DJ Tropical Breeze and Dave Mack will be presenting an extended 8 hour all vinyl DJ set playing Balearic classics and obscurities on Saturday 1 February at Eydies, Lygon Street Brunswick. More info here and here. To celebrate we have produced a 2 hour sampler mix, available below. It steers more to the calmer side of Balearic but starts picking up pace in the latter half. This is Volume 1 so expect more to come...
1. Toshiki Kadomatsu - Sea Song (repise)
2. Seahawks - Calling Always (The Advisory Circle Loving Arms Mix)
3. Blue Gas - Shadows from Nowhere
4. Horizont - Light of Darkness
5. Andreas Vollenweider - Moon Dance
6. Mo Foster - New York City (KBE Remix)
7. Peter Gordon - Afternoon Drive
8. Antena - Achilles (Phreek Plus One Typhoon Mix)
9. David Arkenstone - Valley of the Clouds
10. Hamou Cheheb - Ma Fille
11. Cantoma - Cosmopole
12. Andras Fox - Janine's Theme (Earth)
13. Vânia Bastos - Tabu
14. The Ballistic Brothers - Uschi’s Groove
15. Quiet Village - Too High To Move
16. Knopha - 三 San
17. Warm - On a Journey
18. The Fizz - Rumours (Lipelis Edit)
19. Whitesnake - Is This Love? (New Found Land Edit)
20. House of House - The Rough Half (Don't Stop)
21. Blue Vision - Leila (Variation)
22. Dennis Young - Primitive Substance
23. Your Song is Good - Re-Search (Force of Nature Remix)
24. Poolside - Harvest Moon
25. Pilou - Ca Va (Waffles Remix)
26. Africaine 808 featuring Nonku Phiri and Macadem - Tummy Tummy (Esa's Afro Synth Bubblegum Remix)
27. Nelson Family - Gimme Love
28. Morgan Buckley - Heavy Traffic
29. Cerrone - Back Track (Rizzolo DJ Edit)
30. Francesco Napoli - Balla Balla
HANNAH DIAMOND - EVERY NIGHT
TRANSYLVANIAN GALAXI - SEQUENCE
BEAUTIFUL SWIMMERS - TOUCH BASE
POOLS - UNTITLED B
POOLSIDE - DO YOU BELEIVE?
KALIDASA - IPOTANE
FOCKEWULF 190 - BODY HEAT
LOWTEC - B1 (WORKSHOP 20)
CROWDPLEASER + ST. PLOMB - NOT YET NOT YET
JAPAN BLUES - MYSTERIOUS SATUMA
M. GEDDES GENGRAS - ISHI
STEVE MOORE - ZEN SPIDERS
KEJEBLOS - PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE (LEXX'S SQUEEZE ME TIGHT DUB)
OCTO OCTA - I CAN FEEL YOU
HAULES BAULES - CREEPER
MOVE D - LE FOU (EDDIE C'S SPACESHIP REMIX)
PATRICK COWELY + JORGE SOCCARAS - BURN BRIGHTER FLAME
SSOL - UNTITLED A1
WILLIE BURNS - PONG IN A TRACKSUIT
MISS PLUGIN - YOU & I
BISQUIT - ZOO ZOO
NEW MUSIK - WARP (ILO EDIT)
STEFFI - TREASURE SEEKING
I'm back 10pm tonight, 2 December, playing more of the same, including this:
I don't listen to much Techno these days but the Sandwell District Fabric mix is hugely enjoyable. Played in near entirety on the commute to work (still have the closing minutes to hear), with the listening situation - in motion on public transport, Autumn sun intermittently peering through the windows, listening crisply on headphones to which techno is well suited - worked in its favour. Not too much of the dull grey Berghain-post-Basic Channel sound - which tends to bore me - but it's definitely represented, and well, with strong linear chug from Mary Velo, JPLS (sounding very Basic Channel), Rrose and Markus Suckut.
But these work best due to timbral detours via Untold, Mark Ernestus doing BBC, and Plastikman, these strung together beautifully.
I can't help but find far more time for Rrose than others of their ilk due solely to the name. It retains enough 'concept' to provide faceless Techno with a hint of face, and it being Duchamp's, it's a cheeky, playful one.
But one needs an 'in', anything, to make choices in today's music marketplace.
And Rrose's work with Bob Ostertag provides further interest:
After my Maya Jane Coles appreciation/generic minimal tech-house moan , I'm going to sound hypocritical commencing a series of posts praising the very generic nature of this music, but what the hell... this is pretty darn good. Sebo K makes strong tracks, and was among those responsible, along with Efdemin, Lawrence and doubtless a bazillion lesser-known-and-unsung others, back in the mid-late naughties for championing bigger housier sounds within the pervading mnml scene of the day, and it's a sound he's hardly altered. Indeed like everyone in minimal house land its one they do nothing but refine. I first heard him on Mobilee's Back to Back comp with the still stunning 'Moved' with Prosumer, then via his podcast for RA in early 2007. This, along with Efdemin's two podcasts later, seemed to signal a shift in mainstream-underground minimal house, at least as sign-posters like RA documented it.
I saw Sebo K and Efdemin play shortly after their 'casts at RA's June '07 off-Sonar party in Barcelona, and while too wasted to actually remember anything danced my socks off from open til' close. Philip Sherburne was there too, playing to an empty room upstairs, but when he heard Sebo K he rushed to the front of the floor and danced all night too. As we see today, it's an endearing sound.
Four-and-a-half years later and the variants of minimal house have actually narrowed, with more tracks than ever trading on the basic template these - and yes many many others - housey minimalists have been hammering for years. We're at the asymptote of the development of a kind of perfect dance music, or at least a perfected form of minimal house, but one that, of course, can never be reached. It's this kind of fruitless pursuit, this Quixotic quest for the unattainable, that good generic minimal house sets capture, driving along that endless highway, on a dead-straight road, devoid of the kinds of heights and dips that come with more dynamic, and less focused, sets. Even mnml jerked and twitched in ever so annoying ways.
So, to Sebo K's mix at the 2011 Mobilee Off-Sonar Party: 3 hours of sleak, streamlined, bumpin' generic minimal tech house. All changes are slight, with each track offering subtle variants on the tools and structures of its neighbours. Like the digi-dancehall instramentals praised here these tracks are (for the most part) cookie-cutter jigsaw pieces, pure 'tools' with little identity outside of the group (but where I celebrated the isolated oddness of those dancehall tracks here there's little to get excited about individually). Where Sebo K is good is in his restraint, holding back the tension such that you're always (almost) on the edge of your seat but, it being the kind of wishy-washy genre it is, you never are, really... This teetering contradiction is the whole point and one Sebo K does well here - avoiding boredom by embracing sameness, celebrating it. Like Cage said: If something is boring for one minute do it for ten, then an hour, then two hours... Sebo K does it for 3 and it pretty much works.
In its fluid linearity this reminds me of stellar microhouse sets like those by Kettenkarussell , but with a different agenda: Sebo K - and most/all minimal tech house DJs - is more about funk, groove and sashaying movement, albeit in a compressed and blankly repetitive manner, with a shallower expression of emotion, more warmth, greater diversity, more by-rote and perfunctory (all intentional and not necessarily pejorative), whereas Kettenkarussell... is another story...
