New Records, Future Times & Victor Rosado Interview

Just a quick round up of some new releases I’ve been feeling in the past couple of months and a nice interview with Victor Rosado…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Um3ahDkKHc

Theo Parrish’s remix of About Group’s You’re No Good is his trademark deeply layered grimey house cut, with heavy bass, jazz keys, and vocal samples shimmering in and out. It’s slow and hypnotic but still damn funky, especially when the hip hop beat drops near the end. Staying in Detroit, Andrés has just dropped Andrés III, which is another very strong mini-LP of sample house and short hip hop cuts. The opening track samples the wonderful piano line from Pharaoh Sanders’ We Gotta Have Freedom to good effect, and there’s some really nice Dilla-esque tracks on the b-side.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z0gJZFAaCE

I’ve been following Recloose since his first EP on Planet-E back in 1998, and over the years he’s steadily developed his own distinct style of electronic music based on Detroit house and techno but with strong roots in soul, funk, disco and jazz, with liberal use of samples and often guest live instrumentation. After going all the way and touring with a full live band between 2006-2008, he seems to have gone back to a more electronic sound recently, and Saturday Night Manifesto EP is his latest offering. The opening track Electric Sunshine is the stand out for me, quirky deep summer sounds, with some great use of samples. The other tracks are more straight up dancefloor focused house/techno jams. It’s got a mixed reaction from some people I’ve talked too but in my opinion it’s one of the best new releases of the year. Keep up with Recloose over on his Hit It And Quit It blog where he posts his excellent weekly radio show from Auckland, New Zealand.

I’ve been getting into the Washington DC based Future Times label over the past year after picking up some nice releases by Beautiful Swimmers, Protect-U and Rhythm Based Lovers. Modern house music heavily influenced by cosmic disco and boogie funk is the general feel. The latest release is a limited 7″ by Beautiful Swimmers, Open Shadow. Slow, cosmic dubbed out disco yacht rock song is one possible way to describe it (badly), I guess a good comparison would be with Jonathan Jeremiah’s Happiness from last year, except a bit more dub.

I also just want to mention Tom Noble’s new(ish) reissue label Superior Elevation Records. There’s been 2 great releases so far, the first was a reissue of a rare 7″ release by Detroit’s Exit from 1982, Detroit Leaning is a slick funk rock jam, sounds more like a 70’s track with only the beat and synths giving it a more 80s boogie feel. That was followed up by an absolute monster disco funk gem, Charlie Clemons And The Might Power Band The Devil Has Made This Land His Playground. This was a very obscure indie disco project from 1980, Tom Noble was given access to the masters in order to “give it the full on Tom Moulton era disco extension” adding, “No new instrumentation has been added, simply a late 70’s disco face-lift for two previous songs which had mad potential, but weren’t fully realized.”

And keeping with the “Tom Moulton era disco” theme, Victor Rosado was in Dublin for a gig recently and kindly accepted an invitation to appear on my man Nic’s weekly radio show Box Deluxe on Power FM. They have a chat about Victor’s memories of the Loft, the Paradise Garage and Larry Levan and pick out some favourite tracks from that era.

box_deluxe with special guest: victor rosado by box_deluxe