SE5 afterparty

*may not accurately represent SE5 afterparty

As compensation for witnessing yesterday’s outpouring: here’s the mix I recorded on returning home from Prosumer on Sunday morning – 6am-7am to be precise – wrapped in jumper and hoodie and conscious of it becoming light (and therefore becoming springtime, almost). My living room is suitably isolated from the other inhabitants of this house so I can in fact make a bit of noise without disturbing anyone – though how anyone could be disturbed by such calm, smooth vibes is not a question I can answer.

It features some of the new records I’ve written about recently – from Xosar and Murat Tepeli – as well as a forthcoming release from Hakim Murphy on his Machining Dreams label. Then there’s a load of old hat minimal house, which seems to be becoming a bit of a theme round these parts.

Consider this the soundtrack to the frustration I wrote about last night – where other than fabric am I going to hear this Fumiya Tanaka record on a soundsystem that does it justice? Where other than in my friends’ houses am I going to hear records like the Kenneth Graham while surrounded by people I know are going to go ‘wow’? Maybe I really am WRINGING MY HANDS here.

Shutting up now.

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You go out with your friends

Approximately 7 hours of sleep later I sit here listening to Derek Carr’s ‘Destiny‘, the kind of track with which to celebrate an enforced sense of nostalgia – in this case for a time when my relationship with dance music was unrestrained by experience. I say this because this weekend demonstrates clearly the transition I have made from a novice’s wide-eyed sense of immediacy to an attitude of informed and measured regard towards, and even complicity in, a culture or ‘scene’ often defined by the jadedness of its longest devotees. As in, I used to just go to parties and dance, often solo, everything sounding superfresh. Now I go to parties and dance, often solo, finding only rarely a sense of freshness or, more worryingly, outrageousness.

This latter I mean not in the way that, say, the hottest new nu disco excrescence is outrageously bad, since this happens all too often. Rather I mean in the way that a truly exceptional record can floor me when hardly expected, viz. the first time I heard On The House’s ‘Let’s Get Busy‘ or G Strings’ ‘Motivation‘. It seems these moments nowadays are less frequent and less organic (if you can read between these lines), which is in itself no problem as long as they remain reliant on an emotional engagement with the time and place independent of whatever drugs are working to create them – i.e. what makes them inherently special. And thus far I can still identify when they do, since it’s only natural when you’re standing sunblessed on an Oxford rooftop surrounded by those you love to find something singular in a record like ‘Searching’ as it spirits its way out of the speakers.

But this isn’t meant to be hand-wringing. I’m not pulling a Fitzgerald. It’s just an acknowledgement that my relationship with this life has altered perceptibly and is now of a different quality to what it was a few years ago. So on Friday we threw our latest Kiss Me Again, an exercise creating vibes both positive (good music, good friends, an opportunity) and negative (not the right venue, not the right energy, a frustration). Surely you can’t complain about hearing the KB Project ‘Feel It‘ at 3am in a club in London, but somehow I find myself doing so – the soundsystem not being up to it and the crowd that should appreciate such a thing weirdly absent. The solution to this remains a mystery. One suspects it involves a sense of adventure currently quite alien to me.

And on Saturday I saw Prosumer again, the DJ who defined my enthusiasm for house music for so long but, to be honest in a way that I don’t find wholly comfortable, stands today less as a guiding force than as a sort of keepsake for the time I’m talking about (April 2009 to be precise), when I could dance from 12-7 for 5€ and not feel the now ever-present pressure of ‘am I enjoying this?’ or ‘that could have been better’. But yesterday despite the perfunctory mix out of ‘Forever Monna’ and the odd tribal-ish cheesefest there were still the good old basslines I can’t get away from, the Jackmaster Hater-style drumtracks that go straight for my gut, and a couple of genuinely memorable records that really did stop me in my tracks – an R&B slowjam for one. And when again am I going to get to hear ‘Darn (Cold Way O’Lovin)‘ in room 1 of Corsica Studios?

Though these highlights are tempered in my memory by my burgeoning sense of awareness (and surely to lose this is what people go to clubs for!) I am thankful that I can still hold out against ambivalence. I think the way forward is to fine-tune as much as possible the efforts I do make so at no point do I turn up on the guestlist for my favourite DJ and go home forgetting why I bothered. That, I think, is something to be avoided. Part of me suspects (very quietly) that the way forward is also probably not in London – this place does not play fair with party people.

Suggestions on a postcard.

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Discognoscenti

It can’t just be me and Andrew who have noticed a sudden surge in the number of discogs sellers charging exorbitant asking prices for previously common records…can it? As soon as the last cheap copy of a record gets picked up, the next seller to put up a copy now seems almost obliged to charge far over the odds, simply because they’re the only ones offering. A couple of examples from my own collection (by no means the worst I’ve been told about):

Sunflower Liberation Movement EP – I bought the last listed copy of this for about £9 and now someone’s trying to sell it for £50, because apparently it’s a ‘rare item!’, never mind that it sold 5 copies in 2011 all at under a tenner.

Fibre Foundation – Don’t You Ever Stop – I got this for £2 in a bargain bin, and the sales history says a fiver, yet seanlazy (from whom I’ve bought many many records these past few years) thinks it’ll sell for £20. I sincerely hope not.

These all demonstrate a certain level of audacity. Perhaps you’d counter that the demand is clearly there, since many of these records are wanted by more than apparently own them. Is this just because of a spike in discogs users? More DJs in an age of austerity? Has discogs reached a critical mass? Should the fact there aren’t so many for sale mean the record is automatically worth two times as much? Maybe.

It also makes me question the records I have shelled out more than £15 for, of which there might be tons of copies just lying around in shops for £3. How can anyone know what’s out there without actually looking around? And are the power sellers who should know the real availability of a record complicit in marking things up just because they appear scarce online? Unfortunately for everyone, items listed by honest sellers probably get snapped up so quickly that all the outrageously-priced copies are left to lounge mockingly on the sales list. And now copies of certain records are being snapped up for >£50 within minutes of being listed – as investments? Why? I suppose some records really are worth that premium, but the people paying so handsomely for other records that are probably worth half as much are doing us all a massive disservice by encouraging the sellers. Everyone but them loses out.

I guess the only answer is to dig. And keep digging. In obscure places. Can anyone recommend record shops in Svalbard?

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The month in shit disco

Todd Terje – Inspector Norse
Todd Terje’s big tracks have ‘hit’ written all over them, everything leading inexorably to the inevitable echoey synthrush two thirds of the way through. Give me a fucking break. I don’t care if they’re made with timeless machines, the sound is anything but timeless, combining a hypercool now-disco beat section (brownie points!) with the cheesiest parts of bigroom now-disco-house (hello Tensnake melodies!) and manipulative build-ups/breakdowns worthy of the most cynical of now-chart-dance records (HUGE DELAY-LADEN BEATLESS SECTION!). It makes me cringe.

The irony being that I wrote that while actually listening to ‘Ragysh’, knowing that exactly the same formula is used in ‘Inspector Norse’. The difference is that while ‘Ragysh’ has a bit of muscle on its side (the only thing going for most tracks like this), ‘Inspector Norse’ instead sounds like it’s skipping through the land of chocolate (see picture). Even some vaguely adventurous Daft Punk cadences halfway through can’t save it. It’s stupid music that resolutely refuses to be enjoyed, even if only for what it is (unlike, you know, Jentina).

******

Storm Queen – It Goes On
Now I hate mentioning Morgan Geist’s name in the same breath as Todd Terje’s, but I’ve chosen my theme so I’ll stick with it. Geist has proven over and over again that in the business of making contemporary disco he is not only top dog, he is pretty much the only dog. He is one of my all-time favourite producers and records like Terje’s stand precisely zero chance when facing off against ‘Caught Up’, ‘Strut’, ‘Miura’, ‘Let’s Get…’, it goes on… And it does go on, with his good-to-ok productions for Erlend Øye, Junior Boys and now under the alias Storm Queen, whose ‘Look Right Through’ was actually pretty good (and, incidentally, everything ‘Inspector Norse’ wishes it was but isn’t).

And it goes on even further, regrettably, with ‘It Goes On’. Listening to it now I feel dismay at its lunkheadedness, mild bafflement at its general popularity (mild only because, as we’ve already seen above, people will go for anything), and genuine outrage at its popularity with people who should know better. Like in Terje’s tracks, for a split second the sounds in this record make me say ‘yeah!’, before I regain my senses and realise: the bassline isn’t motivational, it’s oppressive; the vocal isn’t emotive, it’s oddly empty (partly due to being unfairly treated by effects); the key changes in the chorus aren’t revelatory, they’re completely non-sequiturial, stripping them of any power. The techy bridge section is the only part of the track worth saving, and it’s possible someone could use it to make a worthy remix, though something tells me Geist’s chosen remixers for the Storm Queen project (e.g. JAMIE FUCKING JONES) are not the ones to do it.

The track makes me sad. Gone is the effortless joy of his early-2000 output – and I wouldn’t complain about him trying a darker atmosphere if he hadn’t at the same time done away with the finesse that defined his best work. This is flat and unpleasant to listen to and I don’t want to listen to it again.

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Snow

As I sit here listening again to my favourite record from last year (disclaimer: on youtube, because it’s far too expensive to buy…I feel so dirty) while hiding from the snow outside, I might as well write about some even newer records that against all the odds I would actually like to buy.

Murat Tepeli – Philpot 059 (Philpot)
The A is my least favourite here, but I still like it a lot. The whole thing is a lot less refined than I’m using to hearing from Murat Tepeli and in fact there’s a bit of Levon Vincent in the drums and clashing sirens/fanfares, which is no bad thing. But this sort of track is quite conventional dancefloor fodder at the moment – just look at the Raw Interpreter EPs, for example.

Both tracks on the B-side are a bit more distinctive. The B1 mixes steppiness with Stasis-esque synths and typical Tepeli clicks/tics. It’s an intriguing new version of his sound. Then on the B2 the rounded analogue bass tones and little keyboard melodies recognisable from Serenity get the ambient/dub treatment, all sounding rather glorious if you ask me.

Xosar – Tropical Cruize (L.I.E.S.)
Andrew sent me samples of this almost three months ago but it’s only in the past few weeks that this has been available in any shops. Of course I failed to get it on Juno while it was in stock, but it seems unlikely to sell out any time soon elsewhere…hopefully. Anyway it’s three proper house tracks in the mould of Virgo Four, Bigger Than Life (dubs at least), Rheji Burrell etc etc. I’m waiting to hear these tracks out.

Andres Zacco – Invisible (AirDrop)
This was actually out at the end of last year. I remember posting about Andres Zacco a few years ago on my old blog, in a post about the various South American producers making the kind of minimal I was very much into at the time (and still am in some cases – Zacco’s digital-only remix of ‘Get The Funk’ being a prime example). Evidently since then they have all branched out a bit and are even making what you might call house music. This EP’s got a Swayzak remix on it but it’s pretty crap (which probably means it was just Brun doing the remixing). Stick with this techy one or the even harder A1, which has a nice cyclical riff thing going on.

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