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.

I’ll kick things off here with my picks for top track of ‘09:

1 Tevo Howard “Passion Sound (Inner Beauty)” Beautiful Granville Records
2 Alton Miller “Love’s Right Here (Mush Remix)” Balance Alliance
3 Floating Points “Love Me Like This” R2
4 Shake “Indagoo” Morphine Records
5 Disco Nihilist “A2″ Love What You Feel
6 Kai Alcé “KZR Gruv” Deep Explorer
7 Wavelength “Funk Dreams” Glydezone Recordings
8 Malik Pittman “If The Earth Could Talk” Unirhythm
9 Reggie Dokes “Chicago Pimp” Clone Loft Series
10 Juju & Jordash “Blue Meanies” Dekmantel
11 Rainer Truby “To Know You” White Label
12 Walter Jones “Living Without Your Love” DFA
13 Specter “Night Hawk” Tetrode Music
14 Lerosa “4th Floor “Real Soon
15 Dynamodyse “Gare Du Nord” We Play House Recordings
16 Jitterbug “Speakers Corner” Uzuri
17 Buscrates 16-Bit Ensemble “Frozen Extremities” The Harmony Society
18 $tinkworx “MKB” W.T. Records
19 Osborne “The Count” Spectral Sound
20 Black Jazz Consortium “Believe” Soul People Music
21 LCD Soundsystem “45:33 (Theo Parrish’s Space Cadet Remix)” DFA
22 Ron Trent “Intoxicate” Future Vision Records
23 Pépé Bradock “Path Of Most Resistance” Atavisme
24 Ibex “360 (Original Mix)” Rush Hour Recordings
25 James Duncan “A” Le Systeme
26 San Soda “Doorsnee” We Play House Recordings
27 Bruce Ivery “A1″ Stilove4music
28 Big Strick “A Walk Down Linwood” Fxhe Records
29 Burial + Four Tet “Moth” Index
30 House of House “Rushing To Paradise (Walkin These Streets)” Whatever We Want Records

Because we were limited to 30 selections, I ended up trying to compromise by including all the artists whose music I loved this year, while not over-representing any one artist or label, and some “popular” tracks that I knew would get votes from others may have dropped a few places in order to make more room near the top for the more obscure things. A couple artists really paid the price for this, San Soda and Tevo Howard were ON FIRE all year long, and I could have listed damn near every track they made. Rick Howard also got shafted because all his music was produced by Tevo, with his “Can Your Love Find It’s Way” being one of the year’s highlights for me as well. I tried to make up for some of this in the label poll.

For those who think it might be cheating to chart a record on my own label, let’s put it this way: that’s the record that I liked enough to pay a huge amount of money to own on vinyl. A few year end acquisitions that would have made the list had it not been due in early December: Delano Smith’s “This Heart” on Mixmode, 9dw’s “Stingray” on Catune, and any track from Rick Wilhite’s AWESOME “My Voyage” EP on Stilove4music. You can see how things turned out on RA here.

Now for the top labels of ‘09:

1 We Play House Recordings
2 Beautiful Granville Records
3 Balance Alliance
4 Future Vision Records
5 NDATL Muzik
6 Stilove4music
7 Stone’s Throw
8 Soul People Music
9 Ferrispark
10 Fxhe Records

This one was much easier to choose, as these labels all defined consistency in ‘09. I had multiple records from each label in my bag at all times. I could play a set of just their releases from this year, and it would sound awesome and varied. Check our RA’s results here.

My picks for the top artist albums of ‘09:

1 Ron Trent “Dance Classic” Prescription
2 Juju & Jordash “Juju & Jordash” Dekmantel
3 Andrés “II” Mahogani Music
4 Moritz Von Oswald Trio “Vertical Ascent” Honest Jon’s
5 Brock Van Wey “White Clouds Drift On and On” echospace
6 Leron Carson “Red Lightbulb Theory ‘87-’88″ Sound Signature
7 Maxwell “BLACKsummers’night” Columbia
8 9DW “9DW” Wax Poetics
9 Dam-Funk “Toeachizown” Stone’s Throw
10 Carlos Niño “High With A Little Help From” Kindred Spirits
11 James Pants “All The Hits” Stone’s Throw
12 Moody “Anotha’ Black Sunday” KDJ
13 Mayer Hawthorne “A Strange Arrangement” Stone’s Throw
14 Robert Hood “Minimal Nation” M-Plant

My only real qualm with this list is that had the second part of Andrés’ “II” album come out this year, it probably would have charted #1. Which makes ‘09 pretty remarkable in terms of albums, with FOUR future classic albums (Trent, JJ&J, Andrés, and MVO3) in the house and techno genres. Also, there was no way to mention that it was really the Intrusion dubs that put the Brock Van Wey album on the list. The originals are cool, but those remixes are so good. And any year that “Minimal Nation” comes out in any way, shape, or form, that shit is going right in any top X poll I’m filling out. RA’s results are here.

Moving on to the best of ’00s polls, I’ll start with the best albums since that one is already up on RA:

1 J Dilla “Donuts” Stone’s Throw
2 Thom Yorke “The Eraser” XL
3 Jill Scott “Who Is Jill Scott? – Words & Sounds Vol. 1″ Hidden Beach Recordings
4 D’Angelo “Voodoo” Virgin
5 The Other People Place “Lifestyles of the Laptop Café” Warp
6 Andrés “Andrés” Mahogani Music
7 Jay Dee “Welcome 2 Detroit” BBE
8 The Connection Machine “Painless” Down Low
9 Recloose “Cardiology” Planet E
10 Tiombe Lockhart “Bootleg #1″ No Label
11 Burial “Untrue” Hyperdub
12 Reggie Dokes “The Afromation” Psychostasia
13 Robert Hood “Wire to Wire” Peacefrog
14 Theo Parrish “Sound Sculptures” Sound Signature
15 Flying Lotus “Los Angeles” Warp
16 Ron Trent “Dance Classic” Prescription
17 Drexciya “Harnessed the Storm” Tresor
18 Radiohead “Kid A” Capitol
19 3 Chairs “3 Chairs” 3 Chairs
20 Omar-S “Just Ask the Lonely” Fxhe
21 Andrés “II” KDJ
22 Brock Van Wey “White Clouds Drift On and On” echospace
23 The Streets “Original Pirate Material” XL
24 Rod Modell “Incense & Black Light” Plop
25 Metro Area “Metro Area” Environ
26 Rhythm & Sound “With the Artists” Asphodel
27 Amp Fiddler “Waltz of the Ghetto Fly” Genuine
28 Moritz Von Oswald Trio “Vertical Ascent” Honest Jon’s
29 Erykah Badu “New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War)” Motown
30 Red Hot Chili Peppers “By The Way” Warner Bros.

For this, I basically went with records I listened to a TON, regardless of genre. I have no clue why “With the Artists” made it while the “Rhythm & Sound” compilation didn’t. If I could go back and add two more records to this list, they would be MJ Cole’s “Sincere” and Wookie’s self-titled album, two highlights of the 2-step period in album format. I’m sure there will be comments (if anyone actually read this far!) about the inclusion of The Streets’ first record, but to me that is like the white British equivalent of De La Soul’s “3 Feet High and Rising” or some shit: hilarious and obviously classic. Also, fuck you if you don’t like that RHCP album. That shit is just beautiful. I could have listed every one of Recloose’s records from the decade, but decided that would be overkill for the purposes of this list. There were lost of other dope albums, but these are the ones that I identify with the most from various points of my life in the ’00s. If you don’t know any of these records, go out and buy them immediately. All are awesome, and in constant rotation in my car, my deejay sets, my iPod, and in the CD player I listen to while going to sleep at night. These were the soundtrack for the past decade of my life. RA’s (rather interesting, I think) results are here.

Finally, my top tracks of the ’00s:

1 Recloose “Dust” Peacefrog
2 Omar-S “Just Ask the Lonely” Fxhe
3 Reggie Dokes “The Skin I’m In” 3rd Ear
4 Kevin Reynolds “Anonymous Room At The Corridor Of Last Night” Todhchai
5 Shaun Escoffery “Days Like This (Spinna & Ticklah Mix)” Oyster
6 4 Hero “Hold It Down” Talkin’ Loud
7 Theo Parrish “Solitary Flight” Sound Signature
8 Erykah Badu “Honey” Motown
9 Erlend Oye “Ghost Trains” System
10 Amp Fiddler “Superficial” Genuine
11 Underground Resistance “Transition” Underground Resistance
12 Troubleman + Steve Spacek “Without You (Waajeed’s Flash Gordon Remix)” Far Out
13 Platinum Pied Pipers “The Look of Love” Ubiquity
14 Cesaria Evora “Angola (Carl Craig’s Mix)” Lusafrica
15 Nelly Furtado “Say It Right” Geffen
16 Mr. De’ “Whonleeone” Electrofunk
17 Pépé Bradock “Life” Atavisme
18 St. Germain “Rose Rouge” Blue Note
19 Cobblestone Jazz “The 5th Element” IIWII
20 Rhythm & Sound + the Lovejoys “Best Friend” Burial Mix
21 Metro Area “Miura” Environ
22 Tevo Howard “Passion Sound” Beautiful Granville
23 Gnarls Barkley “Crazy” Downtown Music
24 Hercules & Love Affair “Blind (Frankie Knuckles Vocal Mix)” DFA
25 Loosefingers “Lamentations” Alleviated
26 Seiji featuring Lyric L “Loose Lips” Bitasweet
27 Irfane “Just A Little Lovin’” BOOTLEG
28 Laurent Garnier “The Man With the Red Face” F Communications
29 Wayne Wonder “No Letting Go” Atlantic
30 Rufige Cru “Beachdrifta” Metalheadz
31 Detroit Experiment “Think Twice” Planet E
32 Kenny Dixon Jr. “Should’ve Known” Private Press
33 Alice Smith “Love Endeavor (Maurice Fulton Vocal Mix)” BBE
34 Povo “East On West (Moonstarr Remix)” Raw Fusion
35 Jay Dee “Fuck the Police” Up Above
36 Far Freddy’s Drop “Hope” Kartel Creative
37 Wookie “Get Enuff” S2S
38 Mayer Hawthorne & the County “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out” Stone’s Throw
39 Osunlade “I Don’t Know” Yoruba
40 Galaxy 2 Galaxy “Hi Tech Jazz (Live Version)” Underground Resistance
41 Osborne “Ruling” Spectral
42 Flying Lotus “Tea Leaf Dancers” Warp
43 Theo Parrish “I Can’t Take It” Sound Signature
44 Underground Resistance “Timeline” Underground Resistance
45 Carl Craig “Just Another Day” Planet E
46 Tracey Thorn “It’s All True (Escort Remix)” Virgin
47 Cassio Ware & the O.G.’s “I Wanna See You Freak (Like Dis)” Black House / Funkysoul
48 Juan Atkins “Rebound” Subject Detroit
49 Jose Gonzales “Down the Line” Peacefrog
50 Smith N Hack “To Our Disco Friends” Smith N Hack
51 Osunlade “Pride” Set
52 Louie Vega “Circa De Mi” Vega
53 Omni Trio “Nu Birth” Moving Shadow
54 Drexciya “Under Sea Disturbances” Tresor
55 Omar-S “Set It Out” Fxhe
56 Amp Dog Knight “I’m Doin Fine” Mahogani Music
57 Jay-Z “Big Pimpin” Roc-A-Fella
58 Africanism “Block Party” Yellow
59 Annie Lennox “1000 Beautiful Things (Blu Mar Ten Vocal)” BMG
60 Underground Resistance “Hardlife” Underground Resistance
61 John Tejada “Timebomb” 7th City

The ’00s were the first decade of my life during which I was always deejaying. There were plenty of songs that came out that I liked in various ways, but this list is all about the ones that created moments for me when deejaying over the past 10 years. I probably could have gone on and on even just within that framework (for example, the one year of drum and bass and the year and a half of 2-step are well underrepresented due to the fact that I rarely got to play any of those tracks over the past 8 years. But you could add any number of tracks by Marcus Intalex, El-B, MJ Cole, etc. in there as well….), but I had to cut it off at some point. This list is hardly definitive. Every one of these tracks is special to me though, and I have very good memories to go with all of them. Making sense of a decade’s worth of music in a list, even when making it as personal as this one is, is just kind of stupid. But I can say that reading this list shows just how incredible music can be, and how it can help define your life. What an amazing decade. When RA posts their results, I will link to them here.

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

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.

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: