I always loved ghetto house, cut-up disco house, UK breakbeat music and hip hop. So when I was working at Berlin‘s Hard Wax store and the first footwork releases from Chicago hit the shelves I fell in love with it instantly. So many styles and samples and sounds I thought I was familiar with were in there, but the way they were used was crazy and fresh, particularly in connection with the rhythms that seemed to be all over the place, yet completely locked you in.
Over the years I gathered a digital collection of footwork and juke, but as I am still playing vinyl in clubs, most of it was only for my ears. But then I decided to get creative with it and do some digital mixes. The result is this, my favourite tunes spread out over twelve sets. The selection is really subjective and quite determined by my fascination with how especially disco and soul was sampled in this field, but there are other styles in there as well.
Heavee x H.E.R. – Could’ve Been
DJ Diamond – Ready Motherfucker
Traxman – See Things My Way
Elmoe – Lost And Found
DJ Rashad – Well Well Well
DJ Earl – Y U Do Dat
Taso Teklife – Spell On You VIP
Traxman – Elements Of Style
Traxman – Know Da Truth
Sirr TMO THANKYOUGOD9999 – Come Into Knowledge
DJ Earl – Souf Side Daydream
Sirr TMO THANKYOUGOD9999 – Don’t Look Away
Sirr TMO THANKYOUGOD9999 – Unforgettable
EQ Why – Just 2 Good
DJ Earl & King Agee – Scared 2 Come Outside
DJ Wicked – Thoughts (Flame 2022)
EQ Why & Cuenique – P.O.M.
DJ Earl & King Agee – New Pack Landed
EQ Why – When It’s This Good
Traxman – Setbacks
DJ Earl & King Agee – F**ck Da Haterz
DJ Manny – Hard Drive
Sirr TMO THANKYOUGOD9999 – Metropolis
DJ Tre – My Cry
DJ Clent – Let Me Hit And Freak
DJ Earl – Woke Up
EQ Why – 17 Inside
Cuenique – Some Problemz
EQ Why – Chilling
DJ Oreo – Rocket Man Stevie Intro
Comfort Noise – Don’t Hold Back
Heavee – Show’s Over
DJ Earl & King Agee – Turn My Musik Up
Traxman – Too High (Over Da Edge Funk Rework)
DJ Rashad, Tripletrain & DJ Spinn – Pass That
Traxman – Lady In My Life (Mics Supa Rework)
DJ Oreo – Call Your Name (Imma Call You)
DJ Oreo – Rocket Man Stevie (I Still Love You)
DJ Rome – Show Me
Traxman – U Taken Me
EQ Why – Count Me Out
DJ Manny – Where Are You
Sirr TMO THANKYOUGOD9999 – See You In The Morning
DJ Phil – Get Over
Traxman – Zang Ga Zoo
EQ Why & DJ MC – We Got Grandz (Street Mix)
DJ Rashad – Walk For Me
EQ Why – Juke Signs
EQ Why – Don’t Come Back Hot
Traxman – We Can Go Anywhere
EQ Why – How Do You
Jana Rush – Old Skool
Cuenique – It’s A Revolution
DJ Acey – Blue Light (Fallin’)
DJ Earl – Freak Da Beat
DJ Clent – Saturday Luv
DJ Clent – Strings Of My Life
Traxman – Goddest!!!
EQ Why – I Keep Wild Wild (No Wild Wild)
Sirr TMO THANKYOUGOD9999 – What’s Yo Phone Numba
Traxman – With Each Beat
Traxman – Toast To Da Foolz
Dj.Mc – Payback Is A Dog
DJ Clent – Piece Of My Mind
Curren$y – Don’t Miss This Jet (DJ Earl Remix)
DJ Rashad x DJ Spinn x Taso – Nothin’s Gonna Stop Me
Although acid house exports provided the sound blueprints for Second
Summer of Love in the late 80s, the rawness of the US originals often
did not really match the ecstasy fuelled day-glo hedonism that was
sweeping UK clubland. Of course the pioneering tracks from Chicago,
Detroit and New York had the same huge impact in English clubs as
they had in Continental Europe, and the American originators brought
music that was informed by no less aspiring ambitions, but it was
also often produced on the equipment that you could afford in
problematic social environments, and its initial target group was
more local, and on another street level than the almost proverbial
MDMA hugs between football hooligans or other thugs and the dancers
they were previously beating up. But UK pop and club culture had
interpreted outside influences into something more pop before and
sent it back, as it had happened with the British Invasion in the 60s
and lovers rock in the 70s, and house, and particularly acid house,
was no exception. In the UK, some clever people not only heard a
difference, they also understood that it had potential far beyond
that. Just a new, small and dedicated scene at first, but maybe more.
Or even much more.
Baby
Ford seemed to have a very clear vision of what was missing for the
music to really cross over and reach such potential, and with his
first promising releases from 1988 up to his first album „Fordtrax“
he brilliantly merged inspirations from Larry Heard, Derrick May or
Todd Terry with a knowledgeable pop sensibility. But in contrast to
other successful London cohorts of the Rhythm King label like Bomb
The Bass, S‘Express, The Beatmasters, and Coldcut on their label
Ahead Of Our Time, he did not succumb almost entirely to the charms
of the wild days of sampling, instead aiming more for his own
musicianship than a wild collage of references with a beat. And in
contrast to Manchester artists like 808 State and A Guy Called
Gerald, who achieved a similarly distinctive sound, he was ready,
willing and able to sing as well, and he implied his sense of humour.
Be it „Ooochy Koochy“ or „Chikki Chikki Aah Aah“, his music
was catchy and smart, but instrumental gems like „Fordtrax“
already proved that he knew how to arrange and set a mood. He seemed
to make fine use of his influences as much as he made them his own,
and he established a mini-canon of his own work in which his ideas
naturally referred to each other.
Already a year later his second album „’Ooo’ The World Of Baby
Ford“ aimed considerably higher. There are variations of „Fordtrax“
material but in a different, more mellow mood („Milky Tres / Chikki
Chikki Aah Aah“). Which is perfectly ok if your source material is
good enough to be reinterpreted in such a short time. Other tracks
like „Let‘s Talk It Over“ or „The World Is In Love“ have a
similar mood, somehow as urban as pastoral, sublime and full of hope.
„Beach Bump“ or „A Place Of Dreams & Magic“ are more over
the top, reviving the camp fun of „Oochy Koochy“ and other
livelier tracks he made before. And then there are tracks that hint
at the idea of this album as a continuation of gone but yet still
lasting UK youth cultures. In terms of music „Poem For Wigan“ and
„Wigan“ have not much in common with the 70s northern soul haven
Wigan Casino (or the Jazz Funk and later Electro played at Wigan Pier
club by its resident DJ Greg Wilson), but Baby Ford grew up near
Wigan and experienced what happened there, and both tracks have a
sentiment true to the inspiration. You may now flock to other clubs
and dance to other sounds, but the spirit is the same. Else the cover
version of T.Rex‘s „Children Of The Revolution“ is more
obvious, putting the 70s glam rock anthem into the context of the
acid house movement, whose children won‘t be fooled either. It is
time again for the UK youth to rise up against it, and this is how it
sounds. And then the according modern grooves also meet the
modernized version of the hippie era aesthetics that the tabloids and
authorities directly diverted to blame and prosecution. Where there
are loved up messages and melodies, psychedelic colours and a quest
for an alternative way of living, there must be something for society
to fight back, regardless of what you are afraid of in the 60s, 70s,
80s, or the decades to come. Us against them, forever irreconcilable.
This
album captured the revolutionary spirit and joy of that time
perfectly, and it indirectly predicted why it could not last. It was
not widely perceived as a defining statement and Baby Ford did not
become the defining pop star, and he seemed to abandon his bright
ideas soon after. First with the subsequent 1992 album „BFORD9“,
which still had some traces of his prior optimism left, but which
also confrontationally displayed disillusionment, darker topics and
harder sounds, until he reduced his persona and sound more and more,
albeit still with consistently great creative results. Either way,
Baby Ford‘s world may have not been big enough, but you still think
‚Ooo‘ when you think of it.
There is a whole lot of claiming who did what when and where first as far as the origins of house music are concerned, and I do not intend to complicate the matter even further. But Colonel Abrams produced an 8-track tape with Boyd Jarvis and Timmy Regisford as early as 1982 which included this, and a lot of the legendary DJs in New York City and Chicago and beyond were rinsing it. Just saying!
Colonel Abrams – Music Is The Answer (1984, Streetwise)
There is a whole lot of claiming who did what when and where first as far as the origins of house music are concerned, and I do not intend to complicate the matter even further. But Colonel Abrams produced and released this track as early as 1984, and even more of the legendary DJs in New York City and Chicago and beyond were rinsing it. Just saying!
Colonel Abrams – Trapped (1985, MCA)
Still a house prototype, but now he paired his inimatibly determined vocal style with the shoulder pads and fierce dance moves of the day and stormed the charts. It was about time!
Colonel Abrams – Speculation (1985, MCA)
The second hit of his breakthrough and glory year. Handclaps galore and another bold funky groove, mixed by NYC club music protagonist Timmy Regisford.
Colonel Abrams – Over And Over (1985, MCA)
A mighty fine demonstration that Colonel Abrams could well navigate his way beyond punchier dancefloor imperatives. A slick and beautiful R&B ballad, both in tune with other productions of mid 80s post-disco reality, yet still very much him doing the own thing he created.
Colonel Abrams – I’m Not Gonna Let (1985, MCA)
This is basically a sequel to „Trapped“, but not a few people would say it is even more irresistible. I am most probably one of many going out to clubs in the mid 80s who observed this did not go away for a long time, and got them all dancing everytime it was played. And it still does.
Colonel Abrams – How Soon We Forget (1987, MCA)
Only adding a bit of the piano stylings introduced by the Chicago house producers he paved the way for, Colonel Abrams still rode his sound in 1987. Only by then he faced a lot more competiton in terms of club music, and his efforts to satisfy the pop market with slower R&B tracks suffered from the lack of distinctive hits. Sadly he seemed to get lost in the middle and his promising career slowed down considerably. Still, this is up with what led him there in the first place.
Funktion Feat. Colonel Abrams – As Quiet As It’s Kept (Soul Creation, 1993)
After a failed attempt to revive his career as a soul singer on a 1992 album on the Scotti Bros. Label, Colonel Abrams retreated to being a vocal feature for hire on house records throughout the 90s. Even if his voice still stood out as ever, many of said releases were lacking the potential to re-establish him on a level worthy of his beginnings though. Thankfully he found a fitting production counterpart on a string of records he made with the US Garage dons Smack Productions/Mental Instrum. And yes, this is the original template for DJ Dove‘s holy grail „Organized“.
Mental Instrum Feat. C.A. – Should Be Dancin’ (Freetown Inc, 1994)
Another supreme example for the congenial drive and fierceness of the collaborations between Colonel Abrams (his real name actually) and the Smack camp. Eventually there was album compiling their finest moments together, but it also failed to get his career on track again. By this point he settled on guest spots on club music records, or had to, with mixed results. Sadly nobody had the idea to give him the opportunity, team and budget to reinvent himself as the soul singer he should have been, and he vanished from sight in the years to come.
Omar S Presents Colonel Abrams – Who Wrote The Rules Of Love (2011, FXHE Records)
It was one of the most memorable moments of my time working at Berlin‘s Hard Wax record store to discover that Omar S had done this record together with Colonel Abrams after the latter’s several years of silence, and then listening to it, floored by how good it was. In a way his career had gone full circle, with beautiful music produced in way that made both the song and his breathtaking voice shine. I was really sure that this record would not be the last time I ever heard him on a new record, but then it was. I was shocked to learn about the troubles he had, and that they eventually led to him passing away, and I cannot separate this song from his incredibly sad story anymore. But what a song!
In discussion with Steve Fabus on “Let’s Start The Dance” by Hamilton Bohannon (1978).
How did you discover „Let’s Start The Dance“? Was it in a record store, or in a club?
I discovered “Let’s Start the Dance” in my slot at my record pool, BADDA (Bay Area Disco DJ Association) in San Francisco in 1978. It was the album „Summertime Groove“, where „Let’s Start the Dance“ is the first track on side A. When I first heard it I was blown away by it and couldn’t wait to play it at the club that night. When I played it the crowd went crazy and it was the peak record of the night, not surprisingly.
When the record came out, you had already started your career as a DJ in San Francisco. What makes this record so special for you? And was „Let’s Start The Dance“ a defining record for the sound you played back then?
I was playing loft parties and underground clubs and at two of the major clubs in San Francisco, the I-Beam and Trocadero Transfer. I know one of the reasons I was brought into the scene was because I incorporated a lot of the R&B, Groove, Funk and soulful sounds from Chicago and New York and mixed it with the NRG and Electronic sounds already being made in San Francisco, and coming in from Europe. „Let’s Start the Dance“ was and still is a defining record for me because it is such a fusion of so many of these sounds but most importantly — it’s a jam. Its many elements, Jazz, Blues, Rock, Funk, Electronic, Boogie, take you on a trip in a whole movement building up to a crescendo of orgasmic release. It relates to other fusion sounds like the Isley Brothers’ „Live It Up“, Crown Heights Affair’s „Dancin“ and many of James Brown’s tracks.
Hamilton Bohannon was a drummer originally, and he started releasing records that were very focussed on rhythm and very distinctive from the early 70s on. What was his role in the history books of Disco music?
I first heard Bohannon in Chicago in 1975 at Dugan’s Bistro, a major downtown gay club. The track I heard was „Bohannon’s Beat“ which is on one of the early albums on the Dakar label. It stood out to me because it didn’t follow any of the commercial rules of the day. It presented itself as a unique sound — experimental and minimal, a mantra to hook into. It inspired and encouraged DJs to take Disco underground. It was like a loop, a tool to use to improvise, phase or use as a bridge. Mantra is a major theme for Bohannon and he carries it forward with „Let’s Start the Dance“, which is just the opposite of minimal. He turns it up with the full on jam that puts dancers in an intense trance that they have no choice but to ride to its conclusion. It is very rich with a number of instruments played including guitar and keyboard with Carolyn Crawford’s couldn’t-get-any-better-voice. What this record represents to every generation is that this is the real deal musically.
Are there other Bohannon records you rate nearly as much?
My other all time favorite is „The Groove Machine“ – as intense as “Let’s Start the Dance” but trippier with its phased out psychedelic break and its total fusion hard funk rock electronic groove. When I hear this it makes sense that Bohannon early on drummed with Jimi Hendrix. Both “Groove Machine” and “Let’s Start the Dance” feature guitar riffs prominently.
1977 saw the peak of the classic Disco era. Was „Let’s Start The Dance“ an early sign that Disco could live well past the end of that boom? That the sound could move on and still matter?
“Let’s Start the Dance” is timeless because as I had mentioned before it’s a whole movement and jam where you’re hearing real instruments. It always ignites a dancefloor and from the first note you want to pay attention. The lyrics come fast with “Everybody get up and dance – Ain’t ya tired of sitting down?” This could be cheesy but it’s not, and you know it’s not and surrender completely to it right away. There is no way you couldn’t let yourself be seduced by it and every generation experiences this seduction. It still matters because it’s a prime example of the authenticity of Disco of that time period and that’s what lives on. Read the rest of this entry »
Why does this record mean so much to you? Is this a time capsule of a certain kind? What is its appeal?
It very much is. Although it is of its time in certain ways I don’t really feel it has dated. It was a record that I heard quite a few times before I had any idea who it was. I was usually too shy to ask DJs back then and there were lots of tracks that you would hear and just know because you’d heard them before and maybe one day you’d actually turn it up in a store, or meet someone in the club who could tell you, or it got used on a mix. Which is how I found out what this one was.
The thing I love so much about it is it creates a mood that is perfect at any time of the night or morning. It has the exact balance of menace, tension, joy and release that the perfect DJ tool needs. The mixdown is really nicely done, the way it ebbs, flows and kicks at certain points. I have a distinction between what often gets called ‘tools’ which to my ear are usually just drum tracks with a stab or a pad or something and the really useful stuff which usually has a fair bit more going on and can always take you up, down, reset, roll out, maintain… anything that you ask of it. This is one of those tracks.
I guess most people stay true to their formative years in the clubs of their youth. What made The End so special?
It was a club that was very well designed. Loosely based upon The Tunnel in New York but with a crucial difference of placing the booth in the middle of the floor so the DJ was cocooned by the crowd, who were in turn were cocooned by the sound system. The fact that this set up existed in a tunnel created two opportunities. The first was that it was very easy to lose yourself at the back by the system without feeling any disconnection from the place. The second was that this architecture created a particular atmosphere that I think must have meant certain DJs would have fun in a way that more disconnected settings don’t encourage. Its obviously a truism to say that good DJs play to the setting they are in, whilst bad DJs do the same thing no matter where they are. Well, this was a space that I feel coaxed the best from people.
I went maybe twice a month on average for about two years, then less frequently for the next few years because I had relocated to Glasgow, but in that time almost every night held surprises at what had been played, or how it had been played. The video of Mills covers a little of that ground. You cannot understate the importance of having these experiences to draw on when you end up doing this for a living, your own constellation of places and people that inspired you. That’s what gives you your distinct voice and I feel massively grateful to have had that club incubating me. Read the rest of this entry »
These mixes are an admittedly self-indulgent excursion that is a very personal sentimental journey. Going back, way back, back into time etc. A time where I was over twenty years younger, the early 90’s. The music you are about to hear is what we listened to at friends’ places before hitting the club. Every weekend we were dead certain that tonight will be THE night, even better than THE night the weekend before. We were young, handsome, carefree and everything that mattered was imminent. We knew there were hours of dancing to the most wonderful music lying ahead, and we actually could not really wait. In those days the club night began timely, and it had an end. We did not even think of being fashionably late, because there could have been so much we could have missed out on. But still, there was some time left. So beers open, cigs lit, talks, laughter, scheduling phone calls, dressing up and of course, the music. The music had to be perfect. But the music also had to be different to what we would dance to later on. We are not talking about music that should not distract, quite the opposite. It should be involving, fuelling our anticipation, but not exhausting it. Of course sometimes were were out buying the latest records earlier on, and we were playing them to each other. But sooner or later the dominant sound of getting ready was mellow, slick, lush, warm, elegant, fluid, flowing, smooth, soothing, emotional, DEEP.
It was the sound pioneered by in Chicago by artists like Larry Heard and Marshall Jefferson and many others, then developed further in New York by artists like Wayne Gardiner, Bobby Konders, the Burrell Brothers and also many others. Do not mistake their music as being designed for home listening purposes. The DJs would use them, too. As a gentle introduction, or as a moment of regeneration during peak time, or as the best possible way to ease the crowd out again in the early morning, so that not a single glorious moment of what just happened was tainted by something less. A lot of these tracks had enough kicks to have you working at any time, but they also seemed to be created for special moments, closed eyes, embraces, disbelief evoked by sheer beauty.
The musical programming of that era was quite different to today. It was not steadily going up and up, it was going up and down. There were detours, breaks, constant pace shifts, even pauses. Surprises welcome. A single style was not mandatory. Changes were expected, and fulfilled, at best unexpectedly. There was a flow, but it was not built-in, it had to be achieved.
A lot of these tracks have tags like Ambient or Jazz in their titles and credits, but they did not really try to be either. The artists involved liked to display their musicianship, and their ability to establish a mood and an atmosphere. They knew how to write a melody, they knew how to arrange their layers and instruments, they were determined to sound as good as their means would allow.
One reason why I wanted to record these mixes is that I sometimes miss club music artists being musicians. And music oblivious to floor imperatives and mere functionalism. The other reason is that I was interested how these tracks would sound or even hold up if you did not just inject this feeling inbetween something else, but you pull it through, for HOURS. Would it be too much? You decide.
I’d like to dedicate this to the Front Kids, wherever you may roam. You rule.
I am an avid longtime collector of 70s/80s Japanese Synthpop music, and being based in Europe that always proved to be quite some task, particularly in the pre-internet shopping days. You had to start from scratch, mostly starting with Yellow Magic Orchestra and their affiliated labels like Yen, Monad or Alfa, and you studied the credits of every record and learnt about new artists, crosslinks and local scenes. But finding those records in some continental crates was a rare and lucky occasion, and then when internet offered more purchasing options, it appeared to be a rather pricey habit because of shipping costs and Japanese sellers who were perfectly aware that their items were considerably out of reach beyond their own soil. But it also became very apparent that their was way more to discover, and it was well worth trying. Still, the Japanese music scene was frustratingly hermetic. I had gathered a collection over the years, but regularly you came across sellers with pages and pages of offers, complete with listening clips, and you had to admit that you were not scratching the surface, you were not even near it. I could have bought the bulk of it if possible, it all sounded fantastic, but it was not possible, and as I tried to at least learn about the artists I read in the item descriptions via web search engines, information was very scarce. For a nation so obsessed with technological progress and cultural information, there was mysteriously little given away to the outside world, only a few hideously designed websites by American or European enthusiasts who lived in Japan and fell in love with what they heard. I was really glad they made the effort, but their discographies, as thorough as they were, offered not much beyond artists I already knew about, and sooner or later every such site disappeared from sight again, only to be replaced by, well, not much else. I’m perfectly convinced that a well researched book about Japanese music would sell profitable quantities, there must be more people like me, but it can only be written by a Japanese author.
And then it always fascinated me that it was well acknowledged that Japan contributed a lot to electronic music in said period of time, but once House came along in the mid to late 80’s, and Techno shortly after, there were so few notable Nippon producers reacting to it. And as the Chicago pioneers operated mainly on musical equipment built in Japan and later neglected for the international bargain market, it was even more curious that those sounds originated so far away from where they were originally developed. No matter how hard you tried, the Japanese equivalent to the early House music masters was nowhere to be found. But you had this feeling there just had to be someone.
Years later a good friend of mine, a serious Deep House completist collector, pointed out that there were some interesting releases by Japanese artists on Hisa Ishioka’s King Street Sounds, a New York based label established in 1993, which was inspired by the Paradise Garage experience. He investigated further and found Ishioka’s sub-label BPM Records, which from 1991 on showcased a small wealth of Japanese producers taking on the trademark mellow but crisp Big Apple Deep House style established on imprints like Nu Groove, Strictly Rhythm, Nervous and a plethora of smaller labels. The producer with the most credits was Soichi Terada, and he also seemed to have the most distinctive signature sound. It is known that Larry Levan toured Japan at the end of his career, and even shortly before is death, and there must have been some interaction with the local scene, as he remixed Terada’s gorgeous 1989 track „Sunshower“ two years later, as did fellow New York DJ legend Mark Kamins. So there he was at last, the House music master from Japan. He even had his own label, called Far East Recordings, and though it only had a small back catalogue the few sound bits I could track down had me locking target on every single one of them. Terada’s sound admittedly owed a lot to its US prototypes, the whole lush smoothness of it, but it also had a weirdly bouncing funk, and more importantly, it had all this charming humour to its melodies and arrangements, and this all-embracing both respectful and freeform use of Western influences interpreted with Japanese music traditions I so fell in love with the first time I ever heard YMO.
But the other parallel was that it was as hard to find as any other record I had in my Nippon wantslist, or even worse. At least the releases pre-House were pressed in suffcient runs, but these were only done in quantities of a few hundred. Enter this fine compilation, which although interest in Nippon House had increased over the years, appeared a bit out of the blue. It was put together by my friend Hunee, a DJ and music enthusiast with a fine tendency to dig that little deeper, and he managed to secure all the essential tracks by Soichi Terada and his frequent collaborator Shinichiro Yokota. And even when reissues of rare records are quite common these days, this is really something special. Now someone please do that complete collection of Koizumix Production tracks, and make me an even happier man.
Over the 80s and 90s I spent a lot of time per week digging through a tiny store called Plattenkiste in my hometown of Kiel, up North in Germany. The store was rammed with stacks of records, filthy paperbacks, VHS tapes and video games. It was all completely unsorted, and whenever they did their regular flea market stints, they just rearranged it all back randomly and you had to start all over again. The store was operated by a family business, a couple and their daughter, and neither of whom had even a vague interest in what they were selling, nor any knowledge. The only music playing was an oldie radio station, constantly. They bought record collections from local DJs, Danish libraries and any private person in need of money. Every record in the store then cost 2 Deutschmarks, regardless of format, and later 2 Euros. It was a total goldmine, where I found a good deal of my record collection, and even if it now has dried up compared to its former glory days, I still find bargains there whenever I go back to visit family and old friends.
One of the finds with the most impact on me has to be “Ruff Disco Volume One” by Nature Boy, which was released on NYC based Black Label in 1992, and which I discovered in the store a year later, probably left there by some local DJ in search of some funky House tunes for the rather commercial clubs of the town. Given that purpose, this particular record was really bound to fail. Apart from myself I never hear it played in clubs for years to come. Disco actually was the theme throughout, and its samples mainly shared the same heritage used in the freestyle based releases of early 90’s New York House labels. But that was it completely in terms of similarities. These tracks deconstructed Disco thoroughly, down to a primitive core that was just incredibly rugged and dark. It kicked determinedly, but all the glitz of its sample references were twisted to a muffled mess, and you were rather thrown out into the back alley through the back door than swayed through the velvet rope on the other side of the building. The record was and is totally visionary, and it preceded what the mid 90’s Chicago trackstyle or Detroit House producers would make of Disco, albeit arguably not this radical and daring.
This was pre-internet, so it took me some more years to find out the producer behind it was DJ Milo from Bristol‘s legendary Wild Bunch sound system, and then I loved it even more. You could snatch up copies of it for little money for a really long time, but last I checked that changed dramatically, and these few words probably won’t help. Then again, it might help to get it reissued. Else, dig and you shall find.
One thing I really enjoy when DJing is sequencing tracks that use the same samples, or combine them with the material it was sampled from on top. The same goes for tracks with similar sounds, and of course you find the most similar sounds if you takes a closer look at a certain producer’s output. I have a very weak spot for the eccentrics of House music and Chicago‘s Curtis Jones is among my favourite from that species. I have a weak spot for spoken vocals in House tracks as well, particularly if they exceed mere dancefloor imperatives or spiritual togetherness stuff, or embarrassing sexual posing. Well, Curtis Jones is well smart and hip enough to perform the latter with tolerable style and humour. So I was flicking through my archives of 90’s Chicago House 12″s for a recent gig at Panoramabar a few days ago, and I remembered that several tracks produced by Jones used the sound template made so famous by the “Underground Trance” version of Cajmere‘s “Brighter Days”. The other that instantly came to mind was “Chit Chat”, it took a while longer to come up with “Believe In Me”. All three tracks sound very similar, but have a very different lyrical content. I decided to play “Chit Chat”, “Believe In Me”, and then “Brighter Days” in succession, and together they form a really weird narrative. Of course the majority of the people on the floor have enjoyed the music more than the tracks’ twisted little story, but that is perfectly fine. Not every point you make has to hit home. But it is important to make a few points throughout a set, for me at least. I also played a few early 90’s NYC sample House tracks that sample Yazoo’s “Don’t Go”, but none were too obvious, and I forgot to bring Yazoo’s “Don’t Go”. Next time.
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