This guest mix is a really interesting one. Longtime ISM homeboy Lerosa decided to do a tribute mix to one of house music’s all time legends, Todd Terry. In all the hoopla over house music’s “revival”, Mr. Terry has been relatively overlooked. Why? It could be the dated sounds of his early sample-based house tunes, which have not necessarily held up as well as other drum machine and synth based tracks from the same time period. Having said that, I would recommend opening Terry’s Discogs page to see just how dominant he was in house music, however it is so huge it will likely slow down or crash your browser. That’s how big time Todd Terry is.

This mix focuses on his earliest productions from ‘88-’90, including most of the classics from that period. These tracks really are made like hip-hop tracks in their sampling style, most likely done on the classic Emu SP1200 sampling drum machine. If you like it rugged and raw, you should definitely check this one out!

Tracklist:

1 hard house, check this out, champion
2 royal house, dirty beats (extended mix)). idlers
3 funtopia, let us rise, (a different macid mix), idlers
4 black riot, warlock (club mix), fourth floor records
5 limelime, i wanna go bang (old time dub), loud house records
6 black riot, a day in the life (bonus dub), fourth floor records
7 sax, don’t turn your back on me (funny bone mix), loud house records
8 swan lake, don’t stop, loud house records
9 swan lake, the dream (54 dub mix), bad boy records
10 The Todd Terry Project, it’s just in house, fresh
11 The Todd Terry Project, bango (club bang), fresh
12 The Todd Terry Project, just wanna dance (club version), fresh
13 royal house, get funky (dub) idlers
14 The Todd Terry Project, weekend (UK remix), fresh
15 limelife, cause you’re right on time (old school mix), loud house
16 royal house, yeah buddy (extended mix), idlers
17 The Todd Terry Project, back to the beat (club mix), fresh
18 royal house, can you party (club mix), idlers
19 black riot, a day on the life (a day in london mix), champion

You can download the mix here. Big ups to Leo once again for this mix!

Hi folks,

Much like meschi posted last week, I’ve been a bit quiet on here recently, but have been busy with the mixes again recently (there’s another one ready to post up soon).  First up is a guest mix I did for Juju & Jordash (which they originally asked for about 4/5 months ago!). I was really pleased that they asked me, we’re great fans of what they do here at ISM as you all know and it was really nice that they mentioned us on their new album. So getting it together for 2 hours to do a mix is the least I could do for them. I’ve been wanting to do a jazzier mix for a while now and I thought this would be a good opportunity to try something in that line, there’s quite a bit of electronic stuff in there too of course, but it’s pretty much all music with a jazz feel.

1. Thelonious Monk – ‘Round About Midnight
2. 3 Chairs – Backbone Waltz
3. Melvyn Price – Voodoo Love Dance
4. Black Renaissance – Black Renaissance
5. Green Pickles featuring Billy Lo and M Pittman – Feedback
6. José James – Desire (Moodymann Remix)
7. Duke Ellington – Fleurette Africaine
8. Robert Hood – The Color Of Skin
9. Theo Parrish – Major Moments Of Instant Insanity
10. Reggie Dokes – Black Children Of The Ghetto
11. Lerosa – Ruski (Ruski On The Roof Remix by Juju & Jordash)
12. Susumu Yokota – Card Nation
13. Dorothy Ashby – For Some We Loved
14. Quintette Guineen – Massane Cisse
15. Eddie Kendricks – My People… Hold On
16. Alice Coltrane – Blue Nile
17. The Pharaohs – People Make The World Go ‘Round
18. BSMNT CITY Anymle Kontrol – The Perfekt Sin

‘Round About Midnight

It’s just under 2hrs long, enjoy!

ps. while you’re there do have a look around the rest of their site, there’s loads of good mixes, by the guys themselves as well as guest mixes, videos, news, etc.

Generally, we don’t devote entire posts to single releases here at ISM, but I think this one is exceptional and deserves mention all by itself (even with the crazy backlog of records I need to get to!).

As you most likely know, we have been big supporters of Lerosa since the beginning of this blog. As this is his debut album, it would be a big deal no matter what. But what makes this really interesting is that it was released on a label, Further Records, that prior to this release was digital only, and that this release exists solely on limited edition hand-dubbed cassette tape.

I feel like I’m one of the few people in dance music who still regularly uses cassettes. It was the primary way for me to listen to music in my car up until 2005, when I finally purchased a car with a CD player and no cassette. Not coincidentally, that is when you start seeing mixes of mine appearing online, as they were no longer appearing on cassettes for me to listen to in the ride. I continued to use cassettes to record my interviews, and to do mixdowns to when working on tracks. The record I released by Disco Nihilist was multitracked on a 4-track cassette deck. I know that cassettes have been cool in the indie rock realm for a hot minute, but it’s awesome to see the lo-fi electronic dance music lovers grabbing hold of the format as well. Not that sound quality is an issue here, Further uses vintage Nakamichi tape decks to dub off copies!

I’ve always been a fan of the way cassettes almost force you to listen through entire albums, unlike vinyl and CD where skipping tracks you don’t immediately “get” is very simple. For this reason alone, making a cassette album in 2010 is interesting. Most importantly though, it takes the idea of a performance using the tracks off the table in almost all cases. I’m sure there’s a deejay booth somewhere with a tapedeck in it, but it is certainly very very uncommon. The ability to stretch out and do some things that would not be viable in a commercial product aimed at deejays is something that Leo took great advantage of here.

If you like deep electronic music, Dual Nature is a great album. In fact, the choice of tracks reminds me of what might have passed for a techno artist’s album in the 90s. From electro, through house and techno, and into downtempo and ambient, this album features beautiful, deep, and abstract tunes that all have the perfect character for the slightly hissy format on which it is recorded. At times it sounds almost like a long lost Carl Craig album! Personal favorites include the funky “Dixon Jar”, the slightly discordant “Common Theif”, and the misty “Paved”, but what makes this album great is that all the tracks are good, and they flow together flawlessly. After Juju & Jordash delivered with their album, I guess it should be no surprise that Leo comes correct with a future classic as well.

It seems as though Further Records has another cool project about to drop on cassette, Aybee’s “Ancient Tones”! This is certainly a great start to a cool project, and I must say that I enjoy listening to cassettes almost as much as records. Convenience be damned! When the quality is this high, it doesn’t matter what I have to do to listen to it.

The end of ‘09 also brought the end of the irritatingly unnamed decade of the ’00s. In the two previous years writing on this blog I have not had any sort of rhyme or reason to my year end wrap-up posts, and since I’m already almost a month late I’m not about to start now. Since I have been a contributor at Resident Advisor, I do fill out their year-end (and in this case, decade-end) polls in order to help guarantee good spots for music that might be underrepresented by other contributors. So this year, I’m gonna talk about my choices for those polls here. This will be long, so it will all go behind the cut. (more…)

Just a little heads up that I’m gonna be guesting on the Delicious Mix Sessions on Power FM tomorrow from between 6 – 8pm (1pm over yonder ocean), along with Mike Black and Eoin Callanan, who present the weekly show.

For anyone interested, you can listen on the net here

My god… how long has it been! I’ve been on hiatus from really doing anything for a while. But I come back to you to spread the word of mixes and music.

1. Music for a Deep Sleep 01

I was having a lot of trouble sleeping a few nights ago, so made this selection to fall asleep to.

download

01. absolute elsewhere – moon city
02. michael rother – km4
03. ryuichi sakamoto – chinsagu no hana
04. cluster – es war einmal
05. kitaro – morning prayer
06. conrad schnitzler – tanze im regen
07. tangerine dream – creation
08. locust – still
09. jean michelle jarre – the overture
10. from within – do bassdrums have feelings
11. ashra – four guitars

2. The Videdrome

As aired on IFM the other night.

download

01. manuel gottsching – despair
02. i-f – secret desire (instrumental)
03. valence – minus
04. sendex – hypenosis
05. mantra – untitled
06. dj pierre – box energy
07. hot hands hula – hot hands
08. lidell townsell – i’ll make you dance
09. mr lee – art of acid
10. mr lee – feels good
11. nacho patrol – colour sound
12. the martian – skypainter
13. duplex – meta
14. carl craig – sparkle
15. the martian – particle shower
16. nukubus – europa (aux 88 europoort mix)
17. ashra – midnight on mars

and last but certainly not least

3. L’orrore II

The second installment of horror soundtracks from some of the spookiest and frightful films about!

download

for those that missed the first installment, grab it here!

I promise it won’t be another year before I’m back.

Peace… Meschi.

Waaaaayyyyyyyy back on December 22nd I think it was, my computer at home decided to shit the bed. Being busy over the holidays, and since then with a skiing trip and a bunch of potential job stuff, I only got the chance to get everything back up and running this afternoon. Finally, the guest mixes that have been languishing on my harddrive will be unleashed on the world! You’ll have to wait till Monday for that, though.

In other ISM news, sometime in the last 48 hours or so we had our 200,000th visitor. As always, we are eternally grateful to all of you who follow us on the site, via RSS, or through Twitter (I’ve definitely seen an upswing in referring links from Twitter recently!). We’re gonna do our best to keep up the good work in 2010. I hope to do a short ‘09 wrap-up as well as a ’00s wrap-up sometime in the next week, plus I have TONS of awesome new records to review dating back through mid-December. So basically what I’m saying is that I’m gonna try to make up for this lost time as soon as possible

One other note for Pittsburgh readers – I am no longer involved with the Beat Aesthetic night. I will probably explain better in the next little bit via Facebook or on here, but in the meantime if you want to hear me play don’t go there. I am working on a new night already! Keep your eyes peeled for more info very soon.

Just wanted to do a quick link across to a great new mix and interview from J&J. Have been loving the mix – a great blend of spaced out jazz, ambient electronics, dub, house and other funkiness that sees all the elements working together to make something else. Check it!

http://madelikeatree.com/Pages/jujujordash.html

I know it ain’t the second half of the ISM interview with Shake from 2.5 years ago (which is still on a cassette tape somewhere in my house!), but it is a brand new interview with the man over at Resident Advisor. I actually did the interview a little while back, but it’s still all good. It’s always fun to get to chat with one of my personal heroes. Also, it was cool to “collaborate” in a way with my man Matt Cohen, whose photos were used for the RA piece and at the top of this post (and in the current issue of Sports Illustrated as well!).

I’ve been waiting for it to go up on RA so I could also mention this radio special our man Recloose did on his radio show about a month ago. On it, he takes an interview with Shake as well as some of his music and combines them into a very nice tribute. Another great episode in what is a great radioshow/podcast.

Shake is such a fantastic musician, it’s about time that he gets his due. I got the Frictionalism box set on Rush Hour in the mail earlier this week, and aside from the plastic sleeve (which was broken on the bottom when I got it!) it’s a very good way to own many of these very hard to find tracks. It would have been nice for some liner notes, photos, and other stuff, but really I think Shake’s music speaks just fine for itself. If you don’t already have all of these tracks, I definitely recommend getting this box set in any way possible, it is that essential.

Teddy Pendergrass is one of those artists whose work I have seemingly always been aware of. From the Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes classic “If You Don’t Know My By Now” to his solo work, Teddy was one of the most iconic soul singers whose identity was wrapped up in one word: LOVE. But it wasn’t until I started getting into disco music where my love for Teddy really began to develop.

Many of the uptempo cuts by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes that appeared on their releases on Philadelphia International were tunes that were instrumental to the development of what would be called “disco”. Classics like “Bad Luck” and “Don’t Leave Me This Way” were later remixed by Tom Moulton for the Philadelphia Classics album that set in wax the contributions of PIR that had defined disco music so heavily that Salsoul Records began by stealing much of the PIR rhythm section MFSB to back their artists. Other songs like “The Love I Lost” were anthems all the way through the 80’s and were influential in creating what would become house music, especially when edited by deejays such as Ron Hardy in Chicago.

Teddy’s own solo career featured a great many dance classics, from “The More I Get, The More I Want” and “You Can’t Hide From Yourself” which appeared on his debut eponymous album (pictured above) to later joints like “Only You” and slow grooving “Love TKO”. Even after he was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident in 1982, he continued to record and perform. He will be missed, though his music will live on forever.

Here’s some YouTube links for some of the most classic Teddy Pendergrass jams: