[Lick My Deck]

Thomas Melchior’s once restrained release schedule, which only occasionally exceeded one record per year, befit a master of patient, subtle grooves. But in the wake of his landmark 2007 sophomore album, No Disco Future, the gaps between Melchior releases have shortened considerably. Not only has the period given birth to the Cinderfella alias, it’s seen Melchior venturing further afield from his home base at Perlon (while still contributing two EPs to the storied label) and rejoining his Soul Capsule collaborator, Baby Ford, for two new singles on the renewed Trelik imprint. One wonders, though, if the lengthy gestations of his releases were actually to their benefit. Because as exciting as it’s been to receive a flood of new Melchior material, the unrivaled quality associated with his name has dipped significantly. Where even his most reduced tracks once hypnotized while sounding effortless, many of his current works have lacked that earworming quality and feel somewhat half-baked. For all its lengthy repetition, the same fate befell his Latin-themed 2010 single Apariciones for Lick My Deck. Apariciones Reworked aims to inject some magic back into the original tracks with remixes by Melchior’s long time friends Baby Ford and Ricardo Villalobos.

Some may be surprised that both veteran producers opted to refine Melchior’s originals rather than transform them more radically. This speaks to either the level of respect they have for the source material or a lack of better ideas. In the case of Baby Ford’s “Cinza De Fenix,” the former rings truest as he focuses on making the track more immediate. The original’s snorting, unkempt organ riff is pushed to the front to wriggle like a marionette in the thicket of bloops and clinking percussion, making it much harder to ignore but not much more interesting. The newly plucked bass line, however, is a winning addition, as its distended notes open up a great deal of space in the busy track. Villalobos’ remix pulls “Todo Mundo” out of the haunted house and into the mirrored fun house, shedding many of the cacophonous percussive elements along the way. Instead he reaches for a crisp, bass-gulping beat upon which the original’s Spanish vocals have their pitches bent and their speeds tweaked. While his version is less cluttered or demanding, it feels as if the venerable producer ran out of steam before he had the chance to make a memorable contribution. It becomes the kind of track you’d find Villalobos using in his DJ sets as a base layer for more arresting material, which would an enviable position for any less established producer but seems like a punt for his own remix. Although fans of the original Apariciones will likely enjoy this vibe-extending remix package, it offers relatively little of the awe-inspiring creativity which once established these three producers as leaders in their genre.

It’s difficult to mention Baby Ford in 2009 without feeling the need to also discuss the passing of his longtime production partner, Ian “Eon” Loveday. Ford’s Trelik label was established primarily to release his work with Loveday, whether solo or together as Minimal Man. Loveday also lent his talents to the now seminal Baby Ford & The Ifach Collective project. Although the frequency of their collaborations tapered off after the turn of the century, one imagines the bond between them never weakened. All the more reason “Tin of Worms,” Baby Ford’s latest single released only days after Loveday succumbed to pneumonia, feels inexorably linked with his partner’s untimely passing. Production schedules suggest the music was likely complete well beforehand, yet a pall hangs heavily over the release.

“Tin of Worms” isn’t overtly macabre so much as lacking small comforts to make listeners yearn for repeat spins. On the title track, aching, amporphous bass coats the mechanical thrusts of vintage drum machines like a sore mood. Only minor details — shuddering drum fills, stereo-scanning pads and malicious snaps — emerge from the sulferous atmosphere Ford concocts. With little to hold on to, the aggregate effect of “Tin of Worms” is a dejected sort of numbness. If the A side feels inhibited, B-side “Westway” offers a mournful reply, coming to grips in a still quite restrained way. A series of sustained piano chords are shadowed closely by doleful synth sighs whose indistinct and drooping tone suggests a sort of moan. Hushed percussion ticks off time next to almost frantic kick drum eighth notes and broken piano arpeggios, obscuring whether the track is fast or slow. Like its flipside, “Westway” is not particularly gratifying, which has as much to do with its pragmatic focus as the sorrowful sentiments it carries. In some ways these are just another set of utilitarian Baby Ford tracks in line with the minimal master’s oeuvre. Yet the crestfallen tones communicate a vexing if unintentional sentiment of loss, which might not earn the record much airtime but perhaps a sentimental place in DJs’ collections.

[Vakant R]

It’s somewhat beyond me why we’re just now hearing the second remix package for Onur Özer’s Kasmir album two years after its release. Though it might seem a bit redundant, we’ve not heard much from the young Turk since Kasmir, so consider it a long overdue stopgap. Tardiness gripes aside, Özer will have bought himself a good chunk of time by enrolling Isolée and Baby Ford to remix “Innervoice” and “Aida” respectively as their interpretations will keep fans buzzing for some time.

Isolée drives “Innervoice” away from the suspense-filled, incidental Turkish orchestral hits that proliferated the original towards a grooving minimal funk epic. Sounding like he’s utilizing each part of the source material, Isolée clips most of the sounds into fragments of what they used to be, repackaging them around an acoustic double bass sound that drives the remix with an astonishingly effective, yet simple groove. Some of those Turkish horns turn up without the ethnic identity of the original take, here instead drawing attention to the electronic and organic contrasts of this outstanding remix.

On first contact Baby Ford’s remix of “Aida” comes across as an unyielding, impenetrable beige fortress, but studied inspection of those hessian-hued walls brings them crumbling down to reveal an inventive, finely nuanced piece of minimalism. Ford infects his hi-hats and other higher frequency percussion with such a strong sense of swing it feels like its breathing rhythmically throughout the track. Where the original played out with more melodic structure, it is this kinetic feeling that helps to carry the otherwise fairly barren remix as it highlights the slight use of other sounds, giving them even more onus. Whilst Baby Ford’s remix doesn’t have the same instant appeal as the original, its subtle turns and overall feel provide an excellent alternative.

[Perlon]

Baby Ford once said, “Voices on tracks have always been part of the sound, but that’s all it is, part of a whole sound.” “Gravy Train” and Soul Capsule’s “Waiting 4 A Way,” a track Baby Ford co-produced with Thomas Melchior in 2007, help us to understand this relationship of parts to wholes when it comes to vocals and instrumentation. There are similarities between the voices on “Gravy Train” and “Waiting 4 A Way,” both in execution and concept. Linguistically, they share a sexual “come on” croon, they’re worked with effects in equal measure, and both have been released as a cappellas. This last commonality suggests a logic where the voices are no longer just parts of a whole sound, but have become a whole sound in and of themselves.

There’s a transparency to the a cappella in dance music. By themselves, they stand starkly naked, existing under the microscope for their potential to be remixed. Not only are their durability and mutability assessed for instances of appropriation, but their fitness to the original works considered. You wonder if the track lived up to the a cappela’s potential; you make a comparison between extant and ideal circumstances. As parsed details, a cappelas function as invitations to deconstruct the multi-tracks into their components and understand how the gears make the clocks tick. At first I thought “Gravy Train” sounded too similar to “Waiting 4 A Way,” but that was missing the point. In realizing the voices are being held constant, it became easier to note the records’ differences: the percussion of “Waiting 4 A Way” having more to do with Melchior’s style than Baby Fords’, the bounce of Baby Ford’s organs in “Gravy Train” — a signature of his since “Noddy” on BFORD 9. The parts and their microscopic details are built up into a dense sound that defines these records and the maxim that a sum can be greater than its parts.

“Waiting 4 A Way” is a crown jewel for both Soul Capsule and Perlon, and as much as “Gravy Train” catches its vibe it’s just not as revelatory. Fortunately, there’s some sense of urgency from Baby Ford to break new ground on the B-side, “No Day.” The track’s got several things going for it: Larry Heard-like keys for one, but perhaps the main thing is it’s quite nearly a song — that is, there’s an implicit musical relationship to the oratory. But there isn’t a voice on “No Day,” only the micro sounds that suggest a cappela. The “scat” on “No Day” sounds rooted in the twee of Aspect Music. It’s mildly cheesy, but you get a sense Baby Ford clearly had some fun with this one, and that there’s a story being told here. I started off this review with a quote from Baby Ford, and I’ll close with a quote by Thomas Melchior/Baby Ford, which is actually a remix of a famous “a cappella” by T.S. Eliot: “We shall not cease from exploring and when we come to an end of all exploring we shall return to where we started and know the place for the first time.” For Baby Ford, his most recent 12″ seems like a transition point, both a return to BFORD 9 and Aspect Music, and a progression of a sound nascent in Basking in The Breaklights and culminating in “Waiting 4 A Way.” However, “No Day” is also a point of departure from this progression, and if the quote holds true, hopefully Baby Ford will one day return to “Waiting 4 A Way” where something new and revelatory happened.

[Trelik]

A collaborative project between Baby Ford and Ian “Eon” Loveday birthed way back in 1993, Minimal Man have released a dozen or so singles for such labels as Perlon, Trelik, Guerilla, and Vinyl Solution. But it’s been “Make A Move,” originally released in 2000, that has taken on a life of its own via mixes and DJ sets over the years, enough so to justify a welcome repressing eight years later. Never a big hit, “Make A Move” has proven to be more useful than jaw dropping, but you have to admire a DJ tool with this kind of longevity.

On first listen, it’s easy to hear exactly how this track has become a secret weapon for so many DJs. A crisp, punishing breakbeat (always one of Loveday’s specialties) pushes along a circular, acidic bass riff, punctuated by a Chicago house vocal snippet to make a simple, direct and devastatingly effective track. Part 1 and Part 2 appear on opposite sides of the 12″, mirroring each other and allowing for those springing for two copies to have lots of extra fodder to extend the fun. Third track “Stay On” works in a Kraftwerk sample over a clattering electro break and some spacey textural backdrops, but “Make A Move” is the real star here. It’s rare that a record can effectively be mixed with deep house, techno, minimal, breakbeats and pretty much everything in between and still hold its own distinct identity; missing it a second time is inexcusable.

In his work as Melchior Productions and various Aspect Music projects with Baby Ford and Tim Hutton, Thomas Melchior has consistently evoked a great deal of motion, thought, and feeling with relatively little grist. He helped define the micro-house era with his 2004 album, The Meaning on Playhouse by snatching sensual vocal slivers for his skeletal rhythms dabbed in melodic blush.

In the three years since, Melchior’s output has taken a darker and more abstract turn, a change well represented on the aptly titled No Disco Future, his Perlon-released second album under more or less his own name. Therein he and collaborator Hutton trade sparse melodic optimism for more atonal and obstinate arrangements which pack the same full body blow as his cheerier back catalog.
Melchior excels at stripped down grooves which wear hypnotically into listeners’ heads as their bodies jack. At times the motif of reiteration seems rather utilitarian at surface level, but the subtle textures and nuances he slips into tracks often require unabated length to worm their way into the brain. This makes No Disco Future‘s 10 tracks equally suited for a discerning dance floor and a pair of good headphones.

“Coming Up” is buoyed on its Pink-sampling refrain (so soused in dub suds it leaves ripples), but its underpinnings moan and crack like a finely tuned swing set, pumping away. The dense percussion battalion on “Prepare For Love” is warmed by descending melodic pads that conjure a rapidly setting sun, or Villalobos’ “Ichso” with neater form. “Where’s the Happiness” and “Out There” mesmerize with tight, sample-heavy loops over which Melchior wrings out writhing keyboard vamps that relish their own incongruous shape. He gets closest to the skinny deep-house aesthetic of his past releases on “Black Mother,” grabbing odd ends of vocals and a subliminally familiar bass line.

Listen to “Where’s the Happiness”:

No Disco Future also challenges listeners expectations and pursues contradiction through varied tactics. On “The Hypnotist,” Melchior conducts an exercise in cognitive dissonance: Its listeners are alerted every few bars of the “nice, warm feeling” they’re enjoying, the joy of “people smiling”, while battered by nudist percussion ticks and timbre. “Don Juan” giddily splices Latin-fired minimal percussion and accordion stylings with deep house vocals — the results are infectious without a chance of turning into a pop song.

But even on his most minimal and morose album, Melchior fits in two cuts whose sheer beauty are a shock in and of themselves. The solemn “Her Majesty” (co-written by Bruno Maman) lingers around a phased pipe organ refrain and eventually bursts into shimmering, dulcet swells. Melchior then contrasts his tuneful indulgences by injecting an overtly Casio sound just to show who’s boss. Closing out the album is “Water Soul,” a deep and haunting tune that embraces listeners in long, layered female vocal phrases and consonant piano and synth arrangements, making it more than a little hard to let go.

Listen to “Water Soul”:

Thomas Melchior exhibits just how much he’s learned over his two decades of artistry in No Disco Future without a single sign of creative fatigue. He executes a stylistic departure comfortably and completely without the stumbling blocks a new path could mean. And most of all, the album hangs together cohesively, affording listeners an intricate perception of whatever dance apocalypse he might see in store for us. Hopefully the world sticks around long enough for us to receive his next great statement.