Marching sledgehammer thuds and Autumn-frosted organs drenched in deeper than deep strings courtesy of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (probably).

Ame and Dixon dropped this last night in the closing stages of their final Thursday night session at Plastic People.  Exquisite.

Kerri Chandler – ‘Pong (Ben Klock’s Strings & Bones Rework)

]]> http://doyouknowhowtowaltz.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/orchestral-manoevres-in-the-dark/feed/ 0 doyouknowhowtowaltz pong http://doyouknowhowtowaltz.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/missing-you/ http://doyouknowhowtowaltz.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/missing-you/#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:51:32 +0000 doyouknowhowtowaltz http://doyouknowhowtowaltz.wordpress.com/?p=76 ]]>

Perfect late-period Larry Heard.  This track has become my hot water bottle as Autumn draws in these last few weeks.  Strangly close to modern-day R&B, these raw, stripped back workouts have increasingly become his weapon of choice over the last decade or so (see also 2001′s ‘Time Machine’ and 2007′s masterful ‘The Sun Can’t Compare’), and they continue to prove that, for Heard at least, a pristine finish in the studio doesn’t always equate to schmalzy mediocrity.

Larry Heard – ‘Missing You (Jazz Cafe Mix)

Sharon Jones – ‘How Long Do I Have To Wait RMX’

*More posts from now on.  Promise.

Elias Rahbani and His Orchestra – ‘Liza…Liza’

“Not everyone understands house music; it’s a spiritual thing; a body thing; a soul thing.” (Eddie Amador, ‘House Music’, 1997)

“You see people house is more than a nation, house is a feeling, house is a sanctuary, house is a release, house will pick you up when you feel down, house will make you strong when you feel weak, house will fill you up when you feel hungry.” (Efdemin, ‘Just A Track’, 2007)

When Jesse Saunders dropped the first release on his fledgling label Jes Say Records in 1984 it’s hard to say if anyone could have predicted that the music would live up to the track’s name.  Of course the heads can argue into the night about which was the really the very first House record, but On and On was without a doubt among the first off the block, and for anyone who has come of age over the last 20 years the genre it helped to kick-start is arguably as ubiquitous an artform as Rock n Roll was by the end of the ’60s, with similarly variable results .  What’s especially striking now, however, 25 years on, is how prominent the vocal is in Saunders’ track.

In a recent Resident Advisor interview Jeff Mills (perhaps the ultimate auteur of ‘pure’ machine music for the 1990s) recalls the difficulties that he and other American DJs faced in Europe when playing House music.  “I can remember very clearly taking things out of my record box”, he notes, “because even if it was Chicago house they didn’t want to hear the voice of Xavier Gold or Jamie Principle and things like that.”  So in 2009, as Techno plumbs ever darker, more suffocating depths, it’s reassuring to see its Windy City sibling still singing its own cause.  It’s a contrast perfectly summed up in the still zeitgeist defining techno powerhouse (literally) that is Berlin’s Berghain club.  While Marcel Dettmann, Ben Klock et al pound their ‘true techno music’ in the cavernous, forbidding main room, the Panorama Bar above plays the part of Paradiso to the Inferno downstairs.

And Reboot’s new release on Ricardo Villalobos’s Sei Es Drum label is ready made for those Panorama Bar dawns.  The concept is simple enough to cause derision in some circles, Frank Heinrich adding little more than a delicate Latino shuffle and a subdued thud to what appears to be Simone Bittencourt de Oliveira’s rendition of ‘Pra não dizer que não falei das flores’, a Brazilian dictatorship-bating torch song composed in 1968 by Geraldo Vandré.  But simplicity is not always to be sniffed at, and the back story is almost irrelevent.  It’s the sheer elegance of the track that sweeps you away.

Around the 5 minute mark the vocal is left to stand shamelessly alone.  The crowd joins in, swept up in the moment.  The bass returns, preventing the lilting refrain from floating into the ether.  It actually is a soul thing, and in Panorama Bar this summer, when the sun comes up and (as is tradition) the blinds are thown open for just a few seconds, it is this song that should be playing.

Reboot – Caminando

Eddie Amador – House Music (Message Mix)

Efdemin – Just A Track

Presented with a label who describe themselves as “a collective of explorers dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers” the cynics among us might be forgiven for recoiling slightly at the thought of Western butterfly collecting ‘world music’ record execs giving the globe a twirl and seeing $$$ littered all over Africa, Asia and the Middle East.  Fortunately it doesn’t take very long to realise that Sublime Frequencies, the Seattle based archivist record label founded by Alan and Richard Bishop of Arizonian experimentalists Sun City Girls, operates with only the best intentions.

On the world music tag Alan Bishop is extremely clear:  “We really don’t waste our time in that shit blizzard”, he told VBS.tv in a recent interview.  He continues:  “I want music that’s baked in seductive ovens and served on a crumbling colonial mattress of swirling cobras distilled under a thousand consective moons of drone erotic hip-swivel.”  Jools Holland’s obligatory ethnic-minority-quota-filling ‘sitar for 5 minutes’ slot this ain’t.  From long-lost Burmese pop stars to a collection of field recordings featuring a drunken spirit orchestra performing a Leo Sayer song, Sublime Frequencies deal in both the truly weird and the downright beautiful.  Of particular note is their most recent foray into the Saharan guitar scene, this time stopping off at Agadez in Northern Niger and the sound of the nomadic Tuareg.  Group Bombino offer up a record of two halves.  The first is unplugged; handclaps and harmonies guiding you over the moon-lit sand dunes.  The second half is all raw garage grit and churning, surging, howling sun-baked guitar.  Find a taste of both below.

The records are limited but beautifully packaged and well worth a trip to discogs, and downloads are available on the Sublime Frequencies site.  You can also catch  Omar Souleyman running through his pocket-full of breakneck Syrian street pop at the upcoming Sublime Frequencies showcase at The Dome in Tufnell Park, London on the 29th May.  Tickets here.

Group Bombino – Tenere

Group Bombino – Boghassa

A review of a recent historical/sociological/scraping-the-barrel examination of the Internet, social networking and ‘what it all means’ saw fit to make light of the intrepid academic’s concern that we are all lonely FaceSpace Twittering nodes staring out of our windows onto an empty street, communicating only through the morse-like flickering of a digital light bulb.  As the reviewer points out, this may be true, but isn’t it actually quite nice to be ‘in the loop?’  Sure there probably comes a point when that carefree fourth status update of the day turns into a terrifyingly girlfriendless real-friends:internet-friends ratio, but hey, if you’re actually alright in real life that probably won’t happen to you.

So here’s another blog Mr. Internet.  I’m going to post some music and talk about it a bit.  Hope that’s OK.

First up here’s a small reminder from Italy’s answer to Barry White that we all need to get a little closer.  In real life, not on the Internet.  The original sister-track to this has had a small East London based resurgence of late thanks to a nod from Disco Bloodbath, but this is the choice cut.  Just Giampiero and his girls sleazing their way onto an Italo Classics ’82 compilation near you .  Press me a copy that lasts 20 times as long please.

Gepy & Gepy – Body to Body