big for any of my toys, too detailed. whose is this toy? where did it come from? perhaps it's an orphan, left behind when i threw away a toy i had outgrown. was it mine to begin with? did i steal it from a friend, out of jealousy? was it left behind by a playmate whose name and face i no longer remember? what is that lost thing that meant so much to me - and why can't i remember where i saw it before?

the back cover may be the most striking i've ever seen. you really have to hold the thing in your hands to appreciate its beauty. the text, laid down in gently oscillating font sizes, slowly approaches and recedes, carrying your eye in gentle loops around the glowing center, where a tiny, lovingly-screened white-on-yellow "mo wax" glows and shimmers with furtive life. is it a glowing sun, or the center of the atom? the resemblance to orreries and nuclear models is highly suggestive, at first, of a journey down one of techno's favorite freeways, towards the unpopulated spaces of its nth generation sci-fi imagination.

"nebula", the second track on the album (and the first to really grab you by the brain and twist), seems to bear this out. just as soft, pointillist synth tones begin to merge into something like a washed-out rhodes drone, huge bass pulses start quaking the speakers. is it this the b-flat hum of the black hole at the center of the perseus galaxy? more synth figures slowly enter: foggy oscillators bounces back and forth, a modulated sonar ping pounds out an icy vamp, bubbles of ARP gently burst over the whole thing. unhuman doesn't begin to do it justice - one reviewer (in the wire) compared its fragile beauty to a crystalline environment grown in a glass bubble. this is the beauty of a benevolent sublime, the beauty of an snowed-over landscape untrammeled by footprints, of looking out your window in the morning and seeing the neighborhood erased by fog, the eerie quiet after the ice storm and before the dawn. a few simple elements, effortlessly interweaving into breathtaking the depth - it all suggests something grown rather than composed.

are we verging on cliche? fine. you should all be grateful, you know, that i didn't drag fractals into this. you start talking about fractals, and before long, you're wandering into a truly inhuman landscape, the dessicated music-is-maths of current autechre and de9-era plastikman: the sound of sound-as-data, interacting with itself. this is not to say that's not interesting - often it's not, but hey - but that's emphatically NOT what's going on here. the first hint ought to be the roster on the back, crowded to the gills with names: anthony shakir, carl craig, kenny dixon jnr and the mysterious "m. king" (anybody?). even where sherard ingram gets sole production and writing credit (as on "nebula") craig and ingram show their hand with mixing credit, addl keyb, edits, etc (and on an album as stuffed with production minutiae as this one, that's not an insignificant credit).

ironic then, that for a team effort, so much of the album revolves around depopulated spaces of social relations. conventional wisdom runs that the "techno" in "techno" refers to the nonhuman or antihuman aspects of its twitchy machine rhythms (snicker!). "detroit techno", while it gets a sort of a free pass here as the accepted "soulful" variant of real techno, is still regarded as concerned with the posthuman possibilities of space travel and technology. urban tribe's collapse of modern culture is the gleaming tip of an iceberg, a third way for techno, the high point of intelligent techno practice based on an (ostensible) exporation of inward-looking and backward-looking social practice.

the feathery drums, vangelis-esque synth and elegaic repose of tracks like "at peace with concrete" and "decades of silicon" hark back to derrick may's "relics" and the black dog's obsession with classical artifacts ("kings of sparta", "the crete that crete made", and, oh, a million other tracks). the reggae-flavored caribbean lope of "low berth" ducks and weaves like a ship on stormy seas, grounding craig and ingram's composition (compare to late-period drexciya's sometimes unconvincing flights of fancy) much as classical asian tunings underpin ken ishii's avant-garde practice. what tracks like "sophistry","lap top", "transaction" and "cultural nimrod" lack in dynamic drum programming, they make up for in rapturous textures that invite contemplation and meditation, recalling the b12's "scriptures" and "silicone gardens", as one's "reflections" and "shambhala", steve pickton's optimistic dreams for stasis and inspiration.

this is not the techno of juan atkins and drexciya. we are not waging lonely imaginary war on the military industrial. we're not looking to hitch a ride out of this damaged cluster. we are already space travelers, the alien astronaut of kc flightt's planet e, landed on earth and looking back at ourselves through a distanced lens.

urban tribe differs sharply from this company, though, in the pervasive sense of unease that shoots through much of the album. the dreamy humanism of most UK techno and much detroit techno is as dated as the early blue note fusion albums, late silver age sci-fi (first hints of new wave creeping in, without the creepiness) and modernist architecture (saarinen & niemeyer & etc) that inform the aesthetic. while UK heads seemed to be thrilling over the possibilities of connection, of global chronological harmonisations of the likemind-ed, sherard ingram was finding roads that traveled, apparently, to nowhere.

"d2000" - the track most resembling a collabo track, with it's strong uptempo KDJ moodymann vibes - blends sampled party chatter into a thick layer of glutinous muck, while laidback house snares and hats clatter above. the euphoric, yeah, except towards the end the beat twists itself into an awkward corner, while the first figure of the sort-of-call-and-response string refrain goes unanswered, ending the track on a moody, unresolved note. the trick is reprised for the glossy surface of "daytime TV", a track formed from overlapping voices, echoing dub-spatially into unintelligibility (ed note: it is 2:45 AM - am i there yet?). in these cases, human relations are represented by an shifting and uncertain sonic surface.

my favourite tracks are the astounding "human genome project", "micro machines" and "social theorist". in the first, wildly phased breakbeats run like droplets of mercury, swarming together and merging into a buzzy pulse which threatens the poignant synth lines (so wispy and tenuous it's like it's evaporating off the speakers) the titular nanomachines of "micro machines" are represented by a busy whir and hum of tiny 909 hi-hat, which build in urgency and intensity, eventually overrunning the stoned tone poem ingram is plucking out on bass and keys. "social theorist" revolves around the dubbed-out clack of billiard balls, wandering around the soundstage over a muted murmuring. are we theorizing implacable cause-and-effect of newton's cradle, or hume's existential dread?

so, where are we? oh yeah, detroit techno's like, not just about things, it's about people, you know? and if collapse of modern culture was a person, he'd be a ~~tall dark and handsome~~ a mysterious, moody, difficult sort of dude. cause he's all about culture, and tribes, and the collapse thereof and so on. none of which would be all that impressive if he weren't a) so damn handsome and b) so damn right about everything that was going on. i'm not talking merely about the collapse of culture at large - which is what everybody is talking about all the time, sort of, in one way or another - but the collapse of detroit/intelligent techno, as a musical culture.

collapse of modern culture is pretty much the last great intelligent techno release. as such, it basically marks the end of the detroit tradition. at around this time, the major detroit players start to fade into the background. meanwhile the UK players move en masse into the west london broken beat sound, the continental europeans embrace stale drexciya-isms and fractured carl craig atmospherics. in each case, the impulse is to treat detroit techno as a sort of ready-made to be plundered. stalwart crews like UR are reduced to flogging the same rhythmic tricks to death ("vintage future", indeed!) or attempting to recapitulate old hits ("inspiration", "jaguar"). for awhile, the (not really) new school sound of theo parrish and kenny dixon captures everyone's attention. their sound is exciting enough, and well-crafted enough, to ignore the tough facts: KDJ and parrish have displaced one anxiety of influence with another. sensing an exhaustion of detroit's possibilities, they dip back into the well of soul and r&b, shoehorning these readymades into the awkwardly rigid (yet functional!) beat structures of detroit techno - to still-thrilling effect, i might add.

detroit techno, in 1998, had found itself in the same position jungle had a few years earlier. having worked on ferociously hard at perfected its conception of itself for years, it found it could go in anywhere it wanted to, except forward.

so where does techno go, when it needs to turn inward?

ritual damage - the practice of deliberately bending, smashing or otherwise damaging an object before it was offered to the gods was a widespread phenomenon in antiquity. it occurred in the classical world, where pots were broken in shrines, as for example at the sanctuary of hera at samos ... the idea seems to have been that by damaging an object ... the worshipper was consecrating it and rendering it appropriate as an offering to the powers of the supernatural

the interesting thing about this idea, and i've noted not too many texts make any mention of it (though i guess maybe it's obvious, or taken for granted in context) is the idea that the supernatural is not separate, but rather immanent in the world. so this is what you do. faced with the thought of making offerings before perfection, you stress your creation, smear it into haziness. the most successful artists working in the detroit idiom, post-detroit, have taken this to heart. the ann aimee label is a particularly good example. alex cortex didn't bother with naming the 24 tracks on his album, CiM's album, while nominally more approachable by the inclusion of track titles, traffics in the same sketchbook vibe, offering a wealth of 2-to-3 minute tracks that somehow transmute loose composition and unfinished edges into hazy, soft-focus perfection.

anyway.

this is like the term paper that refuses to die. i've ritually damaged my brain trying to pour out everything that is good about this album. tomorrow, i'll step back, add a postscript, and throw some mp3s at you, as a prize for reading.

For Starters #01: Blaze

2005-08-04T10:37:00.000-07:00

(Just Blaze, black and free -- with bonus white guys)

01. Blaze - "How Deep Is Your Love" (Life Line, 2001)
02. Blaze - "Lovelee Dae" (Playhouse, 1998)
03. Blaze Presents Sheila Slappy - "Love Comes Around" (Simplex, 1996)
04. Blaze Presents A Moment in Time - "So Thankful" (Shelter, 2002)
05. Blaze Presents The Ghost of Norman Harris - "Love Is the Message" (Love Line, 1993)
06. Blaze Presents Shelter Skelter - "Tell Me Something Good" (Wansel Wand, 1993)
07. Cassio Ware - "Baby Love" (Easy Street, 1992)
08. Blaze Presents Blaze - "Sweet Thing (Danny Krivit Re-Edit)" (Roc Meets Rambis, 1991)
09. Blaze Presents Cassioware f/ Sajaeda - "Fantasy" (Shelter, 1994)
10. Blaze - "If You Should Need a Friend" (Quark, 1987)

Actually, this is more like a guide to Blaze minus hand-percussion overloads. 01: A lot closer to Level 42 than the Bee Gees. 02: Only remotely like Bill Withers; brings great mists of purification as much as Pepe Bradock's "Deep Burnt." 03: Closer to Herb Alpert than Donald Byrd & 125th Street NYC. 04: Cynic kryptonite. 05: Exactly like MFSB. 06: More Upchurch/Tennyson than Rufus/Chaka. 07: Closer to Bernard Wright featuring Robert Owens than Diana Ross & the Supremes. 08: More Rufus/Chaka than Mary/Puffy. 09: More Loose Ends than Earth, Wind & Fire. 10: Jamie Principle after stalker rehab.

From Me 2 U, or Eastern Europeans Really Luv Drumfunk

2005-08-03T19:29:00.000-07:00

A ton of nu-d&b mixes most out in leftfield (Paradox features heavily, as he usually does). I can't vouch for most of them, having only been able to download a couple (cue tiny prehistoric bird running on wheel inside my computer: "eh, it's a living") but the tracklistings make me all covetous.

Headz Up

2005-08-02T15:09:00.000-07:00

Though my heart will always belong to Reinforced, I am often tempted to say the greatest drum & bass label is Metalheadz. You cannot fuck with the first 27 or so Metalheadz releases. If you try to argue this with me, I will just give you The Eye and ask you to get off my premises. If you are not as married to the idea of drum & bass as simply a poorly EQ'd "Amen" and a "Sleng Teng" bassline, if you don't wholly disdain maturation into "drum & bass" (I go back and forth), then Hidden Agenda's "Get Carter" and "Dispatches EP", Doc Scott's "Unofficial Ghost" and "Drumz 95" and "Far Away", Adam F's "Metropolis", Optical's "To Shape The Future", Dillinja's "The Angels Fell" and "Jah Know Ya Big" and "Armored D", even "Pulp Fiction" - these are your anthems. (There is something to be said for growing up. I don't miss those zits at all.)

You all make fun of Goldie. I have seen your snickering faces and heard your hurtful words. Ingrates. Okay, fine. He does act a bit of the buffoon at times with his shitty movie roles, journalistic punch-ups, and prog ambitions. (He has never, to my knowledge, worn a cape.) But despite all those moments where his reach exceeds his grasp, he has never abandoned the scene. Metalheadz has been a strong - if intermittent - club presence in London since they formed. I like how Goldie is still responsible for what gets signed, not leaving it to his underlings. And despite both his and the label's name cache, they are still a resolutely underground operation. Hell, even Dischord advertises. Instead Metalheadz releases retain that hushed, word-of-mouth aura they had even at the beginning, allowing word to filter through the usual channels of specialist mag reviews and shop tipsheets, etc.

True, like most d&b labels these days it's a bit hit & miss. (I can probably name four perfectly curated labels at the moment, all of which have less than twenty releases under their belt. After 25 seems to be when it all goes a bit willy-nilly.) The best you can say about recent singles by Commix and Beta 2 is that they're decent DJ tools, which sounds like more of a diss than it really is. But the last 18 months have seen good-to-great singles by Amit, Bad Company, Outrage, Klute, and even Goldie himself. (Amazingly using the same "Terminator"-era sounds and timbres after more than a decade. The man likes his mentasms.) THe mid-tempo rumblist, throat-hugging frequencies of Amit's "Motherland" and the neon-streaked Shinjuku night train deepness of BC's "Bellini" (named after the Kids In The Hall character??) almost convince me. And then they go and release a record like Hive's "Krush," something as good as anything they've ever released, only in 2005 not 1995.

From those opening oooh, skycraping synths with orgasmic (in the "touched by a variety of religious experience" sense not the sexual one) male "ohhhh"s to the squealing trumpet spiraling upwards to the Organized Konfusion sample to the grinding mentasm breakdown and deftly (but not overly) chopped roll-out, this is worthy of anything in the Source Direct/Hidden Agenda era, but beefed up on the post-Bad Company workout plan. The drums really slam, but they also shake, rattle, and stop on a dime. And admit it, when those same nape-licking synths come in at the bridge, you love it, none--more-expected-none-more-effective. It's, for whatever it's worth, my fave d&b single of the year so far. I seriously don't think anyone can fuck with the Violence crew right now.

Speaking of which: other signs of life in the weird hinterlands between leftfield and mainstream. The definition of mainstream in d&b keeps getting pushed back on both sides, one towards really rote "liquid" (aka "disco-house @ 180bpm") and towards "dancefloor smashers" like the most recent Wickaman single, approaching such crazy, nuclear holocaust levles of droppage that they're gabba in all but name. It's probably a mark of both that and my own dropped defenses towards stuff that doesn't explicitly define itself as leftfield that I've been able to explore the catalogs of people like DJ Fresh and Pendulum. Both of whom have a ton to recommend of themselves. (If I ever get my Irish up, I'll finish my stalled love letter to Fresh.) Like weird breakdowns and tight percussion editing and strange bass frequencies, but delivered with a big, fat, cheesy rave hook aimed at the faithful boyracers on the floor. (Fresh is something like the Marc Acardipane of nu-d&b.) (This stuff is also so sparklingly produced it feels unnatural.)

The problem is that DJ's still mix this stuff as if the pitch control on their turntables were busted, soomthing out all the breakdowns, turning it into an xtreme sports soundtrack or maybe an Iowa meth lab. So, weirdly, individual tracks and albums (of all things) are the way to go. The recent label comp from Dylan and Technical Itch's Tech Freaks is storming neo-techstep, taking off from early Dom & Roland, No U Turn, and stuff like "The Unoffical Ghost". Though they chop up breaks, instead of Inperspective's endless edits, they punctuate a three or four bar loop with a flash of grainy snares or nasty kicks. (The difference is immediately apparent when the Paradox begins breaking beats across the bar line.) Even better is the new comp from the Violence crew, Keaton, Hive, and Gridlok (plus guests), Welcome To Violence. I'm gonna talk about this one more in this month's Pitchfork column, but it's farking great. Even the neurofunky tracks.

u r a doofus

2005-08-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

I can never tell if Nick is making this shit up, but:

"I really hate when people call it dance music," says Safer. "It sounds like some dilettante shit, like 'He's kind of an arty guy.' My mind's searching for the synonym...footworthy? It's still footworthy."

i have a real post for later tonight.

RUMBLED

2005-07-29T19:39:00.000-07:00

Got an email from Kid Kameleon today informing/reminding (I really do not recall if I was cognizant of this...probably somewhere on some deep lizard-brain level) me that he is part of something also called Beat Research, spearheaded by DJ C and DJ Flack of Mashit. First off, no infringement should be implied on our parts; all respect to C and Flack. When yr excited to start a project and groping around in the dark for a name, you sometimes go for the first thing that comes to mind. (If http://houseisafeeling.blogspot.com hadn't already been taken, this would be a non-issue.)

But! He didn't seem to be too mad. In fact, apparently our baby steps waffle here has inspired them to go all Super Friends and form their own group blog, called, RiddimMethod, comprising:

Wayne
Ripley
DJ C
Dj Flack
Pacey
Kid Kameleon

IN ANY EVENT: if anyone above wants us to change the URL here, just holler and thy will be done. And again, all respect to mashit, beat research, and the post-toneburst diaspora.

lifetime achievement award

2005-07-27T21:37:00.000-07:00

just now starting to get my head around smagghe's fabric 23. give it a month, people will be going off, "best fabric disc since akufen!", or some equivalent nonsensical construction. you'll hear the following words quite a bit: dark, moody, acidic, gothy, synth, italo. you'll note that goes not so far towards explaining the gap between this unstoppable burner of a mix disc and smagghe's suck my deck! mix.

let's leave aside the juvenalia - how to kill the DJ is a "back to mine" with pretensions, death disco was so firmly fixated on the past it could've (should've?) come out on soul jazz. the difference smacks you in the face as soon as you put the disc in - great sick waves of undulating low-end. suck my deck promised "murder was the bass", but ultimately, it was a tease. aside from chelonis' crowd-pleasing "the rush" (sing it, robots: THE RRRRRUSH!) the bass was mostly missing. we got stiffed with prissy dx7 basslines or sawtooths filtered high up into midrange riffs.

for a sec, it looked like smagghe was out of step. as tim pointed out yesterday, just in time for summer everything's gone all thick and muggy. you've got isolee's squelch-gasmic "cardiology" remix, dub kult's subterannean groanings, booka shade's penchant for wobbly-boom. maybe it's the gradual-bleeding in of the gloppy'n'glutinous micro-crew (your areals and alter egos, especially) and their smeary sensibility. maybe it's a need to consolidate gains - when it's crunch time, when everyone smells a buck in the electro/micro/minimal, even billions-selling trance djs like howells and sasha and digweed, it's time to pull back to what you do.

but YOU KNOW ALL THIS, right? i'm just taking my shot at summing-up the electronic moment, and the electronic moment, as we all well know, is all about riffage. so who wins the lifetime achievement? NO, it's not vitalic. we're talking lifetime here. NO, not daft punk - though you're close! not marc acardiapane, not joey "speicher owes me money" beltram. the lifetime achievement award goes to...

cause i have my finger on the pulse of dance music, and that pulse is FLAT BEAT. cause unless you're a hardcore conneiseur of 16th note hihat you'll start to drift off every few minutes during fabric 23 - until, that is, those thick scuzzy two-note bass pulses come booming back. cause FLAT BEAT is one of the few 90s dance tracks that still blows up the indie disco / electrohouse dancefloor (the others are "around the world", "jump'n'shout" and ... uh ... "firestarter"?). cause the new sound of electrohouse is not clean-like-a-coke-mirror, it's hairy, funky, crunky, fig-shaped (big bottomed), lizard-brain grippin a fat hotdog with its lips business.

in lieu of acceptance speech (bear with me here) a few words on behalf of our nonverbal fuzzy buddy. what sort of oiseaux is he? no idea, though big servings of nasty faecal overstuffed foie gras seem to be crucial to the aesthetic. where did he come from? again, haven't the slightest. daft punk? well, perhaps out of deference to chicago OGs they seem to take their basslines in the form of 4/4 808 thump or sampladelic punchline. that said, the closest precedent may be the punk's "oh yeah", 2.5 minutes of 3rd-quarter OMG WTF that suggests a way out for producers stuck for a lack of rhythmic tricks: when in doubt, 'fro it out. pump that Monophonic Shit until there's nothing left but Smoking Tape. let's all make mistakes.

ps - the other hot "french touch" ticket for the winter is going to be The New French Glitchcore thing. y'know, Jackson, Choc Rock, TTC, France Copland and other shit. warp and planet mu and the rest of the IDM culture vultures are going to try to sell you on these guys like it's the second coming of the prefuse aesthetic. cause that's the sort of lame hegemony-tricks stale IDM labels like to play. like our aphex twin? you'll love our brothomstates and chris clark. be sure to grab some team shadetek and max tundra on the way out, k? but don't be fooled, yeah? you and i know that the goliath that casts it shadow over the overripe, messy, farty borderlands between electro, micro and glitch is three feet tall!!!!!!!!

Amen, My Brother

2005-07-27T20:27:00.000-07:00

One of the big (unspoken) differences between "traditional" house and electrohouse/microhous is the presence of the Big Guy, our lord and savior (or someones), Jesus Christ. There is no analogue for Jesus in the Euro-house continuum. (Can you name even one major European house tune that features J-boogie?) Even the more "mystical" or "spiritual" house from the UK and the continent (your broken beats, your Jazzanovas) is content to opt for a kind of middling, deity-free spiritualism, a self-actualization poster set to music.

This is obviously because European Christianity lacks that (let's not be coy) Black evangelical edge-of-hysteria delivery that stretches back to Sylvester and disco and soul right down to Mahalia and Sister Rosetta and the Staples themselves. It's hard for me to imagine an Anglican hymn being set to that prostate thumping beat and it being the same. Just like there's no subsitute for going into the revival tent, there's no substitute for an ecstatic religious house record on the floor. Even when it's nothing special, there's something about that canned uplift that's just undeniable. Which is how you get records like Glen Lewis feat. Mojo and Bongani's (oh, those names!) "Life Everlasting (Dennis Ferrer Vocal Mix)".

This record isn't even that good. It starts with the kind of lush pads and synth sweeps that instantly win me over, the kind of thing this music can give you and nothing else can. It's got bongos, people. Bongos! (You keep wincing for a flute that never comes.) There's a very traditional (black) male vocal hymning the joys of love from above and a multitracked chorus extolling the everlasting life. You can not imagine James Murphy covering it. Nor can you imagine Black Strobe remixing it. It is completely unfashionable in almost every way. And that's even before the fake preacher monologue at the end. (And I'm not talking fire-and-brimstone preachin like Green Velvet's "The Preacher," either. I'm talkin we-are-gpnna-make-it-to-the-promised-land-if-we-just-believe.)

I am a lapsed Catholic-turned-agnositc. The only thing that keeps me from being an athiest is humility. There was never any tug between agony and ecstacy when I was growing up. It was just the agony. Church was not about singing and clapping and call-and-response unity. It was about hardwood pews with no cushions on the kneelers. It was about tuneless moaning in a montone that would make Lou Reed blush. It was about sin and rapped knuckles and "it'll fall off if you keep thinking those thoughts." So even though I am going to hell because I haven't been saved. And even though I am neither black nor hispanic nor gay and instead am white and male and middle-class and therefore afflicted with the kind of problems a lot of people would love to have. I still feel the pull. When I think about all those years devoted to religion, all I can think is that I got gyped. I still want that experience. And this stuff is still the closest I've ever gotten.

2005-07-27T05:26:00.000-07:00

Everybody Must Get Stoned

My new favorite house record is Benny Blanko's 8 Ft. In The Air, released on Playhouse in 2004 to what I can only surmise was no press. There's only two mentions of it on ILM, one of which is a huge DJ Martian posting of that week's new releases at Forced Exposure. The other is Vahid's offhand recommendation that it's the best album Playhouse had released in the last 18 months. I didn't search for the number of Villalobos threads.

Even though I don't necessarily agree with him, I can understand Vahid's distrust/distate for the "Villalobos axis". It's abstracted "stoner house" into a kind of undancable autism. I grew to love (or at least respect) the last Villalobos record with him, find something to grasp in a track like "Miami" with its gnomic drum scrapings and powerfully physically bass that nonetheless lacks any kind of forward momentum. It's "listening house." I hestitate to call it IDM, but it's more like "electronic music drawing its pallette from house" than club music.

Villalobos is clearly a big draw on the club circuit (you know, when he can bother to shake himself out of his drug stupor and actually show up), and the sets I've heard have been very physical, very "big". (In one he drops M83's "Run Into Flowers" over a stomping house beat, not the Jackson clicking and popping remix, to transform it into the E anthem it always wanted to be.) But we're talking albums. And sometimes, even at home, I want a little something to bite into rather than just staring into space and goggling at those schools of scattering fish he seems to coax from his sampler.

The Blanko album is "micro-house" I guess, but it harkens back to the late 90's definition, all those early Motorbass records and Theo Parrish splitting the difference between tech- and deep-house. Pointilist jazz house. Big fat globs of Rhodes that have been rolled around in dirt and gravel. Dusty breaks. A raw, broken, bleary sound, that nonetheless oozes a fat, warm low-end. Moodymann rip-off business. Soul vocals instead of camp German spoken word. Gentle enough that you can play it as you go to bed as it is quietly physical enough that you can crank it up to drown out the air conditioner noise and dance around your living room, at least until your neighbors bang on the walls but fuck 'em, you're sick of their reggaeton and you're moving anyway.

Bearded Scandinavian Disco Revolutions!

2005-07-27T04:06:00.000-07:00

Sometime ago on ILM on an LCD Soundsystem thread I remember growling "how much further can we take this macho-isation of disco? perhaps we can make disco into hard techno if we really try". The fact I am now writing a blog post about a disco record with men dressed up as boxers does not necessarily prove I was right to wonder, but I still think it's an interesting area.

Certainly post LCD Soundsystem and post-Murphy, as we now are by several years, there's a rapidly growing stoic respect for disco, in most electronic music circles. In a way it's offputting, when I jeered "perhaps we can make disco into hard techno if we really try" I was simply pointing out the dangers of removing the pop from dance music, the awful rockism that ensues, and the inevitably dull scenes and tunes.

At ground level as it were, there are more young guys I know than ever before asking about italo-disco, and hell even playing it. Robotnick is as big a draw in Dublin as anybody these days. I think for the electrohouse set today, knowing your italo is kind of considered a must, and I don't think it'll be long before EBM goes the same way. I do wonder to what extent this trend for studied retrospection was and is mirrored by those deep house fans who all like old soul and disco of the more organic variety, (I like to think of that as "loveboat disco" as opposed to say, "spaceship disco"!). I would speculate that revivalism is bigger now, in dance, than ever before, hardly a radically new idea, in fact it seems a general consensus has descended which says that "dance music" the genre really is beginning to set its ideologies and legends in stone, unashamedly.

It's fitting then (and fucking typical!), at this point in time, that a rock band like LCD Soundsystem should emerge as being prissy and precious about disco! I mean come on guys, you WEREN'T there in 1986 on that beach in Ibiza were you? If you were you sure kept your mouth shut for all these years. There's just something unsettling about the direction this reverence could take us in, for me. I mean do we really want house or disco conceptually, to one day become like "soul", in that crushing overbearing yuppy way? This is why the more vulgarity, childishness, disgusting sex drums and lack of Murphyist approaches to production in dancefloor music we have the better. I say more prolific artists and less auteurs. And I say all this having seen LCD deliver a scintillating liveset at Glastonbury, complete with a live band version of "Throw" by Paperclip People, a cover version which was inspiring on the day but really isn't in the context of this argument.

So the likes of Prins Thomas (above) and his cohort Hans Peter Lindstrom fit into this argument as the the actual desirable revival, they have a kooky wacky anonymity about them and they're not going to become rock's great new ego overnight, thank god. Also they may never release an album, nor will you have to read about whether they sound like the Fall or Talking Heads, no matter how popular they get. Aside from all this, their music is fantastic, they make wonky wacky disco, sometimes sounding like cosmic italo, and sometimes sounding like music you'd play to a classroom of kids for them to march to. And they're absolutely retro, but it's not an ostentatious jacket of retrospection with a million fucking badges on it, just a revival of a sound they like on some 1000 selling 12s with scrawny beardey dudes pretending to have boxing matches on the cover.

Isn't that real disco tradition?

Deep Forest

2005-07-26T21:35:00.000-07:00

Two wondrous, gorgeous slices of angelic alien-disco that have been occupying my thoughts all through this half-year just gone: one is I:Cube’s “Vacuum Jackers” which you can find on Chicken Lips’ Clicks, Acid & Disco mix, which I don’t propose to talk about here except to acknowledge its greatness in passing. The other is Manhead’s “Doop (Reverso 68 Mix)”, which was the flip of a track a DJ at a record store played me in an attempt to lure me into a purchase (12 inch in question being Manhead’s The Italians E.P.). Said DJ was surprised when I showed more interest in this one: “Oh, that slow track, yeah that’s okay” he admitted somewhat dismissively, with an almost petulant edge to his voice.

Reverso 68 productions (and never mind Manhead; the remixers are the star here) do have a sort of lethargic, sluggish feel to them, not too far away from Metro Area or other neo-disco exponents in their anti-perspirant kick/handclap lassitude. But whereas this particular approach tends to signify a kind of anti-rave, pro-club elite refinement (and I say that with the recognition that this approach can often be a very productive one), Reverso 68 seem to be in tune with another sort of vibe: BALEARIC. Oh yeah, I know there’s not much difference between the two if we take “Balearic” to mean spinning Woodentops tracks for Paul Oakenfeld and his friends on a beach in Ibiza in 1986. But what I always got out of the idea of Balearic was that its eclecticism was sort of false or precarious: surely the point of it was that if the E was good enough it all sounded like house music anyway??

For me Balearic is shorthand for a special brand of dance music eclecticism, where the self-conscious diversity and obscurantism is somehow dissolved into a “don’t fight it, feel it” love of house as some sort of universal panacea, the beat that your heart makes. Think 808 State’s “fourth world” fusionism, or the multi-layered percussive prog of the better Hardkiss stuff. Actually “Doop (Reverso 68 Mix)” is quite close to both of those, if you imagine their lofty ambitions and simple techniques filtered through the last ten years of sound design. The layers of wobbly synth patterns and quavering cumulus clouds of simply indescribable squiggly sounds parade a production flair as nuanced as Isolee (whose remix of Recloose’s “Cardiology” is in a similar realm of deep forest beauty), while simultaneously creating a sense of humidity, a warm torpid heaviness that makes everything feel a little bit too bright, too intense. But Reverso 68 know how to keep it simple when they need to: halfway through the tune breaks down to just a simple kick/clap rhythm over an insistent bass pulse, like you’ve penetrated to the heart of the rainforest to find a sacred grove. Then a bustling hi-hat pattern drifts in, then some tense, clipped Chic guitar strumming and a stompy bongo, and then you’re off again into the deepest recesses of the jungle.

I had been wondering why the Doop remix was so familiar sounding to me, at least, beyond simply being the music I must have dreamt of in utero. Turns out it was included on Cassius’s nu french house Muzik magazine mix almost two years ago, a cd that became one of many casualties when I moved out of a share house at the time. This ruins all my plans to name this the house track of the year, but luckily Reverso 68 just remixed The Juan Maclean’s “Tito’s Way” into similarly smeary starlit fabulousness – capturing that exact same "walking along the beach with a pina colada… on Mars!! (ON ACID!!!)" kind of vibe, i.e. that same effortless ability to inspire breathless clichéd declarations from yours truly.

Now that they’ve gotten on a DFA 12 inch, there’s a small chance that Reverso 67 will get attention from people into that DFA sound, which is kinda what they’ve secretly been fuckin’ with all along – indeed this could easily have slotted onto that DFA Compilation #2 release alongside stuff like Black Leotard Front (and still would have been a peak track). Such exposure would be both nice and somewhat ironic, as it turns out the guys behind this project have formerly been deeply involved in Café Del Mar and other such bastions of tasteless tastefulness – and maybe it’s the amorphous values of languorous islander ambiance such projects espouse which gives their sound its uniqueness.

It would be easy to reject this stuff on that very basis, but I find that the opposite is the case: part of the enjoyment with this track is that Reverso 68 do tread so close to edge of transglobal bad taste – sashaying on the border between deep forest and Deep Forest – and so close to undermining the reflected glory of all the more palatable historical reference points you might care to draw – Arthur Russell? Liquid Liquid? Talking Heads circa Remain In Light? Partly as well because it’s an enjoyably counter-intuitive experience to witness this particular vibe emerging from within that large interzone we may as well call electro-house – the sound of a scene producing its conceptual opposite (to hear a more conventional mediation of electro-house and Café Del Mar, check their remix of Bent’s “Comin’ Back”, which sounds like Rex the Dog at an afternoon beach party). Mostly though it’s because this stuff makes me suspect that dance music has some unfinished business in the hippy-dippy department; that after almost half a decade of cocaine and haircuts, we might be ready for another dose of tanned skin and PLUR.

office politics

2005-07-25T19:08:00.000-07:00

Plum Drank: heres what it should be called
Plum Drank: YOUR GUIDE TO ELECTRONICA, TRIP-HOP AND ILLBIENT
Plum Drank: i like 100 bpm and up
Plum Drank: but not 'house is a feeling'
Jess: LIKE THE 90's NEVER ENDED
Plum Drank: HEY JESS
Plum Drank: DID YOU SEE DJ SPOOKY IN THE NEW URB
Plum Drank: HES WORKING WITH THE DUB PISTOLS
Jess: COME BACK BUBBA, ALL IS FORGIVEN
Plum Drank: SNEAKER PIMPS CENTRAL

2005-07-25T15:53:00.000-07:00

This is a group blog about dance music. The boundaries about what constitutes "dance music" are pretty fluid (hence our cheesy name), and though we are all amenable to the "anything you can dance to is dance music" line of reasoning, you will probably not be reading much about AC/DC or Vybz Kartel or Faith Evans. (I am resisting using a phrase like "post-acid house" because someone will eventually contradict it, but, at least in terms of the time frame, it's post-1985 all the way.) There may be mp3's from time to time, but let's not be greedy. We hope you enjoy it.