House Is A Feeling

Here’s some stuff from the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 I am feeling, it’s not quite a top ten just yet. I did buy some new tracks today also but I’ll let them sink in before they get a mention (or no mention at all)

1. Minimono-Minimono LP (Tuning Spork):

I stopped doing infosheets for Tuning Spork last month for two reasons: because I won’t have so much time once I’m in London, and because I wasn’t really enjoying writing them. But it would have been easy to write positively and enthusiastically about this release. Tuning Spork has been sounding like Classic Records and second wave Chicago house for so long that they must feel pretty smug now that so many others are starting to sound the same way. This is a damn good LP of minimal house with a swing and a bump to it, and it sounds so alive. My favourite track is “Run”. Check it out on Beatport. No vinyl release yet.

2. George Morel-Let’s Groove (Strictly Rhythm): That feeling of instantly recognising a great track from some hazy memory of a nightclub is hard to beat, and it hit me quite hard when I found “Let’s Groove” on Henrik Schwarz’s best of 2007 chart. I heard this a few times when I was in Berlin in November, and what a vintage vibe it brings. This really reminds me of the era when mainstream house music (at least in Ireland and probably Britain) was almost all heavily US influenced, even if I only experienced the very end of that time in 2001 and 2002. Of course it’s no wonder it sounds old, according to Discogs it was originally released in 1996.

3. Ralph Sliwinski-Lockleer (Harthouse): Some of you may recall Ralph’s “Dope Doreen” on Hartchef Diskos last year, a track I really liked and played a lot. This one is on a similar tip, with that rough hardware sound softened up a little by melodies that sound like an early morning walk to work as much as an early morning nightclub. The whole thing feels intensely grey and exudes a cold winter dusk, with a groove that’s perfectly locomotive.

4. Ellen Allien-Go (Marcel Dettmann Mix) (Bpitch Control): Ah that uncompromising motherfucker Marcel, don’t you just love his records? I certainly do. I bought my brother in law new headphones this year for Christmas and he asked if I had an ipod to test them out on. So I duly obliged with by handing him one with this playing at full volume. I’m not sure he’ll be buying the 12 but he certainly got a good demonstration of bass. This track seems as if it was made to start long sets of dark impenetrable techno that begin hours after you should have gone home already. But if this was playing I have a feeling that going home would be quite far from your mind.

5. Scott Ferguson-Wine Red Walls (Ferrispark Records): The beat isn’t in time in this record, which plays havoc on your brain if you’ve ever DJed, as you mentally keep nudging the record on. It’s still a great deep house track though from a guy who you might know from his stuff on Deepvibes. This is one for fans of Moodymann or Theo Parrish. I have to ask though, why not just make the beat in sync? Without it the track never lifts off as it should. Is that a stupid question? Am I missing the point? I hope not and I don’t think so. I guess artists are tempted to break out of the structures of house and techno.

6. Prosumer and Murat Tepeli-Turn Around (Cassy Mix) (Ostgut-Ton): This will probably be the first Cassy release in a while which is available digitally. The fact that many people never heard her rather sweet “Some Light Unto The Night” or possibly even “Soulsaviour” from last year due to vinyl only releases is a shame that overrides any pro vinyl argument, at least for me. I mean, I know Perlon is hard to the core, but why not just let as many people as possible hear your music? Anyway, leaving that gigantic vat of worms aside, Cassy and Prosumer is a perfect match. Cassy’s ghostly production melts the hard analog edges of Prosumer’s original into a woozy mess, with a vocal looped so intensely that the words become just meaningless sounds.

Atmosphere is what it’s all about with Cassy, and this one could make the most sterile environment in the world have character, your bank or the tax office or the train station. I guess that’s why we go to clubs, and what makes them intangibly special, the rarified air that only good music can provide. (I can’t find the sheet I got with this but I trust it will be out very soon. I’ll have some thoughts on Prosumer and Murat Tepeli’s album as soon as I listen to it.)