House Is A Feeling

In the spirit of the cultural necrophilia that has become so popular in house and techno circles of late, I’ve wanted to start posting some older music that I liked on release which I’ve started to hear out again. And also some I haven’t started to hear out again.

I’ve noticed in the last year that I’m hearing music out that I bought or downloaded when it was first released, which is one of those moments when your cultural interests reveal the passing of time in a way that’s really tangible. So for the first time I feel like I’ve lived through a cycle in dance music, where things I liked and bought when they were out can be reintroduced alongside newer things.

So from now on I’m going to post streams of some of these tunes, from time to time, when I think of one.

Now despite me talking about records that are being played once again, years after their release, some tracks that sound completely of their time will still be worth posting in this series. This first one, Speedy J’s remix of Adam Beyer’s “Ignition Key”, from 2002, doesn’t really sound like current stuff. Perhaps Marcel Dettmann or somebody could play it, but whether it’s aged well or not really isn’t the point of this.

The point of this record is very clear. It is genuinely one of the most grandiose pieces of music I’ve ever heard, in any genre. It’s a ferocious animalistic record, it’s wild and unpredictable and mysterious. A 9 minute howl into the abyss with percussion tearing strips out of that vast godly bassline which blasts it all away like the great flood.

But it’s not just a heads down techno track. Speedy J’s remix also bleeds this enigmatic euphoria, this weird otherworldly sense of knowing. It sounds like somebody having some bombastic realisation about humanity and human existence, but it’s not a simple or glorious moment like in other dance records. It’s a vision that’s as disturbing and vicious and ugly as it is ecstatic. A vision that combines savagery with wonder. And a vision that explodes almost as quick as it appeared, in a thunderous final minute of percussive explosions, fizzling out suddenly with a split second of feedback.

Just make sure you give this your undivided attention, preferably in some sort of meditation tank with giant headphones on. Be warned though. Afterwards, the world may never be the same again.