Reggie Dokes, Untill Tomorrow

[Royal Oak]


Buy Vinyl

I can’t think of a producer with a stranger idea of what constitutes house music than Atlanta’s Reggie Dokes. Like fellow Detroit expats Octave One, he gives listeners the sense that every off-kilter drum hit or plaintive piano chord has been placed with great care. Yet the melodic logic he’s employed since he leaped into production in 2001 has rarely made anything close to perfect sense. To be blunt, Dokes is positively all over the place, brewing up for his own Psychostasia imprint and labels like Philpot and Clone Loft Supreme a psychedelic suspension of weird chord changes and jarring phrase shifts. His Spectacle of Deepness EP on We Play House, a serious highlight of my 2009, even played like the hallucination of a madman. But what a gorgeously schizophrenic mess it was. His final transmission of 2009, “Untill Tomorrow” [sic] for Clone’s absurdly limited Royal Oak series (who knew you could press just fifty records?), finds him doubling back on the haziness of that release to produce a record on the whole more direct, more floor-oriented, and more obviously funky than most of his output to date. Unsurprisingly, however, those of you longing for those same old Rhodes vamps and Sascha Dive vocals might still want to look elsewhere.

On the titular A-side, Dokes places us in a tight spot between those oddly emotive, piano-driven melodies he’s made his name from and the kind of heavy percussion you’d associate more with UK funky than American deep. Dokes loves to play tricks with the soundstage — each element on the track, no matter where it’s been panned, vies for dominance over ever other simultaneously occurring element-and he crafts one of his tensest arrangements yet out of all these battling stabs. On the B, “Yellow Toe” finds Dokes winding down his BPMs slightly, but I’ll be damned if this groove isn’t more jarring, manic, and forcefully un-pretty than anything else on the slab. “The Beginnings of Ra,” however, lets all of this spiraling wackiness breathe a little. Like a malfunctioning robot doing a Theo Parrish impression, the track wanders and grooves through house tropes with a clumsiness that only makes it more endearing. For those house fans, like me, who have seized on Dokes as a breath of fresh air amidst the same old deepness, it’s precisely this mix of forceful groove, emotional exuberance, and borderline insanity that makes his records such a freaky pleasure. Keep us dancing, Reggie, and don’t you dare take your finger out of that electrical socket.

HISSNLISSN  on January 15, 2010 at 4:17 AM

This grew on me quite a bit since I first heard it. To anyone primed to rip off a nasty comment, I encourage you to just give it a chance to sink in. Quite a fun, easy-going track, imo.

harrison  on January 15, 2010 at 1:42 PM

great review, loved the last Royal Oak 12″. will defo pick this up (when it comes in on juno!)

tom/pipecock  on January 15, 2010 at 3:06 PM

anyone who doesn’t like this is retarded and doesn’t deserve to have an opinion. i can’t wait till this gets a wider release! possibly my favorite thing from Reggie so far, and that’s really saying something….

todd  on January 16, 2010 at 1:24 PM

what if they’re actually retarded and they like it, than what ?

Colin Shields  on January 16, 2010 at 1:40 PM

Yellow Toe is fantastic.

Reggie is a hard man to pin down, but he’s steadily grown on me since I first became acquainted with his productions. The deeper I go with them, the more it feels they have to give.

Jon  on January 21, 2010 at 2:05 PM

You’re right Colin, he is a grower – having read Pipecock and others going on about him I picked up Chicago Pimp and it took me a good half-dozen spins before i started to get it, but now I’m really feeling his stuff.

Ulterior  on March 14, 2010 at 10:02 PM

I am really fond of this Royal Oak label, judging their first two releases

brian  on November 25, 2010 at 6:34 AM

Loving the A1 – Untill Tomorrow. Didn’t know what to make of it at first but the percussion and highs set against huge wash of the pianos really hits home. Great to mix as well.

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[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by oprincipal and Little White Earbuds, ImaHouseGroupie. ImaHouseGroupie said: Reggie Dokes, Untill Tomorrow: [Royal Oak] (buy vinyl) I can’t think of a producer with a stranger idea of what… http://bit.ly/8fUjzo […]

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