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Sunday 16 September 2012

HOUSE! HOUSE! HOUSE! HOUSE! HOUSE!

 
 
(Giving a warning that this POST is all about House Music,
as this is not at all a specialised house, dance or music blog.
And I don't want to alienate anyone just dropping by to read otherwise.
!While you could give it a go! :)  )

 
 
There has been & is good stuff around at the moment, so time for some stuffing of stuff onto blog.

 
 
I should do a couple or more of HOUSE! posts per week, and at least one anyway.

 
 
3 HOUSE TRACKS in this post today (or tonight, rather, it's late and I've been ill unfortunately).

 
(1) One track I've only heard a few times and clearly already, to me, is a classic of early this year ("Wayne County", Omar S remix, by Omar S).
(2) One track has been around for a few months (though I heard it around 5 months ago first), has been popular, is getting very popular, or already is, and is still growing, house of the moment
("Preset" by Crooked Man).
(3) One track I regard as a classic from last year which reminds me of Old School early house days (the Screendeath remix of "Song For Lisa" by The Japanese Popstars).

 
 
 
(1) "Wayne County" or "Wayne County Hill Cop's (Part 2)", Omar S, Omar S Remix. Early 2012.




An excellent track, find yourself suddenly in the middle of Detroit, listening to classic Detroit Techno from the mid to late 80s. Wayne County is an area in Detroit.

 
A sample of the vinyl, the analogue sample rather than digital, had me feeling like it was 1988 again. Or even '86, I'm not sure and I was young though living on house with every chance. Not young enough to miss ALL the clubs! :) If you ask, I don't really remember.

 
The Omar S remix is featured on the release with the original mix (available to buy from the links below). The original mix is more classic house, and IS so classic, and I love it and probably prefer it, but I share the Omar S mix here anyway, as it's what I'm listening to. It was a shorter version that got me sharing this, some time after I'd heard it a few times before (though I've not been out much anywhere this summer past, or Spring for that matter). That shorter version, mix, or a radio cut / edit, that has me sharing this, was played by Seth Troxler and Jamie Jones on their Essential Selection show on Radio 1 (BBC, UK) this summer. Certainly a best classic of 2012. That much was sheerly obvious right at the start of the year.

 
Follow these links for more info and to buy the music:


 
(2) "Preset", Crooked Man. (From "Preset" / "Scum" E.P. on Crooked House label.)

"Preset", Crooked Man - promotional from radio mix Ben Watt (BBC 6 Mix, UK) by lcb


Good luck finding the track to purchase, online stores still say it is sold out (mid September 2012) for both MP3 and vinyl. It's a brilliant house track, sounds like a classic or anthem to me, so is worth looking around for. It was released in April this year, as far as I know. Yet I checked a few times in the last 4 months or so and the online stores said sold out. Maybe it was released for a week or something, just for DJs, or something, a digital equivalent of a white label, or something, or something.

 
Mysterious - I don't know anything about this track by Crooked Man, who've published on their own label, also called Crooked Man, it seems. They've been around for a while and I think are lead by an old shool DJ from the north of England, from a club I think I must have poked my head into when I were a little teen. Or something. While those are serious house - jazz vocalists on that recording, sounding like a soul groove house classic within a very few listens. It's not just a man in a studio with electronics. While said man really does have the most amazing, incredible digital percussion production facilities - it's beyond most serious balearic stuff, while also a bit minimal acid and more mainstream Chicago at the same time. I can't tell if it's real percussion bars sampled and looped, or all created from some amazing digital boxes. (Some sources online refer to the label as Crooked House.) And the record seems to have been unavailable for some time. Would love more information.

 
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*** Added in a post edit, 17.09.2012: Here's some information now, including vocalists names found on the vinyl record itself: Info - Crooked House
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(3) "Song For Lisa", The Japanese Popstars, Screendeath Remix.




The Screendeath remix is classic house from 2011. It brings me back to a time of classic after classic, week after week, weeks full of classics, from the mid to late 80s through the around the mid 90s or so. Things aren't really like that anymore.

 
Screendeath is a Northern Irish DJ and producer, still based in Belfast, I think, who I've seen some at local house clubs in the city. Really cool. After hearing his "Song for Lisa" remix and being amazed and falling in love with it (some time after I'd thought "Song for Lisa", JP's, was kinda shelved in current club stuff), I saw him do a set and I wasn't disappointed. Brilliant. I think he was one of the names before Ben Klock's visit to The Stiff Kitten club last year (or Steffi from Panorama - Berghain). (Ben Klock back next week at SK.)

 
The Japanese Popstars are also musicians from this region, DJs and producers, still based in Derry I think. They had a remix featured in "Tron Legacy Reconfigured" (2011), the remix album of Daft Punk's 2010 film soundtrack. (Added 13.10.2012: I forgot to mention they have a really good global name as a live dance act, particular in stadia and festival stages.) They were one of the names at the last time I went to Belfast's huge club SHINE. You might call ir a superclub but it always has been and is based in a perfectly nice, but typically basic (but for a nice back bar) students' union - it's not a student club though.

 
Unfortunately, I missed The Japansese Popstars completely that night, and nearly all of the headliner Alex Metric, as the DJs in the very back bar were playing great house all night and I couldn't move away. Anyway that's typical for me at Shine, where I went to see Paul Oakenfold last year, but spent most of the night enjoying an amazing set by Questhouse DJs in the first bar (Questhouse have their own club in Belfast, "Questhouse", formerly The Warehouse, Boucher Rd.) That was surprising as Questhouse are fast, trance, techno - not so much my thing, but the set was SO cool, amazing. And Oakie was not doing so well on that night (and the place was absolutely heaving). And the main hall speakers sounded really bad by the time he came on anyway. That's unusual for Shine, in recent times at least, for the times I've been, the sound is usually at least good.

 
I made it to check out the Questhouse club this summer, actually too tired to bother going anywhere after a few drinks in the bar downstairs, and feeling like a few more beers. The techno was so fast, not my scene, a nice venue though. Maybe it looked fun for those into that. Maybe, as a long time total house head, I thought they need real house music at a danceable tempo. Or a whole night of Ce Ce Roger's "Someday", repeatedly (OK all mixes that can be found, to root the place in something with roots.) This was a Friday night, and from what one of the promoters said, I got the feeling that Saturday should be more housey techno, or that week anyway. (Though checking out one of the DJs online, Moog I think, his stuff can be really fast.)

 
I remember I missed Paul Van Dyke at Shine the week afterwards, quality trance if you want. Illness can be really annoying at times. While for classic later - noughties trance house - rave, Eddie Halliwell is headlining Shine in a week or so from now. I don't know if I can do rave anymore. I think it died in me soon after a few visits to 'Rez' near Edinburgh in the late 90s. While earlier classics live on. There was a time when many types of mainstream house and even pop house and techno and rave were often kind of married in tracks (tracks like Sunscreem's "Love You More", Sunshine Valentine Mix or others, even the original). And even before that when tracks of each genre were all often - indeed probably mostly - kind of married in clubs, along with slower dance such as Soul II Soul and Movement 98. There were the genre clubs - a lot, just like today - house, garage, techno, rave etc. And there were many dance clubs which incorporated charty RnB (meaning swingbeat - swingbeat was OK or at least OKish at the start) and the dance clubs with all of that without the swingbeat (which I much preferred). That kind of thing is really hard to find now. It seems there are underground dance genre clubs, and a commercial play anything or most things nightclub / pop disco, that's that. With recent pop music, the latter aren't worth even directing your mind to. Common or garden discos used still to be nice fun. Once upon a time. Nowadays torture is the name of the "game" in popular music and the lives of those who are somehow attatched to it.

 
Returning to Shine and my missing huge names in the main hall, last year Sasha was a headliner, who of course I'd thought was a really cool DJ, since a mid teen at the beginning of the 90s,and he played a long set. Of which I heard one track early on and the end of his very last track at the end of the night. Because 808 State were playing in the first bar also that night, and it was an amazing set, with guest appearance by one of the biggest current names in house in Belfast, Space Dimension Controller (getting a big name in the wide world). He also played WITH 808 State. It was a highlight to see the amazing 808 Sate play along together with SDC, great sets and combination. I made a promise to myself to see Sasha again, somewhere, wherever.

 
But illness means nothing is sure. I usually don't buy tickets in advance. The last I bought in advance, for Kerry Chandler in Belfast (Stiff Kitten) I couldn't go to and lost. I even waited until the morning of the night, thinking, I can force myself to go tonight, I'm not too bad, but there's no predicting.

 
The Japanese Popstars are playing at the upcoming Shine birthday night in Belfast (is it 17 years old, now? While I always thought Shine went back to nights I sometimes went to at Belfast Art College in the 80s, when underage, house nights I thought people "called" Shine. Or maybe they were telling me to shine, dunno.) John Digweed is the headliner (really looking foward to this), and Julio Bashmore is playing. I saw one or two sets by Bashmore last year and I loved them. But his "Au Seve" is absolutely killing me, I hate it. It literally kills me. Dead. For weeks or longer, with just 1 minute or less of hearing it. Piece of mod retro crap.

 
There is also an excellent Pete Tong remix of The Japanese Popstars' classic, "Song For Lisa". The original anyway is a lovely electronica - maybe indie - house piece.


The Japanese Popstars - Song For Lisa (Screendeath Remix) by screendeath

Sunday 9 September 2012



Promotionally sharing a current chilled but groovy balearic house / club record which I think is super.
This was released in the summer, a couple of months ago,
and will continue to deserve to be heard much.
Both the remixer and the band, who some describe as "indie" (they are not really) are involved with electronic club music.

If you like this gorgeous track, why not go to the Youtube page,
and easily follow the links in the description to purchase the download (from 99p GBP)
or the vinyl record (full EP - 3 tracks).

The remixer, Yves Rymden Dansskola are a pair based in Norway who have been making classic chill, traditional Balearic style house and club music for a few years now.

Ytre Rymden Dansskola remix
of
"Head First Then Heart"
by
Flowers and Sea Creatures.


BUY HERE NOW (available as download digital file, also as vinyl): 

      Or from


Saturday 8 September 2012

Ho hum ... blog-wise as idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean...

' Day after day, day after day,
  We [royal] stuck, nor breath nor motion ' *
.. blog-wise.

Y'know, I've been wondering what to say in a blog and if I should just write something, anything, anyway!

With a lot of interest in certain things, for example House Music, I was doing fine at one stage to expect I could just bloody well post some amazing house classics or rarer heard stuff. Which I really should.

I've just returned from the South of France, yesterday. I spent two weeks there, most of it in Nice, part around Cannes... (Which was very hard actually for this sufferer of chronic fatigue and severe, frequent migraines.) ... And did very little but just about made it going, just about stayed alive and just about made it back again.

The relaxing, high point of one's life ...
... the focus that is needed in the mind (so strongly it is also in the body and movement and existence)
... about the real situation on the earth, periodically, maybe regularly, like a tonic wine or cup of the most healing, inspiring, refreshing, renewing, situating spiritual MEAD (or 'made wine') that winds you up again like the clockwork doll who needed it so long ago, but got by, but anyway for whom it works again
...
... well, ceases much to be all that at all when it is such a challenge, a real chore, something of a nature close to a killer - surprisingly, something bringing on serious physical body pain in trying and worse in the mind and head. To try so hard, in reaching, though just intending to naturally make happen (but it doesn't), what one took for granted once, what is defined as needing to be there to be taken for granted, what should never be "tried" at all ... is muddling everything up.

I don't mean that it ought to be that a person can take having a holiday for granted. No, not at all. I know for many it is a luxury, and many, many, basic food is a greater thing of luxury. Which is very sad, indeed (such is this place, alas).

I was referring to some kind of mind thing, some kind of existence and identity thing about living on the earth. I mean that it's the very kind of thing - visiting the South of France to me (and other Meditteranean places, perhaps only European Meditteranean places, not sure), for example - which has an identity itself as something innately, inalterably of spritual relaxation and the most calm, refreshing inspiration. A necessary tonic involving identity and reality. (Which, if in part or substantially of illusion, nevertheless is so strong it amounts in fact to something that isn't actually illusion anyway, it couldn't be. Reality can work that way.) And that identity of that real facet of life - the visit to a certain place or places which live on in the mind or even become part of the mind - lives in a most special, vital, essential, delicate, sensitive position within a very important place of one's personal identity. ... ... And it doesn't work, and seems it might churn your whole identity and being up, perhaps tragically, perhaps forever, if it happens that it is strangely such an effort it seems a challenge, something that nearly kills you perhaps!!!

Anyway, it was OK, good too! And better than OK!
 
(Added 14.10.1012: And worse and much worse than OK, of course. It was real and not a figment in my mind since it ended.)

...
...
...

So, just some words about holidaying or travelling, and places which can be part of you very existence after some time, and identity. Unless you escape, perhaps... ! Hahaha!? I don't know. It's far too strong for me. There is no escape. Places are me ... to some really large degree (more than just Meditteranean places). And I decided long, long ago, even if escape could somehow be possible, it's fine anyway, it's how it is, and, in a sense, what can be higher (meaning more valid) or other or more true than that?

While in Nice, I thought I should post a blog entry about visiting, either during or soon after the visit. While I couldn't think what that should be, I thought, why not just make a visual blog entry - you know, some photos, perhaps with shaky camcorder footage, made into a quick home video. I'd still like to do that, and want to make a proper post holiday Blog post, even though I took very little footage or photos indeed. A quick flash video to come maybe.
 
         I'll get some kind of blog going eventually, I hope. No, here it is! Yes. It happens to you.
         You don't happen to it. It can't be happened to. But you can be happened to.
         No, I made the bloody move to go and write tonight, that's it, isn't it? Isn't it?
 
...


HOUSE CLASSIC time ...
Slower house - soul classic ...
of Chicago heritage.
I rediscovered this in late Spring or early summer this year,
I think thanks to Groove Armada, and their occasional guest spot,
show 6 Mix takover on BBC Radio. While, I remember, I usually rediscovered it
once every 6 months to a year, quite regularly. But always like a rediscovery every time.
Lovely.

It's the great, great Larry Heard,
as
Mr. Fingers
"What About This Love"
(1989)

(Thanks to Youtube promotional / social sharing, by "LILJAMIE")






Buy "What About This Love" by Mr Fingers:
...
...

Groove Armada, 6 Mix takeover (2 hours)
15.06.2012,
BBC Radio 6 (UK)

A leftish radio show / long mix from the dons who went their own silent way for a while.
 
Download here unrestricted- Groove Armada 6 Mix 15.06.12
(free)

(Note: Legal download sharing, as audio is otherwise unavailable,
and not available commercially.
Fair use exception in Copyright Law due to special interest,
if used not for profit or gain
though copyright remains with Groove Armada / BBC.
While the copyright exception doesn't allow many repeat plays of each track,
without also buying them.)


BBC program info with (usually incomplete!) tracklist:

"6 Mix" Groove Armada, 15.6.12, BBC website page

Enjoy... :)

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* 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner'. Coleridge-Taylor, or Taylor-Coleridge, whichever is correct, I can't remember. Probably the first one and I guess I should remember.