From Jack to Juke: 25 Years of Ghetto House from Sonali Aggarwal on Vimeo.

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!

As some of the subscribers to the 313 mailing list may already know, Dan Sicko, the author of the book “Techno rebels”–the seminal work about the beginnings of techno/dance scene in Detroit during the late ’70s/early ’80′s, and the creative force behind the Moodmat blog–is very ill.  Details regarding Dan Sicko’s current condition are on Matt Sicko’s blog here. If you’d like to contribute to Dan’s hospice fund, you can do so at this link. All the best to Dan Sicko and his family from all of us here at Infinitestatemachine.

We’ve been pretty slack on the interview front here at ISM for quite some time. Don’t think for a second that this post is a sign of us picking up the pace either as none of us had anything to do with it! My man in Tokyo, Andrew Hogan, recently caught up with Rick Wilhite and sat down for an informal chat with him when he was touring over there. He has very kindly given us the interview which we be delivering to you in audio format. Yup, I couldn’t have been arsed transcribing it, but Andrew has edited it for us a little bit – mainly because I believe Rick is a very laid back chap, so this speeds it up a bit, though not much

RIck came in for a bit of criticism for his interview on RA last year with some unimpressed by his old school stance on djing/producing and vinyl with some fools seeing him as a bit too negative and bitter, but there is no sign of that here, where he comes across as a softly spoken, polite dude talking about his history, his productions, and quite fitting for this time of year, the direction the DEMF has taken since it’s inception.

Many thanks to Drew for this exclusive and also thanks to Erica Grainger for the photo from his Tokyo gig.

Grab it here.

If you look on the “Categories” sidebar, you’ll see “DEMF 08″, “DEMF 09″, and “DEMF 10″. Before those years when I covered DEMF for this blog, I attended every year from 03 on. Barring a drastic change in how the festival operates, that will be it for me moving into the future. I will still be going to Detroit this weekend: I’ll be supporting parties with Detroit deejays playing at them, I’ll be eating food at Detroit restaurants, I’ll be supporting Detroit record stores, I’ll be picking up freshly pressed records from a Detroit record pressing plant, and I will in general be giving my money to businesses and people in Detroit. But not Paxahau.

My beef with these guys is pretty long-standing at this point. I’m not going to rehash every single qualm I’ve had with their running of the festival over the years, but the last straws were last year when stagehands were prepping shit DIRECTLY IN FRONT of the Moritz Von Oswald Trio during their set and when the Detroit artists were once again relegated to the underground stage where sound and air quality are just not up to par. I’ve had enough.

There has been an argument that I’ve heard some people make for many years, the gist of it being that the festival is NOT about Detroit music, that it is only an electronic music festival taking place there. Looking back at the lineups from the jump-off through to 2005 or so, I couldn’t agree with that assessment. If you take into account the lineups from 06-11, I now wholeheartedly AGREE with that point of view. I am not interested in going to some generic music festival just because it is in Detroit. Especially when the results are more like a crappy rave than anything else! I loved the festival because it used to be a celebration of Detroit music and culture. It has ceased being that, and I have spent more time sitting around being irritated at the low quality of the music and the hassle of leaving and re-entering if I want to avoid paying crazy money for crappy festival food.

My mind used to be blown regularly at the festival; that experience has been declining precipitously every year. It’s not just me, either. My man Matt Cohen has a few words about his experiences photographing (for RA, XLR8R, and here!) and attending the festival that you can read here. Less and less of my people from all over the world have been attending the festival, including the dwindling Pittsburgh crew. It’s sad to see it all go downhill like this, but that’s what happens when the people in charge of the festival are more interested in being cool promoter guys than in the legacy of Detroit’s music. Carl Craig’s continuing association with them is yet another blemish on his already pockmarked recent track record. I hope that that money is awesome for all involved.

I do truly hope that this weekend remains a time when techno and house people worldwide can get together in the Midwest and hang out, even if it is primarily at afterparties instead of the festival itself. I can’t even imagine how much shit has come into being as a direct result of the connections made on Memorial Day weekend every year. I know it has been wildly helpful for me and many of my friends who deejay, play live, own labels, put out music, etc. Having this die off would be even worse than the demise of the festival itself!

Many people have been asking me which afterparties I will be attending this year. The only one I am 100% sold on thus far is Deep Detroit Vol. 3, this year’s edition of Kai Alce’s party that has been one of the highlights of the previous two years. This party has had the best vibe, crowd, and music, and with Omar-S and Brett Dancer holding it down with Kai this year there should be no decline in quality! Sadly it appears there will be no Soul Skate this year, I guess that will have to wait till next time.

I haven’t really done much research into other parties just yet, I’ll see what flyers I find on Friday and talk to my people up there to see what’s really happening before deciding. If you hit me up via email or txt message, I will let you know what I’m getting into on any given night! I’ll try to report back here each day if I can with plenty of pictures of whatever I get into in Detroit during the day as well as the parties at night. Definitely check my Twitter page for the real-time business!

Keep an eye out for the Noleian Reusse record on Love What You Feel in the shops, and we’ll also have copies if you need to pick one up. We may also have some other Pittsburgh Track Authority related goodies, as well as other projects we’ve been working on that will remain on the DL for now, so if you see me, ask!

The MN Collective have a very exciting weekend lined up for us with Detroit’s Mike Huckaby running tings on both Friday and Saturday night this weekend. Friday night will be a celebration of the music of Sun Ra in the Grand Social, one of the most forward thinking musicians of the 20th Century, he was also one of the most prolific, releasing over 100 full length albums and dozens of singles, composing over 1,000 tracks during his long career. Sun Ra brought some of the earliest electronic music to our planet and not just through the keyboard solos and synths he incorporated into his music, but also the themes of space, mythology & the future which became staples for modern electronic music.

As part of the celebrations Amen Brother will be screening a selection of Sun Ra documentaries, and will also be screening the film Space Is The Place as a backdrop to Mike Huckaby’s set. Later on myself and Barry Walsh (Sunday Times, Cork) will be carrying on the celebrations upstairs before Mike steps up with his own personal edits of Sun Ra on reel-to-reel!

Mike Huckaby Live at Sun Ra Reel to Reel Sessions, Venice by Amen Brother

Then on the Saturday night we head over to the Ormonde Wine Bar, where Mike will be taking us on a journey through house music as only he can, with warm up duties provided by MN residents Niall Kirk and Damien Waters. It should be a very special weekend!

Mike Huckaby – Paris One Reverse – October 2010 by R_co

For full info check:
http://mntothat.com/mike-huckaby-weekender/

Carl Craig hit my home town of Dublin recently, the night before Paddy’s Day, as part of the tour celebrating 20 years of Planet E. A pal of mine was considering going – but, he asked, would he look out of place in the crowd at the venue, as he is a man in his mid-thirties? I told him that he would feel like he was from another era if he went (as the picture above shows). Also, the ability to muster up a posse to accompany him on his folly would be impossible – his cronies don’t do techno any more. Plus, I added, it would probably be rubbish (although, if Craig played just the back-catalogue of his label, it would be quite wonderful – but that would only happen in la-la land, wouldn’t it?).

It made me think about the manner in which individuals of my vintage enjoyed this music, and if they still did - people from the same generation as Craig himself (well, nearly). In my part of the world, attending clubs is seen as a young person’s game – people in their thirties (and above) have other priorities in their lives: mortgages, kids, impending doom and debt. No longer care-free and full of boundless energy. Mustering the wherewithall to go to a club until the wee hours seems like a Herculean task.

Thing is, I still love the music. And I still want to enjoy it – now, though, it’s confined to ease the pain of running and to take the mind off the monotony of exercise. The Internet is my only access to this culture now – mixes from RA, this blog and others are my sole means to finding out what trends are taking hold and which artists. Even on the net, things have evolved. I am on a music mailing list which used to clog up my inbox, now traffic is sparse, intermittent at best. The majority of suscribers have fallen away, I suspect, because of lack of interest.

I still can’t help but view house/techno as something vibrant and new, but that idea is skewed. It’s no longer the new kid on the block, the vibrant upstart. It’s part of the corporate establishment. Just look at Craig, it seems his best work may be behind him – now he is living off his name and past achievements while melding into the commercial end of dance music. I don’t blame him, he’s probably thinking of his retirement fund - he is probably so jaded that he has entered another dimension of jadedness.

It must be so hard to maintain your ‘A game’, remaining cutting edge and still retain your love for the music, especially when the gap between you and your audience becomes bigger and bigger in terms of age and outlook.

He had a great innings – as the Planet E compilation clearly shows. He has given us so much, but the run had to end some time. However, the fact that he is gonna play Detroit in his 69 guise shows that there is always hope that he can raise the bar once again and continue to inspire a new generation.

Apparently, Theo Parrish is pissing people off by charging more than the “standard” amount of money for some of his new “limited” records. This is something Moodymann has been criticized for in the past as well. In fact, I criticized DeepChord for similar practices in a post 3 years ago. I have to say that in the years that have gone by, my opinion has changed. I originally thought that resale prices would get crazier than their original prices. Long term, most of those DeepChord double packs resell for approximately what they sold for new in the first place. One of my least favorite aspects of the record business is the resale market where dealers mark up records to astronomical prices, and the original artist sees NO MONEY from this. For small pressing records that have been out of print for decades, there isn’t much you can do about that. With brand new records though, there are more options.

What has been going on recently with Moodymann and Theo Parrish records has been particularly heinous. Records that are just out brand new have been bought up by speculators who then turn around and sell on Discogs or Ebay for crazy prices because they are no longer available elsewhere. You have no choice if you want the record and you didn’t happen to do an order the hour it was available in the shops. Malik Pittman’s Unirhythm Green record suffered a similar fate. This is NOT good for the actual fans and people who want to support the artists because they are paying some joker inflated prices to basically be ticket scalpers. By charging more than the standard amount of money, the number of speculators is going to be severely limited, especially if there is no guarantee that the price will go up from its already high going rate. It also means that records will be available longer in the stores at their retail price. Best of all, it means that the extra money paid actually goes to the artist, label, and record store as opposed to the speculating reseller.

Perhaps it is my own ventures in the record slanging business that has made me rethink the economics of selling new records, but I have to say that the artist and label getting paid and fans getting the records they want are the most important aspects of the hustle. Cutting out the middle man (except for those who really sleep) and being more fair albeit at a higher price is definitely one solution for limited press records that are in high demand that so far seems to work a little bit better than the old way. Is this going to be a viable solution for every artist (or even every release by Theo and Kenny)? I seriously doubt it. Their positions are quite distinct as I can’t think of any current artists whose new music changes hands at such consistently high prices. These guys are not morons, they know what is going on with this shit. Other artists/labels are welcome to try similar methods, but the results are probably not going to be the same.

That said, I always prefer good music to be more widely available. Of course, that isn’t how some people want to do things. I would like to see more sanity in how in demand limited pressings end up being sold, and this is definitely one step in a different direction. Only a fool would pay the crazy prices for the Sketches LP on Discogs. How long will these be for sale at those prices with no buyers before the price comes down closer to what it originally sold for? I didn’t follow the secondhand DeepChord prices this whole time, but looking back with three years hindsight it seems that the original asking price was relatively fair for the demand. Everybody wins.

What it all boils down to for me in the end is that I know what I like, and I have no problem paying money for things that I like. I generally don’t spend crazy dough on second hand records because that money is going to people who did nothing aside from finding a copy of a record for less than they’re selling it to you for. So I keep digging for deals. With new records, I decide if something is too much money by comparing how much I like it to how much money I have and am willing to spend. If it doesn’t add up, I don’t buy it. If it does, I do. Theo’s recent remix on a Japanese import label was selling for close to $30 new, and I didn’t think it was worth that so I passed on it. I don’t really harbor any anger about it. The Amerie/Lil Louis mashup was worth the money, so I paid it. End of story.

More African goodies for you all, this time we travel to East Africa, Ethiopia to be precise. Legendary Ethiopian musician and composer/arranger Mulatu Astatke studied music in England and the USA in the 60s and started fusing jazz, funk and latin music with traditional Ethiopian music. He then took what he learned back to his homeland and spearheaded a Golden Age of independent Ethiopian music throughout the late 60s and early 70s. He recorded a number of instrumentals albums and composed many works for other artists including the great vocalists of the time, such as Mahmoud Ahmed, Tilahun Gessesse, Menelik Wossenachew, Alemayehu Eshete and others. Another very important composer/arranger from this time was Girma Beyene, who worked with many of the same artists as Mulatu, and indeed composed more titles then Mulatu. Much of this music was released on domestic independent labels, the most important of which was the legendary Amha Records run by Amha Eshete. Eshete was just as important in shaping the Ethiopian music scene as Mulatu and Girma.

Unfortunately, the 1974 revolution resulted in many artists fleeing the country and those who remained were forced to perform nationalist military music, and although some great tracks were made in the following few years the Golden Age of Ethiopian music was at an end and slowly but surely many of these great artists became a fading memory. The wonderful Ethiopiques series on French label Buda Musique has done wonders to revive interest in classic Ethiopian music and now Mulatu and other artists are international stars touring the world and even recording new material, Mulatu recorded 2 new albums in 2009 and 2010. Indeed, there even seems to be a new Ethio-jazz scene happening as this nice article about 2 Irish guys searching modern Addis for Ethio-jazz illustrates.

This is my attempt to pay tribute to this wonderful music scene and I’ve included a few tracks that have yet to be compiled/reissued.

01 Mulatu Astatke – Maskaram Setaba (1)
02 Menelik Wossenachew with Mulatu & All-Star Band – Fikratchin (1)
03 Mulatu Astatke – Yekerme Sew (1)
04 Mahmoud Ahmed with Dahlac Band – Yalem Baytewarnegn (3)
05 Tesfa Mariam Kidane – Heywete (1)
06 Alemayehu Eshete – Kochen Messasate (2)
07 Bahta Gebre Hiwot – Gizie (2)
08 Ibrahim Mahmoud – Gual Aboy Reda (5)
09 Mulatu Astatke – Hooha (1)
10 Aselefech Ashine And Getenesh Kebret – Meche New (4)
11 Tilahun Gessesse with Mulatu & All-Star Band – Lanchi Biye (1)
12 Girma Beyene – Yebekagnale (2)
13 Mulatu Astatke – Emnete (1)
14 Getatchew Mekuria – Yegenet Muziqa (6)
15 Menelik Wossenachew with Mulatu & All-Star Band – Beluw Bedubaye (1)
16 Alemayehu Eshete with Girma Beyene & All-Star Band – Addis Ababa Bete (2)
17 Tilahun Gessesse – Tchuheten Bitsemu (4)
18 Menelik Wossenachew – Chereka (2)
19 Walias Band – Musika Silt (2)
20 Mahmoud Ahmoud with Dahlac Band – Yefikir Wuha Temu (3)
21 Mulatu Astatke – Tezeta (1)

Arranged By;(1) Mulatu Astatke;(2) Girma Beyene;(3) Tezera Haile Michael;(4) Teshome Sissay;(5) Ghermaie Solomon;(6) Getatchew Mekuria

Link

Sat 2nd October sees Sud Electronic’s 10th Birthday party play host to the mighty Boo Williams, with a little back up from the likes of Efdemin, Lakuti, Nick Craddock, and myself. If you’re into house music and you don’t know who Boo is… well, you’re just not that into house music. A legend, no less.

This promises to be a killer party with an 8am finish! Tickets are available here through Resident Advisor. Hope to see some of you down there.

Here’s a little e-flyer they’ve put together – the music is Boo’s ‘Midnight Express’ on Relief Records, and it WILL be in my bag on the night.