So arguably 2012’s biggest tunes were Daphni‘s Ye Ye and Todd Terje‘s Inspector Norse
For some reason, whenever I went out clubbing over this year, attended private parties or spent more than two hours on the internet, there was no avoiding those two songs. Don’t get me wrong, I remember getting the digital promo of both those tracks quite early and immediately thinking to myself those would go on becoming major underground hit tunes. Yet, as soon as I got somewhat excited with those did I also get almost instantly massively bored, or more precisely bored by the fact that those presented no challenge : both those wonderfully crafted tracks offer you everything before you even feel the need to go look for anything. Well, I like my music to fight back a little more before I bag it!
Take Wheez-ie for instance, a newly released artist from the states. His music obviously has some direct appeal, epic ravy stabs, cheesy vocal samples, manic breakbeats, yet I still need to sell it to the audience, listeners, etc, which makes it so much more rewarding to play out when you get the right timing, challenging the deep house heads of the day to a more hedonistic and back to basics style of electronic dance music.
Neud Photo‘s custom memories of the eighties presents the very same challenge with a rather different set of aesthetics but yet remains a quite obviously catchy tune, with an attitude, one that demands the listener to step aside from the current standard to get into the infectious groove.
If you take some of the entries from the previous post such as the Mickey Pearce, King Britt or Omar S ones, you will find this as well, obviously good music that just needs to be fought into the audience’s ears, hips and shoulders, a magnificent statement to the DJing art’s potential.
After finding myself back to music making, writing for magazines, interviewing the likes of Mad Mike, Adisson Groove, Baris K, Actress, John Lydon, Micronauts, Scuba, Robert Hood, Débruit, Josh Wink, Lescop, Skudge, I:Cube, D’Marc Cantu, Bertrand Burgalat and many others, opening a record shop, starting a company, DJing most week ends, I still bought a shitload of records. So far, the highlights have been those :
20 – We Have Band – Still Life
Apparently, this is a cover of the band The Horrors. It sure is indie rock, and it also can pass as a stripped down white gospel house softie, very effective and beautiful.
19 – Siriusmo – Rantanplant
I usually tend to get really annoyed by Siriusmo, but he managed to pull off making annoying good!
18 – Anna Meredith – Nautilus
I don’t know what that was meant for, if it’s supposed to be modern classical or something, but is is rather intriguing enough and quite dramatic, I played it out in the mix to great effect.
17 – Mirrorring – Fell Sound
A lush ambient drone shoegazy tune, like they used to do.
16 – Bass Clef – ‘Hackney – Chicago – Jupiter’
What an album! In between some really cool experimental stuff, a coupla killer beat tracks, like if Terry Riley had made house!
15 – My Nu Leng & Majora – Hips N Thighs
An 808, breaks, jukey beats, thanks 2012 for this revival!
14 – Anstam – Inuit
The weirdo has struck again! The album was a tad disappointing to me, but that EP had two great tracks, challenging ones for the DJ, my kind of stuff!
13 – Kowton – Looking at you
Maybe the track I’ve played the most out of this list, probably because it came out quite early on this year. A really nice and tense bassey choon!
12 – Special Request – Alone
The return of breakbeat, but with a twist, courtesy of Paul Woolford.
11 – Füxa – Our lips are sealed
My love for Seefeel is eternal, and Sarah Peacock singing on this is only the cherry on the cake. I’ve played this out pitched up on 45, and it’s weird, but really cool too, like shoegaze chipmunks!
10 – Samoyed – Klondike Rush
This also was a perplexing combination, but I played the shit out of this, warehouse/rave style!
9 – Hackman – Agree To Disagree
Bass, Africa, Beyonce, pop, a really sweet uplifting one.
8 – Mutant Beat Dance – Let Me Go
I’ve had this in my ears for almost two years now, and it changed a little since the first version I heard, but it’s still an amazing track from Traxx & Co, check the melodic details, the small variations, amazing!
7 – Clicks & Whistles – Hundred Mil
Almost a silly one, but really efficient and weird footworkish choon, challenging.
6 – Svengalisghost – Mars Out Of Range
Almost in the top five, but still, an amazing EP from Marky on the acclaimed L.I.E.S. label. Chicago jams with great attention to musicality and rawness.
5 – King Britt presents Fhloston Paradigm – The Chase
The most unexpected release of the year, new King Britt, and it’s on Hyperdub, and it is Acid (he said quite recently he wasn’t interested in that anymore), and it’s breakbeat!!! Stelar new combination of the most unexpected nature.
4 – Liars – Octagon
When the Liars finally become what I hoped from the begining. Dance music played live with unusal sounds.
3 – Mickey Pearce – Don’t Ask, Don’t Get
The other track I played the most in 2012. It is a little crazy, it goes in all directions, it ends in the strangest way, but still, one of the most striking drum patterns of the year.
2 – Omar S & Ob Ignitt – Wayne County Hill Cop’s (Original Mix)
That is such a cool and clever take on the mid-eighties synthetic music, one that I was surprised to not hear copied more throughout the rest of the year.
And probably my fave of all year :
1 – The Parking Attendant – Mask Of A Thousand Faces
Marco Bernardi‘s new alias, with great rmxs on the EP, but the B-side is the shit IMHO…. Classic in all the good ways.
Also very much enjoyed the Actress B-side rmx of Shangaan Electro at 33RPM, the Shangaan Electro rmx of Nacho Patrol, Isotonik‘s rmx of XXXY, FaltyDL‘s first EP on Ninja Tune, the rawness of Fabio Monesi‘s It’s My Beat, Emotion II Emotion‘s sax rmx of Purple Green, most releases from Citizen (the band), October‘s Tanstafel label, Skudge, I:Cube, the Acid Mercenaries EPs, and Riffs‘ Pots n Pans EP. I was also very happy to have my tracks with Samo DJ out on Versatile‘s Golem offshoot under the Bernadott moniker as well as anohter track out these days on Macadam Mambo. I already have more music lined up for release in 2013, so it’s already exciting!
Hopefully this coming year will be filled with more posts over here, but maybe elsewhere as well. I’ll keep you tuned.
So I’ve been on a holiday from the blog for two days and I get crazy threats already! Well, I seem to have no choice but to get back to postin’. The other day, my friend DDD reminded me of an old swedish joint as he posted an old mix. Years ago I started to look for exclusive swede mixes when roaming the shelves in stockholm dusty stores and found many treasures as remix culture was big there. Most of the time the mixes were just edits, sometimes great sometime just serviceable, but occasionally, you’d get prime nuggets such as this Stonebridge one of Paris Grey‘s “Don’t make me jack“.
Sten Olof Hallström AKA Stonebridge is a swedish producer and mostly remixer who’s produced hundreds of hits and remixes as well as launching the great SweMix remix service. It’s well worth checking his discography for unknown dance floor gems as he’s proven great skills in making tracks becoming “Tracks!”
Why do I like Juke? I guess because I like Chicago house! When Addison Groove did Dumbshit (Footcrab‘s B-side) two years ago, it was a revelation. I remember back then, I still was skeptical about most post dubstep music, but the review mentioned 808 and 909 beats, so I checked it out. It sounded like the most successful mutation I’d heard in a long time. I was already getting mad energy from the Chicago resurgence with Traxx, JTC, D’Marc Cantu & co, but this took me by surprise as I wasn’t that much into the faster Dance Mania joints, too hectic for my tastes, mostly. Addison Groove slowed down the juke to 135-140 BPM and put it on the map, making it mixing friendly in the most noble way : you can mix his stuff with disco, 135 BPM, the origin of all house! But going back a little, I can also see a few other loves of mine, like Miami bass, the quest for a fully accomplished track with nothing but a drum machine, dancing with your mind off and your body on, looking like a fool but not carrying the slightest as long as your feet touch the floor 135 times a minute. Spinn and Rashad are the current gods of juke/footwork (thanks to the attention Addison gave them), but it’s already going further then expected with the Shangaan electro going 175-180 BPM and embracing a similar minimalistic aesthetic, basically a testament to house’s versatility. Anyhow, here’s a closer examination to the phenomenon, a less subjective one. Be thankful, you got both!
Fuckin’ A! This finally convinces me (if I even needed that) that it’s time to dust off those ol’ reinforced 12″s in the club! If the Special Request 12″s from earlier this year were of any indication, this definitively puts hardcore back on the map (breakbeat and jungle as well, of course) for the (my?) foreseeable future! Wheez-ie is hailing from the states, but he seems to have been breast fed from Manix back in 1992, and he’s obviously been keeping up with the new stuff. It might be a little too intense or crazy for your average deep house fascist, but gimme anything more hedonistic than this this year and I’ll shut up. Looking forward hearing that on the dance floor.
Hmmm… Alright, I guess we still want to jack despite the saturday morningness. Well, I’m sure we’re all gonna jack tonight at the Violence FM show at the Nouveau Casino in Paris, so here’s a few teasers!
Violence FM is one of the most interesting french dance music producer, thriving in analog sounds, Detroit, Chicago and EBM roots, he’s graced a few 12″s on Jamal Moss‘ Mathematics label, but the true gems of his discography lay on his Premier Sang EP and his upcoming Skylax release (check Confusion, genius!). Enjoy!
Because we can’t rock the place every single morning and the friday booze sometimes needs to dose off, here’s something more mellow, waaaaaaaaaay more mellow. Nina Nielsen was born in Stony Plain, Alberta, but grew up moving between Norway and Canada. A writer and musician, Nielsen has recorded and collaborated with people such as Timber Timbre and Thomas Dybdahl. Love And Terror In The Wilderness is her first album and it is coming out on Biosphere ‘s (Geir Jenssen) own private label Biophon.
How does one stumble upon Shawn Shegog‘s records in 2012? One doesn’t. One either got those some time ago, seriously digging or seriously paying. So why then? Well, Shegog mostly was a singer, or at least vocalist on some Mark Imperial releases, his No Name ones, and he really did contribute to the edge those have. On both his solo releases, he’s simply manages to get everything right (with a little help from the Imperial cohorts) especially on the “Living in the dark side” dub, one version absent from youtube and such, one heavily involved in my DJ sets.
Little is know about Shegog’s history, so one can only speculate, but one remarkable aspect of both his releases is the unlikely and all to rare dark visual aspect of his labels, one that is all too much absent in Chicago house, at least that dark! Maybe Shegog was way too tormented for this scene and vanished, yet he left us with two gems and that makes him a Chi town hero in my book.
People familiar with my sets will probably recognize this. When I first discovered this some years ago, I couldn’t believe this wasn’t considered a classic, but I made my peace, played the shit out of it, and it now seems to have gained some new attention in this past year. Mark Imperial is a special case, a business man with a strong musical vision, at least for acid house : he got the basic structure pretty fluently, but what sets him apart from other acid knoblers is he indeed got a more musical sensibility with that then most. Probably more famous for his Laurent X‘s Machines and his 1985 hit “J’Adore Danser“, the cherry over the cake is this incredibly poetic track, a “She Ain’t Nuthin But A Hoe” that subtly makes the acid line run and turn every corner possible in the book, a thing of beauty with an infectious groove that possibly sounds even more relevant now than it did some 25 years ago!
Another classic acid line. Eh… It’s actually more of a great 808 bass line, but who cares when it’s such a great track! Few people know of this since it’s one of the more elusive Chicago 12″s, one that will cost you serious dough if you wanna include it to your bag. Code 3 is a weird little unit responsible for three cool little tracks between 1987 and 1989 (1996 also saw an unlikely resurgence, but it is far from noteworthy), and apart from the somewhat famous Duane Thamm Jr. (countless collaborations with the likes of Denise Motto, Chip E, House Master Baldwin, Crystalite, etc, and his glorious Knight Action project), you won’t find anyone there that did anything beyond this project. And that is sad because Antonio Suarez Jr, Yolanda Colon & S. Jammin-Lee have become heroes of mine, understanding so well the fundamentals of chi house and providing a coupla timeless underground classics that always manages to take the spotlight in my DJ sets.
Not acid but nevertheless balls :
Antonio Suarez JR also is responsible for the little nugget that Lisa Perez‘s “It’s Hot” is
Helter Skelter Radio Show 