Its great to be able to give a shout out to a new South London label from some people I have a lot of respect for. A little like busses, two are coming along at the same time. Emotional Rescue and Emotional Response. I’m starting to get very excited about some of the releases coming up.
Firstly Emotional Rescue which has got the aim of unearthing and reissuing forgotten remastered gems of dance music’s past (with full artist consent it should be added). The first release is a reissue of a funky disco rock slammer which started life on a 7″ test pressing in 1973 by Bob Chance, with a synth freakout added to its relentless fuzzed out grove. the b side feratures a second later version of equal merit. This one has got some serious potential for dancefloor drama. Apparently only 10 copies exist so this full release for the first time has already caused a lot of talk from people who had assumed they’d never find a copy. It’s out now in Juno and other discerning outlets.
There’s a great Suns of Arqa 12″ coming up after that with a very welcome loud pressing of Ananta Snake Dance. Managed to pick this up a month or two back on test pressing and has been getting a lot of play since.
Also excited about this Cosmic Hoffman spaced out krautrock track.
Secondly there’s Emotional Reponse which focuses on the sounds of the present day and the future, already has some excellent releases scheduled from Grackle, Alan Hurst, Timothy J Fairplay and Ulysses.
A couple of highlights, this slow jam by Alan Hurst (aka Steve Summers) from the soundtrack to Nzambi lp:
and further cold war zombi film disco scene hits in the form of Timothy J Fairplay’s upcoming Ep
Considering January is seen as a quiet month for music I’ve still managed to pick up a nice bit of wax over the last few weeks. Some are fresh on the racks, some are yet to hit ‘em and there’s one or two things from last year I’m just catching up on properly, so gonna dip into them over the next few posts…
Magnetic Souls – Lovin’ on the Run
This upcoming 12″ from the Atlanta based Rotating Souls imprint is a lil bit scant on info so far, bar that it comes from Magnetic Soul, again an act I know little about (who ever said we were clued in nerds on this site eh?). It starts with a massive blast of funk on the A cut which builds itself around some stonking 70′s brass, a couple of sultry vocal samples and a proper groove that makes the whole thing sound like it was transported directly from back when. Working in a not dissimilar fashion to an edit this is a sweaty bit of funk. It gets a bit more lowslung on the B side cuts which again utilise some old funk vocals, combined with killer boogie bass-lines and more wonderfully catchy samples. Like the first Rotating Souls 12″ from East Liberty Quarters (I missed the 2nd) everything is unashamedly retro in style but things seem less forced than a lot of nu-disco or modern boogie that insists on uncomfortably shoehorning (sometimes, not always, of course) new styles in. The B2 has a brilliantly subtle cut n paste style to it especially, with a couple of unexpected surprises.
Gray is someone I only came across last year when a mate pointed in my the direction of his Tried To Be Good album that came out quite some time ago, like everything else he’s done; this is his first release in many years. As this 12″ is on Downbeat you know it’s going to be deeeeep and as ever the quality is second to none. Downbeat has a knack of selecting the most ethereal of house cuts and this is no different. Gray eschews some of the more typical deep house sounds that are boring the shit out of everyone these days, bar the traditional square bass sounds utilised on Go Away and the barmily titled It Was The Fried Chicken That Saved Our Sanity (Because The Ghetto Is Sad). But instead of this leading the tracks it takes 2nd place to the most delicate of melodic intonations and slightly off kilter percussion. Fried Chicken, for all its laid backness manages to create some superb tensions with its synth lines. The quality slightly dips on the closing Sun Of God but it’s still another fine early morning jam. For those looking for deep house with a bit of a difference, look no further.
This is the latest release from our own Pipecock’s techno/house 3-way with fellow P-burgers Adam Ratana and Preslov Lefterov; arriving on their own new Pittsburgh Tracks imprint (this release is brimming with mindblowing titling) which I gave a brief mention to in my end of year round up, but which is only fully dropping at the moment. It kicks off with Untitled which is their biggest dancefloor cut to date. It comes on like a slightly updated UR/Gerald Mitchell cut, the soaring strings especially are hugely in-debt to those masters of melodic Detroit techno. While this is a style that has often been copied over the last ten years – especially in the earlier part of the last decade – the guys have the sense to not over do it on the instrumentation – a problem so many have with this type of music, insisting on making it way too busy – and what gives it it’s own character is the excellent drumprogramming/bass/percussion. The flip serves up the much more relaxed Monongahela Rainforest (from no name songs to near unpronounceable, fair play), which on the face of it is maybe a little too chilled for it’s own good but the engrossing sub on it opens it up impressively and while it may lack the hooks of Untitled or, say, the enticing oddness of Chris Gray’s 12″ it still manages to steer clear of a lot of deep cliches too.
The Scots-founded Tabernacle Records are not ones to rest on the laurels at any time and following quickly in the footsteps of this rather ace The Third Man 12″ from late last year comes the 2nd part of their collaboration with Lost Trax and The Connection Machine, the initial fruits of which were this split mini-album from last year. Lost Trax kicks this one off with some top shelf electro on 801 with a gnarly bass that leads over crisp hi-hats and a deep, wistful synth line. Dominion is a more hectic, face-paced electro jam, full of intricate programming which dips in and out at times, adding more drama as it goes.
On the flip The Connection Machine goes down a slightly more abstract route and as fun as the Lost Trax material is, is the real show stealer of the release. Klute is a brilliant oppressive slab of electronica, its droning synths and sparse beats creating an eerie, unsettling atmosphere. The release closes on it’s high point, After. It starts off on a lighter if melancholic note, and gently trips along before another heaving synth drops out of nowhere, giving the song a nicely dramatic twist. The track then steps up a gear with some twisted, efx laden (well, what sounds like) vocals, and a great balancing act is played between the opening musical assonances and the darker elements it picks up along the way. A pretty special piece of music drenched in emotion.
Sunday Times! is an amazing lil party that takes place up the hill on Barrack St in Cork City, here in Ireland. It’s a unique party where the Djs get to do their thing from early in the evening while sat upon a wee bar stool, chopping and changing their musical selections at will, gently easying the crowd into a full on dance off by nights end. I’ve played it a couple of times along with Lerosa and I’ve rarely had more fun playing music. John and Barry put a lot of effort into making everything right and anyone who’s attended or played really appreciates this.
The mix is more focused on the early evening before it gets too rowdy, not too much mixing, nothing toooo uptempo and so on. So I don’t get berated for not mentioning it, I was informed that the first track had to be on it by Dean from Tr One. I didn’t own the record at the time of playing down there last summer but another friend had bought the 7inch the day before in a flea market and I took it off him to start my set. So, after a bit of discoging, I put this mix together.
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….
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
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 PittsburghTrackAuthority. 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…)
