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 Aiden d’Araujo on “Rhythm Zone Vol. 1” (1989).
You chose the cassette compilation “Rhythm Zone Vol. 1“. A format that in the 80s was probably still more common for discovering new music than its according CD counterparts. Were you taping radio at a young age, and was this your first foray into purchasing what already had caught your interest?
Yeah taping radio shows was a ritual when I was a kid – got that off my Mum who would tape mixes religiously. In the early nineties around ’92/’93 we had a studio in the loft with loads of gear like Junos and Rolands. The two guys who had the studio (you may have heard one of them under his Deadly Avenger alias who released the ‘Deep Red’ LP and now scores Hollywood films) lodged with us and I remember like it was just yesterday all the trippy, ambient electronica comin’ outta the studio – I would say reminiscent of acts like the Future Sound Of London. No doubt this influenced my Mum and she amassed a series of tapes that had early electronic auteurs on then such as Pete Namlook, Move D and Biosphere (she’s still got ’em!) whose nocturnal opus ‘Novelty Waves’ never fails to transport me straight to my childhood – you remember that iconic Levi’s advert featuring the steam train with that track on it right? Anyway, all these deep as the ocean odysseys would be the soundtrack to when I went to sleep. Warp’s ‘Artificial Intellgience’ comp was another fave, and I’d always be messin’ around with the FM dial to try scope out some more otherworldly obscurities…
Another interesting development was one of my Mum’s mates who when not spraying murals (he was and still is a revered graffitti artist who very kindly sprayed the House Hunting mural for me) would host shows on Birmingham-based pirate radio station Mix FM which he would sometimes transmit from our attic. This would be my introduction to Hip Hop – whether the Britcore of Gunshot and London Posse, West Coast flavour of Snoop Dogg and Souls Of Mischief or the politically-charged Public Enemy and ghetto rap of Biggie and Wu-Tang. GZA’s ‘Liquid Swords’ and Souls Of Mischief’s ’93 Til Infinity’ always on rotation must have proper wore those tapes out on my Walkman. As well as Hip Hop on Mix FM there would be some Soul, Funk, Disco, Electro and House – which when you’re 8 years old listening to all this was a pure mind trip…
So I didn’t really need to buy tapes as there were so many avenues where I was exposed to it. Another influence was my Dad who was split from my Mum so I would stay at his on weekends 10 mile up the road in Leicester. He was in a band that covered a lot of Rock and Blues classics who were a bit of a hit in the mid-nineties with loads of bookings all over The Midlands. Anyway Leicester has a big Afro-Caribbean community and every year hosts the Leicester carnival (second only to Notting Hill in size and scope) with Aba-Shanti representing so Dub and Reggae was also the sound of my Dad’s household – he loves all the Rhythm & Sound albums I’ve got him!
Did you try several compilations and this was the one you liked best, or was this the only one at first, and by coincidence it was also the best choice to get introduced to the US import dance music styles it showcased?
This was the first I bought and I remember clocking the naff early 90s trippy artwork complete with the tag line “A galaxy of imports for under a fiver”. It was a quid so had to be copped – I thought it may be like the deep trips on my Mum’s armada of ambient tapes. It was pure coincidence that the first one I got was the best introduction to Chicago House, Detroit Techno and New York Garage. Not long after I bought ‘The Rave Gener8tor II’ tape where again the cover art enticed me and had some choice cuts on it like the Underground Resistance remix of ‘The Colour Of Love’ by The Reese Project and some Murk flavour via Liberty City’s ‘Some Lovin’. There were only a few decent tracks on this one though as was on a more hardcore tip which I weren’t feelin’ as much. Always went back to ‘Rhythm Zone Vol. 1’. Read the rest of this entry »
Right, we’re going to set it off with “Set It Off”. Basically with “Set It Off”, growing up in New York in the 70’s and 80’s, I grew up with my parents and my brother – my brother being a DJ since 1980, and there were a lot of musical roots in my household. I was always around music. Mostly disco and electro, stuff like that. Growing up with my parents in the 70’s, they were really big on disco and I was hearing everything from “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure to so many underground disco records, like from 76, Jimmy and the Vagabonds, or Crown Heights Affair. Old school disco. I always had roots in the family. My father also had a pretty big rock collection from the late 60’s – Sabbath, Zeppelin, psychedelic rock. That was played probably when I was really younger, but 74/75 my parents were already getting into disco at that time. The roots of the music were always there with me and I would buy records on the occasion. I remember buying Fatback Band’s “King Tim III” which was pretty much the first rap record, Michael Jackson – “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”, “Let’s All Chant”, stuff like that. I was like 7 or 8 years old buying this stuff but I was never really into DJing at this time. My brother was the DJ. He was the one buying the records and DJing. He knew what was going on musically. I would say when I really first started to pay attention to music a lot, but I still was not a DJing, was around 83/84, and I was around 12 years old at the time and I was getting into graffiti which I was actually documenting on subway trains by photographs. I was travelling from Brooklyn to the Bronx. I was going everywhere with a camera – all four boroughs that had a subway system. The records at that time were a lot of electro stuff that was being played. A lot of freestyle like C-Bank’s “One More Shot” or “Al-Naafiysh” by Hashim. I still didn’t really know who the artists were and stuff like that, but I knew the records and heard them all the time on the radio. Around 84 I went to a break dancing club at a roller skating rink to watch a bunch of people battling, and I heard “Set It Off” for the first time. I don’t know what it was with that record but it fit all the movies I liked at that time: New York movies like The Warriors, Death Wish. It was just this dark record that was kind of like the soundtrack of New York City at the time, when New York City was just like in urban decay. On my way somewhere with my parents you would see all these abandoned building like in Berlin in 1945 in certain areas. Then taking the train to the South Bronx and seeing that…I have such a vivid memory of being on the Pelham subway line going to see one of the most famous Graffiti writers in New York called Seen, who was in the documentary Style Wars, and I befriended him when I was probably like 13. He used to airbrush t-shirts in a flea market. I don’t know why music always has a place in a moment that you can remember a certain situation. I can remember being in that flea market and then playing that track. It was just like the track of tracks. It was the soundtrack of graffiti, of New York, the rawness. When I got into techno in about 1990 and I went to trace back all the records that I’d been collecting and I would go back and listen to that record it just sounded so current. Not current to what techno was, but on the production level. When you listen to other electro records or freestyle records from that time, nothing has that 808 feel like “Set It Off” does. That production is just sick. The bassline. There’s really no other record from that time period, apart from maybe “Hip Hop Be Bop” or “Boogie Down Bronx”, that should have been the soundtrack to The Warriors. It’s just an amazing track. The irony of whole record being my favourite record is that it was produced on a label located in Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn, so that record was made probably two miles from where I lived. I guess Walter Gibbons produced Strafe, but it was made in Brooklyn. It’s a 100% Brooklyn. That record… the build up, the vocals, just everything about it…I could listen to it over and over again on repeat mode.
Would you say they produced a prototype with this? It’s a lot darker than most of the electro productions around that time.
I think it’s definitely the prototype for a lot of the future electro stuff that was coming out through the techno scene in the 90’s. Anybody making electro music at that time had to know that record. You have “Planet Rock” and you have “Clear” by Cybotron but that record just stands out for me. It’s such a better record. I love the other records but when I hear “Set It Off” the goose bumps come up. It sounds like something from a John Carpenter movie. It could be from “Assault On Precinct 13”, even if you can’t mess with that soundtrack. It is in the same mode as that. It gives the same feeling, and the same vibe and mood. Those eerie chord strings in the back and the bassline. You can’t mess with it.
> Ryuichi Sakamoto – Riot In Lagos
The next one is “Riot in Lagos” by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
This is an interesting track that Bones had turned me onto in probably sometime in the early to mid 90’s. He was refreshing my memory on records that were on when we used to go to roller skating rinks, and one of the other records was Kasso’s “Key West”. I remember he was playing all these records and I was like flabbergasted by the sounds and the music and how futuristic it was for 80’/81′. The thing was when I got into techno and I realised what electronic music was, and I’m hearing Bones and Lenny Dee – this is the 808, this is the 909 – trying to get my head around all these machines, and Bones was playing me records later on saying “these are the first 808 records, or 909 drum rhythm records”, and I never looked at the music I was listening to in the early 80’s, like Kraftwerk, as electronic music or acoustic music – I never made that difference in my head. I never sat there and thought “Oh, I like music with synthesisers”. When I heard this Sakamoto record, I kind of recalled hearing it but it didn’t really ring a bell in a big way for me. But it did ring my bell. [laughs] I was like “Whoa! What the fuck is this?” because I guess it’s got that Eastern, Asian kind of melody sound to it. That is a one of a kind record. There is nothing that sounds like that. I have never, ever heard another record ever sound like that. It cannot be copied.
It even sounded different to the sound Sakamoto was doing with Yellow Magic Orchestra.
Yeah. There is another Sakamoto record that I got a little later on, once I realised who he was, that is quite rare. Not many people know it, it’s called “Lexington Queen”. It’s amazing. It was released as a 12” and also a 45 as well. I probably should have been digging a little deeper on Sakamoto stuff, when I was doing my East kind of record shopping ten years ago, when I was looking for all this 80’s stuff. But I heard a few things by him that didn’t hit me the way those two records hit me. But “Riot In Lagos” is just a special record, what a special piece of electronic music. It’s up there with Kraftwerk.
It is pioneering electronic music, but from a very different angle.
Again, it’s got that Japanese sound to it. Whatever Japanese electronic music was in the 80’s, I don’t really know much about it, but this is a brilliant track. Read the rest of this entry »
Wie fühlt es sich an, ab und zu den angestammten Platz zu verlassen? Kann man das Shelter verpflanzen?
Ich mag es, gelegentlich New York zu verlassen und woanders aufzulegen. Es gibt weltweit mittlerweile immer mehr Leute, welche die Art von Soulful Music mögen, für die das Shelter steht. Ich habe auch eine Residency in Los Angeles und regelmäßig Auftritte in Japan oder England. Ich habe zudem einen Wohnsitz in Amsterdam, weil ich die Stadt einfach liebe und auf Jamaika, wo ich ursprünglich herkomme. In Deutschland war ich bisher nur einmal mit Stevie Wonder, dass hatte sich sonst einfach nicht ergeben. Ich kann mir aber gut vorstellen, öfter hier zu sein. Mir gefällt die Idee von fixen Außenposten fernab des ursprünglichen Clubs. Das reizt mich als Herausforderung. Es wäre schön, weltweit Basen für den Shelter-Sound einzurichten, daran würde ich mich gerne beteiligen. Mal sehen, wie sich das entwickelt.
Wie unterscheiden sich dann solche internationalen Auftritte von einer Nacht im Shelter? Muss man das musikalische Programm den Trends im jeweiligen Land anpassen?
Ich muss mich eigentlich gar nicht anpassen. Ich werde als Repräsentant des Shelter gebucht und ich spiele nur Platten, die ich auch dort auflege. Ich bekomme mit, was in den Clubs anderswo läuft, aber mir ist das oft zu hart, damit kann ich nicht viel anfangen. Ich achte auch nicht auf die ganzen Kategorisierungen, für mich ist das alles Dance Music und davon interessiere ich mich nur für die Art von Musik, die Deepness, Soul und vor allem Identität hat. Aus welchem Land oder von welcher Hautfarbe ist egal, es muss nur passen. Manchmal ist ein Set nicht so wie in New York, weil ich nicht soviel Zeit habe. Übermorgen lege ich beim Southport Weekender in England auf, da habe ich einen zweistündigen Spot. Dabei brauche ich meistens drei Stunden, bevor ich mich wohl fühle. Ich werde das daher nutzen, um unveröffentlichte Sachen zu spielen, aber ich ziehe einen anderen Rahmen vor. DJing war nie mein hauptsächlicher Lebensunterhalt. Ich war deswegen auch nicht gezwungen mehr herumzureisen als ich wollte. Das Shelter ist wie mein Wohnzimmer, da ist alles so, wie ich es haben möchte. Alle meine Platten sind da, die Anlage habe ich mir zusammengestellt und so weiter. Und mir gehört der Club, ich kann machen, was ich will. Ich lege hauptsächlich Soulful Dance Music auf, aber ich kann auch afrikanische oder brasilianische Musik spielen, Jazz, Blues. Wenn ich merke, wofür die Leute bereit sind, habe ich viel Spielraum. Das Shelter hat einen familiären Vibe, es geht nicht um Drogen oder Hipness, nur um Musik. So geht das Woche für Woche. Wenn ich mal nicht da bin, so wie jetzt gerade, legt Sting International auf, sozusagen mein Protegé. Es hat ein bisschen gedauert, bis die Leute mit ihm warm geworden sind, aber jetzt geht das sehr gut. Read the rest of this entry »
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