House Is A Feeling

Here we go. Lots to check out here including a great new comp on Sonar Kollektiv.

I’m enjoying the Robert Johnson April mixtape. It is as its titled, a mixtape, not a mix, and features a pretty diverse range of guys and girls like Edith Piaf, Fad Gadget, Tiefschwarz, Delia Derbyshire, and the Bureau, with some Strictly Rhythm for good measure. It’s soundtracked me buying food on numerous occasions, no doubt the compiler could never have dreamed of such a success.

In the spirit of not actually talking about this with a straight face and general bemusement at Hawtin’s quest to make people who hate him hate him even more, I’ve compiled a list of future markets for Richie Hawtin which aren’t funny.

1. What next, Richie aftershave?
2. What next, Richie moisturiser?
3. What next, Richie chocolate
4. What next, Richie shampoo and conditioner?
5. What next, Richie international airport?
6. What next, Richie irony?
7. What next, Richie sushi?
8. What next, Richie toilet paper?
9. What next, Richie action man?
10. What next, Richie homewares?

Most of the above are actually taken from messageboards. Feel free to use them around the web, and for extra marks try making a joke which employs the word “minimal” followed by “no doubt” : eg “Hawtin aftershave, minimal effect on the opposite sex no doubt!” NB: the above are not funny.

Had a quick look in to Luke Solomon at T last night, though he may have finished by the time we got there. It was pretty quiet and the highlight was someone playing Paperclip People’s “Steam”.

After that there was an attempt to go to Sosho where I guess Retox was on, interrupted by about 25 police cars surrounding the place. Apparently somebody played “Heater”.

Well, either that or there was some gun related incident outside. Maybe they’ll change the name to Gun-sho. As we walked away Johnny Vegas appeared (really) telling a woman walking past she was “a well fed bitch” then after walking alongside us for a few minutes and engaging in some jovial Irish humour: “‘Hang on, I don’t even know you people, you’re probably infected.”

A pleasant and demented end to the weekend.

For stuff to do today, check Bjorn’s review of “Silent State” over at RA. I really like this release though I’m not sure I can rate it as one of the best in years or whatever. I guess the difference between calling something a great record or a future classic is sort of nebulous or even semantical. I think in the feedback comments Efdemin said this was the best record he’d heard in years or something. Anyway you should check the release and make up your own mind.

No other clubbing apart from the above, but perhaps next weekend.

There is nothing like starting the day with that shudder that says “where am I?” as you emerge from bizarre dreams about continuing the previous night’s party in a small French village you may or may not have visited as a child.

Although the specifics may be different (obviously nobody really had the above dream, certainly not the writer of this site) I suspect there are plenty of people struggling through work today or probably still out after a raucous opening for the new T-Bar, a really big night that gave real reason to be excited about the place in the months to come.

I got in at about 10, after asking a drunken businessman where Dukes was (”you’re taking me back now…”)  The queue took about 15 minutes or so and even at that stage the downstairs room was busy (and the toilets blocked!) The main room is a big hall basically. It’s a fairly natural club space apart from a big pillar in the middle of the floor, though that’s not a major problem. The sound is good too.

When we got in Michael Mayer was playing a warmup set and I thought he was fantastic. It’s been ages since I’ve seen that shit eating grin of his behind the decks but the pop inflected electronic deep house he played really heated the place up.

Even early on there was a real vibe in the air, with people cheering (unheard of in London!) The main room has a disco ball which gives a real intimacy to the venue and is a nice change from the usual retina assault.

I’ve always thought of Mayer as a sort of Laurent Garnier for the post-internet techno world, and last night it felt that way again, as he veered between electronic disco, deep house, and techno. Most of what he played had that European pop or rock or italo slant to it, with a few really classic US house tracks. It was a brilliant two hours or so of music, I guess it’s still true that a warmup set is a good litmus test of a DJ’s skill.

Jamie Jones came on at what must have been about midnight, and I thought he was mostly very good, having never seen him before. He obviously has a thing for really heavy duty hardware drums and basslines, and it went down really well. I certainly enjoyed him more than Lazarus doing an impression of Ebeneezer Goode on the stage in Fabric last weekend.

I felt towards the end of his set the style wore thin a little (and there was a small but palpable amount of “serious dance person disdain” when he played some slightly weird remix of MGMT) but I would definitely watch him play again, he had the place hopping.

Away from the dancefloor there’s an upstairs area with its own bar and a half decent soundsystem piping the music from downstairs through, which I guess means you can still have a conversation (remember them?!?)  I always like the way these parts of a venue get looser and more unhinged on a really good night, and this was the way it went, people sprawled about and chairs fucked everywhere and a few sleepers. You could spend the night in the bar area and have a pretty good time I reckon.

The same isn’t true of the toilets unfortunately, you couldn’t spend the night in them and have a good time (well maybe you could if you like it dirty. Look I don’t want to know. Jesus Christ.) There was about an inch of piss cleaning your shoes in there from an early stage and the cubicles were all blocked up. Maybe people vary but personally I reckon you just get on with it and laugh at the banter that goes on eg “I could do with a boat” etc while mentally grading it at 5 or perhaps 6 out of 10.

So after some general fucking around and boozing upstairs I caught Mayer playing the closing two hours till 4am. Memory is a bit hazy by now (I am fairly sure he produced a guitar at one point, and my grandma was there, but we were in Hawaii and I was back in my old school) but his set had a lot of feel good Balearic type stuff in it alongside house and techno.

Again there was a really big vibe around, more than you get in London usually, with people smiling and cheering. It was a party not a club night, which over here is rare enough, at least in my limited experience. By the end people were doing the whole “one more tune” beg, and Mayer dropped some ridiculous piano laden old school track that seemed to have about 7 different verses in it.

Then the lights came on and I guess people stumbled home in various states of confusion. In the actually quite warm light of day I’ve got to say that was one of the best nights out I’ve had in London, just simple good fun, with nothing getting in the way. Let’s hope the new T stays that way. There’s some good stuff coming up.

PS: HIAF tip of the day (in the style of a hardened TV police officer.) “Never eat a salt beef beigel you can’t see.”

Phoenix’s “Tabloid” compilation for Kitsuné is something I’ve been listening to a lot lately and really enjoying. It’s not got anything to do with dance music particularly but is a really strong selection of rock and pop which will let you discover some acts you might not have heard before if you’re interested in that.

Can anyone remember when dance music labels and artists became such conduits for hearing really good rock music? That almost seems unremarkable by now. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

Anyway Kitsuné have made a nice video to promote the mix which shows Phoenix doing what a cold blooded British or Irish person could only describe as “faffing around in the (bloody) snow”. Watch it here.

Belgian Franco Cangelli who runs Mowar has done a mix of older disco and house for the Energy Flash blog here. Franco gets extra marks from me for including two Jungle Wonz tracks, no doubt I’ve mentioned about 15 times that “The Jungle” is my favourite old Chicago tune. It’s those strings, that mix of grey introversion and the almost naive ambition of the music.

For those of you who’ve not heard it, Burial and Fourtet’s collaborative release, “Moth/Wolfcub”(reviewed here by Richard Carnage of the Tape blog) is on Youtube to check out.

In the spirit of our times I feel I should cease my old fashioned sermon from the mount and let the most exciting and informed voices speak here. I’m talking of course about “Youtube users”. (Stop laughing please.) User generated content, as promised, is changing the world for the better as it continues to blur the lines between amateurism and professionalism, creating enlightening battles of words and thought.

Yes these ideological high priests are kind enough to devote minutes or even hours of their time to calling each other wankers. Expertise vs street knowledge, practice versus theory, and the perennial war between people who do things and those who spend all day masturbating in a darkened room. All are hashed out daily on forums/messageboards in this golden age of knowledge, civility and learning.

Tensions are high regarding “Moth” as a complex argument brews between two great minds: “How is it a comeback when you didn’t even address me in the first place…think before you post simple man. It’s also ‘were’ not ‘where’-Chinmassager

However unity is restored when a great philosopher weighs in: “I would love to listen to this on K, all the layers in the track would absolutely blow your mind.”-dotman88

Moving on from such high minded theory T-Bar reopens in London tonight and if any of you are there I’ll probably see you. Mind you for all I know there are people sleeping on the pavement outside by now to ensure they get in. If you’re going along say hello: I ressemble golfer Sandy Lyle circa 1985, though more in terms of my mental approach to the game rather than actual physical similarities.

Michael Mayer and Jamie Jones will wet the “proverbial baby’s head” (while several hundred revellers drink in the baby and one or two vomit in the baby, you get the picture) tonight and it’s for free.

So it begins: one thing’s for sure, Houndsditch won’t know what hit it (and still won’t have any sentient humans present after 11!)

Check out my latest WPP Roundup here. (I actually did this late last week but forgot to provide the link)

So I managed to get to Fabric at about 1 or 2am on Saturday, and saw some of DJ Koze, a little Sebo K, Guillaume and the Coutu Dumonts, and an hour or so of the Wighnomy Brothers, before stumbling madly into the morning.

I found most of the acts pretty good without being outstanding, I couldn’t say I got a big kick out of the Kompakt guys but it was good music. Guillaume and the Coutu Dumonts’s live show on the other hand was one of the most exciting things I’ve seen in quite a while. It’s rare to get a huge cheer in Room 1, at least in my experience, but when he came on playing a long solo made up of various sampled bongos via a drum machine, then dropped his remix for Sety, the place lit up.

It seems there’s a lot of recycled kneejerk hate for bongos recently, which is like the latest incarnation of my beloved “sounds like an insect walking across a microphone” from the mnml era, but fuck that, bongos are no more variable than any other element. Guillaume’s set proved a pretty old idea, that if you’re going to bother to do live dance music, it absolutely has to offer something different (not that samey DJing is welcome but you get the point)

He also managed to get around every dance forum’s favourite cliché “is he ‘checking his email’ up there”? (”is he checking his email while playing those fucking bongos”/”they sound like an insect walking across a microphone”) by using the MPC throughout the set to give things a physical and visual feel.

It was a good show to watch as well as dance to, which is so rare with a one man band dance show. Normally I’d wonder why we need to watch something, but then, if a “live show” is just a guy basically DJing and playing all his own music then no wonder people are switched off, not least given most are so used to hearing a different artists music every few minutes in a club.

I spent most of the rest of the night in the Kompakt dominated Room 2, which was sort of unremarkable to me, though some friends enjoyed it a lot more. I found Koze fairly tame and hard to really dive into, and though the Wighnomy Brothers were better it all felt a bit gloopy. Mind you I did hear it got a lot better in the last hour, I left at about 7.30am because I wanted to not be in bed all day on Sunday.

That evening I went to Losoul at Millenium Disco’s monthly night in BarMusicHall, and had a really good time, despite some of the crowd early on seeming like they were straight out of whatever your local smalltown shit disco is (attempts at breakdancing in a large dancefloor filling circle, or limbo, shudder.)

Thankfully that crowd dispersed and the DJ before Losoul, not sure who it was, a bearded man, played some really good stuff including Lil Tony’s Arthur Russell mix which sounds great out. Losoul himself was even better, it’s so good to go to a gig for free and hear some brilliant music. His set featured a few of his own tracks, new and old, and the kind of groovy German house you’d expect.

It all went on till around 2am, at which point there were about 3 people dancing, one of whom is writing this post (the other two were a former Miss World and the actor who originally played the “One Armed Man” in “The Fugitive”, I’ll let you look them up)

The venue might have its share of weirdos due to the location but the system is quite good and “free in” is not a river in Egypt. Afterwards I sat on a step across the road for a bit with a friend and reminisced about the old days (2 weeks or shit…even as far back as 4 weeks ago….man) and how things had changed since then (not very much as it turned out.) Not sure Losoul appreciated the golf clap (think American golf audience rather than European here) we gave him as he left the venue however.

At the end of it all two great things in a weekend is pretty good going I think! Any alternative reports are welcome. Not too alternative mind you, if you spent the weekend discovering your inner wolf child at a Wiccan swingers club then I’d rather not hear about it if it’s all the same to you.

Unless you got pics. Hey now!

As far as London on Sunday is concerned I’m thinking the Escape from New York rooftop party at the Queen of Hoxton rooftop terrace (I’ve got it on good authority this place is good) with Holy Ghost from DFA Records and some others, possibly followed by Losoul who is playing in Bar Music Hall on Curtain Road that evening. The choices abound though, as a quick look at any events mag will tell you.

I am almost certain Beatport has recently added a lot of older Playhouse releases which it didn’t have before. Either that or I am wrong, which seems highly unlikely as this has never actually happened (apart from once in 1991, I incorrectly guessed a “Countdown conundrum”, suggesting an elaborate Irish swear word which was not subsequently revealed to be the answer.)

Anyway I’ve been checking back through old releases to find some really good stuff. It’s interesting how similar some of the releases are to what’s currently popular, and how different some others are. I also like the fact that I was about 16 when some of these tracks were coming out. At some point it’d be good to do a mix of Playhouse only stuff, but for now check out these few classics. (This is by no means a definitive list, just the beginning really! I’ve also left out some tracks which I’ve mentioned here before a few times, like Losoul’s “Open Door” or the “Lovelee Dae” remixes)

1. Bodo Elsel-Grooves (2000)

From the “Sines” EP check this bestial house track, an exercise in raw minimalism which still sounds taut 9 years later. You can practically feel the sweat as a crackling hats and percussion make a single looped Fingers style bassline sound more and more frenzied. Discogs says this was Elsel’s last release, one for Unsolved Mysteries to deal with.

2./3. Random Factor-Broken Mirror (Original/Freaks Turning Orange Mix) (1998)

This one I do remember, sort of. The original was around plenty of comps and clubs over the years, not least Trevor Jackson’s immense DJ Kicks album. This mix is new to me though, the Freaks turning the jerky electro of the original into a house depthcharge, a a classic example of the European house sound. The bump of this is unbelievably addictive too. It’s a mix that actually does justice to such an amazing original.

Original:

Remix:

4. Soul Phiction-Whizzdom and Understanding (1999)

10 years on from this, a lot of records sound exactly like it. Take from that what you care to, but it’s a damn good place to start. Soulphiction obviously still makes house music, but it’s frequently much more restrained than this, an inch perfect deep house record. I guess back in 1999 it must have been quite hard for these records to travel around the world, maybe it’s no wonder the sound is being revisited now.

You can buy these on Beatport.