Image : Amy Plant
Just a quick post to point you in the way of a small interview myself and Dean Feeney from Tr One did with Irish website Thumped.com. The usual topics for us luddites; vinyl n’ hardware plus how we feel about the Irish electronic music scene….
The Drum Dance 12″ has now hit Hardwax, Piccadilly and a bunch other places etc, enough spam. Nice one.
Just a quick heads up to say that Drum Dance is hitting stores over the next couple of weeks. Juno, rubadub, decks.de amongst others are selling it already in Europe while Rush Hour and Clone amongst others are taking orders now. Crosstalk International are distributing it on the other side of the Atlantic, so hopefully it will be hitting the likes of Gramaphone in Chicago in the next while.
For any of those out east, Jetset, Underground Gallery and Lighthouse Records are stocking it (or upcoming) in Japan and over the next while it should be hitting many other stores, pre-orders from the distro have been pretty healthy! And if you still like to shop local in real shops, give them a shout for an order.
This Saturday, the 28th, Tr One will be celebrating the release with a gig out in Galway at The Bierhaus, one of the city’s finest drinking establishments, so if yer out the west of Ireland, be sure to drop in. Friday night sees former ISM guest mixer Paudi Ahern playing in the same venue, so it’s shaping up to be a fun weekend.
We’re also doing our first label party in February in Twisted Pepper’s basement, Dublin, with Tr One djing and Lerosa playing live. And, yes, you can gather from that that Lerosa will be the next artist to feature on the label, but not quite as you expect. More info coming very soon on all that…
Thanks for all the support so far too, be it from bloggers, djs, everyone…
It’s going down in Pittsburgh tomorrow nite! This is gonna be a pretty awesome evening, with some of my favorite deejays playing on a killer four corner soundsystem at a venue with a nice sized dancefloor. ISM contributors Frank Glazer aka Count Zer0, Jwan Allen, and myself are joined by special guest and good friend Chris O’Connor aka C02 for 5 hours of tag-team all-vinyl goodness. Big ups to the guys at Humanaut for making this happen. There’s even more big shit on the way from these guys and us in 2012, you’ll definitely be hearing about it here, on my Facebook, and on my Twitter. I predict Pittsburgh is going to be taking it up a notch or two this year, above even the craziness that was 2011. This is the time to get down here if you wanna witness some ill shit!
I’m not usually one to reminisce very much, primarily because I like to keep planning more and more new shit for the future. But this gig in particular makes me very happy, and it makes me think back. House and techno culture in Pittsburgh were primarily based in the 90s rave scene, and all these deejays playing tomorrow night can say that their journeys as deejays begin in or before that time. The days of Hypervinyl Records in Oakland being a central meeting place as well as the spot to get all the best music coming out loom large in that history. To this day a large number of my best friends are people that I met there. This was the heyday of dance music in Pittsburgh, and we were involved in it by playing records, throwing parties, working in record shops, etc.
Then the rave scene crashed and died in the early 00s. Things got very small for house and techno in particular, moving into spaces like Havana, Pub IG, Ray’s Bar and Grill, Level, etc. Hypervinyl closed and was replaced by shops like Milk Records and 720 Records. I can remember us being amongst the maybe 50 people who saw Metro Area deejay in Pittsburgh in 2004, or the 40 or so who saw Brett Dancer play here in 2005. Even the “big” events like Bugz in the Attic or Norm Talley were nowhere near what had once been. Friday night parties at the Warhol Museum were a godsend, bringing in good music and supporting the local deejays. Through this time, we were still playing records, working in record shops, throwing parties, basically living the life. Things REALLY took a dip in the later 00s as the usually consistent Havana closed, record shops began playing a less important role as deejays picked up CDs or laptops, and many of the older crowd moved on in life or moved away from the city. We soldiered on, doing our ever smaller parties at venues like Shadow Lounge and Remedy, the huge stacks of records behind the turntables only increasing in size and diversity. I started ISM partially to stay connected to what was going on outside of the city at that time. Our annual trips to DEMF became an opportunity for us to cram an entire year’s worth of partying into one crazy weekend, because that was the only place we could get to see the kind of music we loved and lived.
Now, things are clearly on the upswing. Parties are bigger, there are lots of new faces in the crowd (most of whom were probably children in the time we started doing our thing!), lots of new people taking up deejaying and promoting more serious music, and it is all happening on its own as opposed to being part of the rave culture. It took a long time to build this into what it is, and a lot of work from a lot of people. Massive props to those who are doing all the work now to make all this happen! But I want to take this time to give it up to those who have stuck with this music through thick and thin, in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, etc. So many have fallen by the wayside due to moving away, giving up, dying, or a bunch of other reasons. The number who are still around and deejaying is very small. The number who are still around buying new records constantly and continuing to do it the way we started out is even smaller. We keep searching out the freshest new music because it is what we have done for a long time. We were just teenagers when we started, and now we are adults. It’s been a long, weird journey! But we know no other way of doing things. It isn’t retro for us; we’re not trying to be hip by playing vinyl.
What we’re going to do on Saturday night is a culmination of the decade and a half each of us has spent with dance music. You’ll hear house and techno of course, but also electro, disco, broken beat, and more. We’re bringing out three turntables and two mixers, and we’re going to tagteam all night long. We’ve been playing records together so much and for long enough that we know huge chunks of each others’ considerable record collections. We’re gonna take those records and see what we can make happen with them! Just like we’ve been doing…
Big ups to all those who are still around from back in the day, I’m not naming names because I don’t want to leave anyone out. You know who you are. Big ups to all those new cats getting it done today, again I’m not naming names but your efforts and passion are awesome. The meshing of the two is most important, I hope to see it continue and Pittsburgh will be all the better for it. Together we will all finally see things pop off the way we have always wanted it to!
For those of you in the Bay Area, I’ll be playing alongside Joe Rice and Matt Holland tonight in SF, at UndergroundSF in the lower Haight. Come celebrate the new year with us, and expect to hear a ton of deep cuts spanning many genres!
Can’t really think of a better way to start the new year with the announcement that the 2nd 12″ on Apartment will be dropping at the end of the month. Regular readers should be familiar with Tr One at this stage, who’ve contributed a bunch of guest mixes for us in the past as well as releasing a few great 12″‘s over the last few years. As per the last release I’m gonna pass on any superflous promo blurbs on here, suffice to say we are pretty excited about this! Along with the original, John Heckle delivers his stompin’ debut remix effort and the Jujus gave us a proper dub version to round things off…
Check out the samples below…
Also, here’s a video clip of the guys performing Drum Dance live in Dublin in November ’11
Apartment [one] TR One – Drum Dance
12″ vinyl only.
More info to follow soon…
As with the last couple of years, my end of year post isn’t gonna go down the big lists route, just gonna dip in and out of my year in music. You will see some similarities between myself and Tom’s selections, hardly surprising really. There’s no doubt a few things on his that I haven’t bothered to repeat here, though one of them sure ain’t that KDJ edit of Alexander Robotnick 
Since I am feeling very agitated by damn near every year-end list I’ve seen so far (with Little White Earbuds’ top tracks of 2011 list being by far the least offensive!), and my lack of RA contributions this year meaning I didn’t have to compile a list for them (giving me an easy copy and paste way out), I decided to do up a proper list with plenty of YouTube lynx and a few words about each release. I’m going to just pick my favorite tracks, but in the descriptions I will note if the entire EP, LP, or compilation is worth checking out as well. I will also mention other notable releases by said artists or on said label, as the case may be, when applicable. So basically, this is just a starting list for discovering a vast amount of the wonderful music I spent my 2011 listening to.
Also to make things easier on myself, I am not ranking any of the dope music I had a hand in releasing this year, be it from Noleian Reusse, TM Eye, Hidden Twin, or Pittsburgh Track Authority. It’s been a great year for me in this regard as well, rating my babies would be impossible. Suffice to say I love all of these releases deeply!
Okay, moving on to the actual list… I just picked the best tracks from going through my memory and looking through my discogs collection for releases marked 2011, so it is entirely possible I have somehow forgotten something awesome. I don’t really listen to new music just to listen to new music, so this was all sprinkled in there with everything else I was listening to (be it older things I just picked up, or stuff from deep in my collection). So basically I am apologizing in advance if I forgot your awesome joint! Also, there are a couple records I didn’t get yet that would most likely have made the list if i had them already.
One more thing: while these are ranked, the most interesting thing to me about this year is exactly how close all these really are to each other in terms of quality. There isn’t much drop off, it really came down to almost arbitrarily choosing a position for each record. This is a very personal list, having to do with how I listened to them and how I deejayed with them. So don’t worry about the ranking, just dive right in…
(more…)
This Friday night in Pittsburgh, we are celebrating the forthcoming release of our new Pittsburgh Track Authority 12″ on our own new label Pittsburgh Tracks with a big party! In addition to our own performance in conjunction with synth pop group TM EYE, we have a special opening performance from Shawn Rudiman that promises to be heavy on the electro-funk tip and a DJ set from Underground Resistance’s DJ Skurge! It’s sure to be yet another hot night in Pittsburgh…
You can check out the new tunes “Untitled” and “Monongahela Rainforest” here:
There will be white labels for sale at the show, and we will sell a couple online after the show as well. Release date is sometime in January through Crosstalk Distribution. There are definitely our most dancefloor jams so far, I’m really excited to get them out into the world!
We’ve also been working on a couple new things, the first of which to be completed is a remix of Jennifer Hudson’s “Spotlight”. We sent this out to some deejays (Chicago and Detroit, what’s up?! Also ATL and others…) so you can definitely hear this one out in the wild. For right now, you have to either get your dance on in the club, or rock the YouTube video:
Our recent release on Further Records, the Archipelago EP, is also still available for purchase on vinyl only. There’s only a few left on Further’s bandcamp page, so jump all over that here. On this one, we took things in a bit of a dub/digital reggae direction. The slick cover art, green vinyl, and Dubplates and Mastering mastering job all add up quite nicely into a really nice package that works very well with the music. It is awesome to be part of the Further family!
We also had our Pittsburgh homeboy Paul Fleetwood do a mix of all Pittsburgh Track Authority tracks, ones that are already released as well as some that are not out yet. This is the only place you’ll be able to hear them for a while until they have a release! Check that out here:
Finally, we are happy to be joining a new electronic music agency that just formed out of Pittsburgh, Eighty Agency. Their other clients include Claude Young, Different World, and Shawn Rudiman as well as handling booking for Kirk Degiorgio in North and South America. We’re looking forward to bigger and better things in 2012!
Despite only being around since 2010 (and the with vast majority of their releases having been this year), L.I.E.S or Long Island Electrical Systems has established itself as one of the most interesting dance music labels out there. Putting out fast paced sci-fi techno jams next to slow sample-based deep house grooves is what LIES thrives on, and with the impending release of Professor Genius’ Hassan LP, further excursions into even more left-field territory seem to be in store.
It is clear that a love of 1980s US house music is at the root of much of what LIES do. From the second release by 2 Dogs in a Room (aka Jason Letkiewicz and label head Ron Morelli), which consists of sleazy Chicago-esque grooves, to Willie Burns’ (aka Speculator) debut release under that pseudonym, an EP full of quirky house tunes, the sound of drum boxes and vintage synths is not out of place. It might be Marcos Cabral’s EP that most perfectly describes the LIES aesthetic: hints of vintage drum machines poke through the haze of very modern sounding tracks that tread the line between house and deep techno, a perfect combination of old and new.
Legowelt’s Sark Island Acid EP is another highlight of the label. Dense, melodic synth lines do all the heavy lifting emotionally, while the banging drum tracks remind of Chicago and Detroit, but without sounding too derivative. Terekke’s Damn EP seems to be the one most desired by the Discogs crew, fetching high dollar amounts despite only just seeing release over the summer. The bass heavy, lo-fi joints work very well with the hand-stamped white-label aesthetic of the LIES “X.5″ release series they appear on.
Throw in the most recent release, a typically highed-up EP by Beautiful Swimmer Maxmillion Dunbar as well as two solo outings by Mr. Letkiewicz (one as jack-tracker Steve Summers, one as sample heavy Malvoeaux) and you have quite a varied lineup of house music on one label released in just over a year!
LIES also has the distinction of putting out my favorite techno record so far in 2011, Steve Moore’s excellent “Zero-Point Field”. The connections between LIES and Washington DC’s Future Times crew is obvious from the sharing of artists such as Mr. Moore between the labels, helping to create an interesting East Coast dance music crew. Their vibe seems to be spreading out through other labels like 100% Silk, which also has multiple releases by Jason Letkiewicz in the past year!
With so much quality and variety coming out, as well as connections to some other outstandingly interesting labels, it’s clear why LIES would be a favorite of mine. I hit Ron Morelli up with a few questions via email to get a better idea about what motivates him…
ISM: The releases on LIES have a tendency towards American dance music (even the Legowelt record is in a Chicago house vein), though not of any particular style. Are there any specific labels that are influential to your approach?
Ron Morelli: I wouldn’t say that there are any specific labels that are influential in my approach regarding how I run the label and the aesthetics of the music therein. I have cited on numerous occasions how Bunker Records and the 90s Hague squatter scene and their anti-establishment approach sonically as well as their business model or lack of had undoubtedly resonated strongly with me. All I’m doing here is putting out jams by people I know. If people are open and catch on, then cool, if they don’t that’s cool too.
ISM: How does working at A1 affect what you do? Do you tend to buy more new music, or more older music?
RM: It’s 70/30 down the line. Kinda always has been. There’s so much old music out there to be discovered still, but it would be ignorant to not keep up with new projects coming out. I’m a fan, I wanna know what’s out there and check it out regardless. There’s a lot of new stuff out there good and bad, gotta check it always.
ISM: Many of the artists on LIES are known more for live performances as opposed to simply deejaying, how does that tie into the music you choose to release?
RM: I think that has really been strictly by chance. Although, somehow through the years it seems to me like producers who dj are generally not great djs and djs who produce tracks are never as good as the aforementioned. Obviously there are exceptions and this is just some baseless observation on my part which may or may not hold any truth.
ISM: On a record nerd tip, what is up with the “XXX.5″ catalog numbers for the recent white label releases? are they meant to be thought of differently from the full-blown LIES releases?
RM: This was just circumstance as I was told that records released in the summer months records don’t sell as well and blah blah blah.. Europe,vacation, partytime, industry this, that, the third. So basically I heard some tracks that were sick and thought that there was no way I’m waiting until September to put this out when it was June, so I was like fuck it I’m just gonna press this shit. So it’s kind of a monster that created itself. I’m not trying to wait around for anyone really, just keep it moving, so yeah it’s inadvertently become a label within the label.
ISM: Which artists from outside the LIES camp would you like to work with if money/era/etc were not a problem?
RM: I would commission Black Sabbath, Flower Travelin Band, Achim Reichel, and Conrad Schnitzler to compose an epic 4xlp collaboration album with Phil Spector behind the glass, gun at hand.
ISM: Name your top 5 NYC records regardless of genre:
RM:
Whodini-5 Minutes of Funk
Liquid Liquid-Cavern
Implog-Holland Tunnel Dive
EPMD-Business Never Personal
Petula Clark-Downtown
There you have it. You’ll be sure to hear more about LIES and their artists on ISM in the future!
You can check LIES out on Soundcloud here. Ron Morelli is currently on tour in the UK and Europe for the next week or so, check for dates and locations on his Facebook page here.
Guest mix time here again, and this time we got a repeat offender; Dublin degenerate, Shane O Meara. Known for his insatiable love of Liverpool FC and liquor, Shane is also one of my favourite deejays in the city and this time around he’s cut us off a rapid fire mix of house, synth pop, disco and Italo, shit we love here at ISM. Worth posting alone for possibly the silliest titled mix we’ve received yet.
Tracklisting
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