Today, Gabriel and Dresden’s new double CD mix Mixed for Feet is released. The title could not be more fitting. Reunited after three years on solo projects, Gabriel & Dresden are now in the middle of a North American and European Tour. This weekend, in fact, they are headlining New York’s Electric Zoo festival on September 4th. That’s good news for fans of house music–a trance influenced direction of the house sound has taken hold of popular taste. The call of the day continues to be genre-crossing, and Gabriel and Dresden are on the pulse of the moment with this mix. Along with tracks from Gabriel & Dresden themselves, there are tunes by Tiësto, Umek, Felguk, Dada Life, and Fedde Le Grand in the mix here. That type of range in selection is the surest sign of the current era of electronic music. Continue reading →
House has its history like every other form of music– therearebooks about it; documentaries about it; it even appears in movies (what’s that playing at the Hacienda?). It was born recently enough that more often than not the story is told by the people who were there to see the beginning. A classic house song like Phuture’s Acid Trax, therefore, is no secret but known the world over. Phuture began as a trio of Chicagoans in early house music: Spanky, Herb J, and DJ Pierre, who had a rare gift for minting new genres as he made music.
Its been forever. But its summer again, and content is king so its time for some updates. I figured that it would be best to get things going with some upcoming brilliance of the tech house variety. A little while I had the pleasure of catching Marco Corona on Ustream.tv when Ritchie Hawtin flashed the news on Facebook. It was a remarkable set to watch even if beamed through cyberspace. Glad I saw it. Recently I’ve had the pleasure of grooving to Corona’s Tech House ’70 vol. 1. . .Spectacular tunes on that one! Here’s one of them:
Tommie Sunshine is amazing. If you don’t know that already, then you are in for a real treat. This Summer Soundtrack mix has made the rounds on-line because it’s excellent. Brooklyn remains one of the brightest and most vibrant centers for dance music of all stripes and Tommie Sunshine represents all the best reasons why! I should note that hearing Tommie Sunshine’s spring mix is part of the idea behind doing a summer series of my favorites mixes at all! Tommie Sunshine has been a fav since I heard his mysteriously sad track “Runway Runaway” on the classic Misery Loves Company compilation in ’02 from Ersatz Audio. Eight years on he’s even better and continues to be both astoundingly creative and productive. Enjoy this mix!
Chicago has a long and distinguished history in American music–once a center of American blues music through the storied Chess Records, one of its most recent claims to fame is as the christening place of house music. Rising out of the dynamite and steamrollers of Kaminski Park, house music is now one of the truly global forms of music. In fact, many of the Chicago pioneers–Frankie Knuckles, Jesse Saunders, and DJ Pierre–continue to tour the world as legends who have managed to remain fresh and cutting edge.
Like all forms of music house is as much about its present and future as its history. Randy Seidman work behind the scenes of the music industry has gained him as much attention as his work behind the decks and in the studio. His career as a DJ and producer has paralleled one as a tour manager for artists across a range of musical communities from hip-hop to dancehall to psy-trance.
“Evening Harvest,” the debut album from Toronto’s James Teej is out now on Rekids Records. Recently, Teej was touted as the protegé of Rekids’ label honcho Matt Edwards, best known for his work as Radio Slave, and that influence is palpable throughout Teej’s release, but the Canadian’s blend of minimal techno and soul has a singular quality. The deep atmospherics of this sound are part of the mix Teej has released in support of “Evening Harvest.” He calls his spring 2010 mix “Indecent Descent” and showcases the dapper mode of deep techno and house to which Teej’s work belongs. The entire mix runs just short of an hour, and throughout the propulsive drive of the tunes never falls short of emotion. Like the album it supports, Indecent Descent is a sleek and tasteful slice of electronic sound. -Hear the mix inside!>
DJ FM is a talented local guy from Raleigh, NC. He’s always expanding his sound in new directions, and pretty adventurous in his production. So far I’ve heard his hard-edged old-skool progressive material and his more recent neo hip-house material on the EP Influenced–he did that one with another local cat, Big Hop,. More recently he seems to have explored a deeper, more melodic house sound with spacey grooves and bass lines. Like a lot of the folks into electronic dance music in the area, he found his way into electronica through a different genre. . .metal. . . Well people are complex, and not everything can be explained, but this remix he sent me recently is so good I wanted to talk about it a little. Enjoy!
Been a while since I’ve posted, but things are going again so there will be more in the days to come. This mix by Menace was made on January 3rd, 2010 to support the tenth anniversary of his Work it Baby label (see below). It pretty amazing stuff. I played it a coule of weeks ago during my radio show on WKNC and had a great response. It’s definitely something to check out. That Poni Hoax track blew my mind! I hadn’t heard of them before, and now can’t wait to hear more! Here’s the playlist with the track below:
Little Boots – Earthquake(Dekker and Johan Remix)
lullabies -aeroplane remix
myers briggs – red cooler
ryan davis – vanderbird
aphex twin – on
stephan bodzin – mustang
badly drawn boy – promises
metro area – mirua
pony hoax – antibodies 128
rozzo – blue
instra-mental – leave it all behind
oliver koletzski – sure i can dyno
skatebard – pagans
Kris Menace‘s Work it Baby label is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Part of the celebration is a double CD set that make s the label’s amazing catalogue available in one place. The first CD features recent and unreleased tracks from the label that includes. With this posting I’m including one of the best tracks from the CD.
Work It Baby is a French House label that specializes in an energetic synth driven sound that takes inspiration from the west coast disco sounds of, say, Patrick Cowley. But this is not some Hi-NRG rehash–the releases consistent are more than the sum of their influences. That’s a good thing in this case–the sound of San Fran. disco can pretty easily become shlocky and cheeseball. Work It Baby is _never_ like that. Their tracks are invariably mostly propulsive dancefloor monsters that manage to strike chords that are at time down right inspiring. Ten years is a long time to be cutting edge in a genre like electronic music-everything is about the future, what is to come, what’s next, the new directions. Any artitst or labels who rest on their laurels for too long are pretty soon played out when they play out. Menace is still generating excitement through both of his labels. (Compuphonic is the other.)
Work It Baby, well, works it. One of the surest signs of that is the selection of artists in its catalogue. Patrick Alavi of Germany has been shining more brightly with each release. His own boutique label, roXour, is celebrating its 5th anniversary right now. His 2004 track “Power” gets a remix from Menace for the anniversary disc. This track manages to showcases all of the best features of the label-an extraordinary build with increasingly complex synth elements that final explode into an aurora borealis of color. The music is like a laser light show, and no worhtwhile dancefloor could resist this track for very long–Menace’s skillful briliance is that he so ably brings his voice to an artist’s track without undermining the spirit what made the original so fantastic in the first place.
The Snuff Crew are a duo out of Berlin producing a jacking Chicago style house with a dark edge. Their Berghain EP on International Deejay Gigolos is the part of a steady stream of production efforts since the end of 2008. There’s a lot to this sound—it manages to be mysterious and ethereal but also tough and, well, sinister. Both of the tracks on the Berghain EP fall like nighttime with bright synths rising to shine like the moon. The ode to Berlin nightclub Berghain is driving and hypnotic, while the title track is a classic jacking number. Everything is very sparse and the deliberate minimalism adds significantly to the impact of the tracks. The Crew seems as mysterious as their music as the photo above shows. They maybe what I like to call a total package—their talent is productive and innovative; their image is unique and fitting; their sound is relevant and timeless. . . Absolute top quality stuff! Check the set from them below.
