"My purpose was simple: to catch the feel, the pulse of rock, as I had lived through it. What I was after was guts, and flash, and energy, and speed" - NIK COHN - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "When the music was new and had no rules" -LUNA C
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My Instagram keep throwing up reels of Charlotte de Witte , who apparently is one of the biggest deejays in the world. I thought I'd check out her stuff, so tried the Mixmag mix she did in 2021 Where I heard this: Thought it might be some old skool acid from back in the day I'd never heard - but it was originally released in 2019 by one Robert S . I cannot believe this kind of thing is still being…
I was quite taken with the Bass-O-Matic album, cringe though the band name is In the review, I make that cardinal rockcrit error of looking for the dance artist who can sustain at album level. Writing still from outside the culture at this point (October 1990, a year before the Conversion). The technorave-chillout yen for Pink Floyd is worth a mini-essay - wasn't there some ambient house (89-90…
Thanks to Gemma Ross for including Futuromania in the Mixmag list of summer reading for dance music fiends T he full list is here , a worthy bunch to sit alongside indeed
From a 1971 issue of Melody Maker Still, there are two turntables - plus bonus feature of a built-in cassette recorder! This slight return is picking up on the earlier post about the extensive prehistory of discotheques and "disco music" - prior to disco as we have come to misunderstand it. A time when the music was as likely to be some form of rockin' pop as it was soul. And deejays used a a…
Pure Gurley gorgeousness in this Rogue Unit mix Such emotional subtlety to almost anything Steve Gurley touches The other versions - nice 'n' slinky Ray Keith (+ Nookie) work-over in two parts and then the Shades of Rhythm version, the "Hard" Halfway through there's the pleasant surprise - what the Nuumologist lives for - of the Rufige Cru "Menace" diva sample appearing. Here it's much closer to…
Fun and fascinating - with fabulous fotos - Danceteria oral history by Joy Press , aka the missus, who was a regular at the legendary New York club in the 1980s. Everyone from Madonna and Fab 5 Freddy to Marc Almond and Johnny Rotten to Beastie Boys and Butthole Surfers (worth reading the whole article just for the "piss wand" story) makes an appearance. Something in the air clearly - in freaky…
Had Instagram for ages and ages but never got into looking at it regularly until quite recently.... the algorithm quickly learned to serve me up dance music, as that's what I'd linger on. So what I get is an endless succession of reels of deejays playing tunes, either in their living room, or it's clips of them performing at a rave. Occasionally there'll be one where a DJ or producer talks about a…
Sourced in Isn't she lovely? After N’Joi , Saffron fronted - front being the operative word - this Republica tune that I file with a lineage of excitable go-for-it ladette pop ( Icona Pop , "I Love It", Pink "Coming Up", Spice Girls 's "Wannabe", Ke$ha "Tik Tok" / "We R Who We R", Martin Solveig + Dragonette "Hello", Ting Tings "The Drums", right through to Charli xcx ) Even more delightful in…
Well, a dream comes true - I appear on a pirate radio station. Except it's legal now, but still - Rinse FM ! I am talking - alongside Martin Clark aka Blackdown - about Burial 's debut album , which came out 20 years ago - on Eclecticist 's show on Rinse. Now I think about it, I have been on a pirate before - twice in fact. The first time was inadvertent: BBC radio (I think Radio 4) had done a…
Well, I may not have provoked a musician to pen a retaliation tune (unlike my own flesh and blood, who recently joined a select pantheon of irritant critics). But I can now bask in having inspired a song, and one made by a well-known and highly regarded group too: electronic act Overmono. Their single "Lockup" - which heralds a new album Pure Devotion - apparently came from reading not Energy…
