I finally did some catching up on new releases and had a couple nice digging sessions over the past week. I have this big ol’ Stack O’ Records to show for it! Exciting.

The Moodymann remix of Jose James’ “Desire” is an immediate classic. I knew this would be top 10 of the year material from the soundclips, but hearing it all the way through guarantees this to be a late night soul banger that will be a highlight of many sets in the coming years. Having been on a big Ron Trent kick for the past month or so, I picked up two of his recent jams. First up is his new one as Conjure on Future Vision entitled “Pressure Release” which is a rolling synth heavy house track. The second one is a release on Prescription Classics called “From Above” which originally appeared on a CD only album that dropped last year. This one is super deep wigged out percussive craziness, another ultra-late night kind of cut. Also in a similar live/synthetic vein is Joe Claussel’s remix of Hector Lavoe’s “Alejate”. It’s all about the dub mix on this one, it takes the Latin vibe and applies it to a slow groove that sounds nothing like the original but is quite great in its own right. Keeping it deep for me as well are the Theo Parrish remix of Kuniyuki and Aroy Dee’s newest on M>O>S.

In a more uptempo vein, the new Ican on Planet E is completely ridiculous. I don’t think anybody has been doing techno as well as they have over the past two years. This is their best stuff since “Plastic People” last year, mixing melodic techno with Latin vocals in an epic dancefloor concotion. Carl Craig’s mix is the weak point on this one, unlike on the new Tribe 12″ on Planet E sublabel Community Projects. I already had that mix on a sampler from Giles Peterson’s “In The House” mix (which I used in my mix earlier this year for Trackwerk…..), but it was worth picking up again for the full-side pressing as well as the dope jazz track by legends Marcus Belgrave, Phil Ranelin, and Wendell Harrison on the flipside. Another dancefloor highlight is the new doublepack by Andy Ash on Stilove4music. This one rides the line between edits and sample based productions. I recognize Gary Bartz’ “Music Is My Sanctuary” and one of the cuts off of Erykah Badu’s last album which gets chopped into a nice deep house cut, though I can’t place some of the other things used on it even though they are familiar. Overall a very nice selection of tunes for those who like the sample based house style.

Digging-wise, I hit up one of my favorite local shops that I had been neglecting in recent months due to lack of funds.

I dug up a few things I had been looking for: Lil’ Louis & the World’s “From the Mind of Lil’ Louis” LP, the Blaze produced “One Man” by Chanelle, and Maxine Singleton’s “You Can’t Run From Love”. I already had her “Don’t You Love It” and had been looking for that other one for a hot second. It’s not quite as good, but it has a more early house feeling instead of the disco boogie of “Don’t You Love It”.

A couple trips to my usual spot landed me a few of my long time wants. First and foremost is the promo only 12″ of Rufus and Chaka’s “Any Love” which I have been hunting for for years after hearing it on one of those Garage Classics bootlegs. Now I can finally play that shit to a dancefloor, I can’t wait! Another one that it seems like all my friends had found but it kept evading me is Gwen Guthrie’s mini LP with Larry Levan and Sly and Robbie as Padlock. If you haven’t heard this one, it is essential dubbed out disco boogie that is segued together with echoed vocal interludes and the like. Absolutely awesome, I’m so glad to finally have my own copy. A couple other classics I found were the 12″ of Yellow Magic Orchestra’s “Computer Game” and Mr. Lee’s “Come to House” on Trax. I also came across a small treasure trove of dope 80’s electro boogie shit that seems to be pretty obscure since most of it doesn’t appear on discogs and a few of them are not even mentioned at all online. One that is on there is the fantastic “Let’s Get Nice” by Glory which was written by the all-star team of Arthur Baker, Maurice Starr, and Michael Jonzun. Check it out here on Youtube, now *THAT’S* what I’m talking about! One more for you boogie fiends to hunt down is Essence III’s “The Party Side of Town” which is also on Youtube here. That was quite a productive day at the record shop as I’m sure you can imagine

In other news, I managed to finish up my interview with Rick Wade for Resident Advisor, it should hopefully be going up sometime this week. I’ll make a post when I see it up there! School has been keeping me completely dazed with the amount of work I have (really, I should be doing some RIGHT NOW) so I haven’t been able to do a mix, but I’m going to try to make some time to knock something out later this week if I can. Apologies to my fellow ISM homies and to readers out there for the lack of posts on my part due to school sucking so much!