Mo’ Records and Other Shit, Too

It’s been a while since I talked about new records on here, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been getting plenty of them! In actuality, I’ve been getting a bunch of nice things and just haven’t been writing about them due to my temporary craziness (which has been eradicated by my decision not to write record reviews for RA. They definitely seem to be picking up some more good house and techno stuff, see their interviews with Larry Heard, Prosumer, and reviews of Asthetic Audio amongst others. And I think they can keep that up without me!) Moving on, then…..

One of the hottest pieces of wax I’ve picked up recently was Omar-S’ “Psychotic Photosynthesis”. This one could really see his profile rise as he combines the smooth, clean production of the Oasis material with his signature tripped out repetition and what sounds like a theramin. He told me before I heard it that this one would be big, and I tend to agree. People seem to just be picking it up now, but I fully expect to hear it for a long, long time. The new Ican productions 12″ is super-hot as well, probably the best thing since the Planet E release (though I have liked them all!). “Plastic People” is a jacking drum track with a twisted vocal sample, while “Maravilla” has that epic melodic Los Hermanos feel.

On the disco tip, I recently dug up a copy of Parlet’s “Pleasure Principle” album, which features George Clinton, Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley, Bernie Worrell and Bootsy Collins. The title track instantly became one of my favorite disco songs with its silly singalong chorus and funky orchestration. The same day I found that one, I grabbed Creative Source’s self-titled LP. For the dancefloor, it’s all about the long opening groove of Bill Withers’ “Who Is He And What Is He To You” which seems to last forever before breaking out into the vocals. “You Can’t Hide Love” is an awesome downtempo soulful funky jam, giving you two classics on one LP. On the same trip to the record shop, I also found a jam that I trainspotted from Recloose’s mix from summer ’06, “E Flat Boogie” by Trouble (aka Trouble Funk, the classic go-go group, before they changed their name). Throw in the “Paco” album by the great flamenco guitaist Paco De Lucia that features the gorgeous “Entre Dos Aguas”, Irakere’s eponymous latin jazz LP, and the self titled album by jazz trumpeter Jimmy Owens that includes the hot as hell jazz-funk jam “Do It To It” and I’d say that is a hell of a trip to the record shop. And then the other day I picked up the very sweet “Agora” LP by Paulinho Da Costa that contains some jams that wouldn’t be out of place in a deep house set. Now I just need to get that 12″ for “Ritmo Number One”!

That is a picture (courtesy of Kelly Carter) of me looking irritated at my gig last weekend. It was for a large artsy crowd who apparently are way too cool to dance, even though Jose, Ollie, and myself threw some dope house and disco music their way. My irritation hadn’t even truly begun yet though, it was not until after the show that we realised that the deejay set-up was right below a furnace vent. It turns out the vent was spewing this fine sandy mist over our records all damn night. I had to spend 3+ hours the next night cleaning my records off and replacing their inner sleeves so that the sandy shit wouldn’t scratch the hell out of all the records. It even managed to get into records I hadn’t played. Argh. Thankfully none of my records were damaged. Oh well, hopefully the next gig (Jwan and I at Remedy for our usual gig) will be better!

In other fantastic news, we finally have a good out of town deejay coming to Pittsburgh (it’s been since about ’05 when Brett Dancer came to town that I’ve been this excited): Mr. Dan Bell will be rocking the 412 tomorrow night. If anyone is in the area and needs the info, hit us up with an email! Jwan and I will obviously be in attendance as well as most of the Technoir Audio crew and the extended Pittsburgh techno and house family.