Although Soft House Company’s 1990 single “What You Need…” feels like a New York house anthem its Italian origins are what make it so special.
big black headphones
BBH: Extortion ft. Dihan Brooks, How Do You See Me Now?
July 14, 2010 – 10:01 AM
The short-lived duo of Jason Load and Pavel DeJesus, aka Extortion, may not have made any big waves in the global waters of dance music but one of their singles was fortunate enough to feature the remix talents of one Joey Negro.
BBH: Ross 154, Until My Heart Stops…
May 18, 2010 – 10:01 PM
Listening to Delsin’s reissue of Until My Heart Stops… by Ross 154, born as Jochem Peteri but best known as Newworldaquarium, trying to pin down its exact origins blindly gets a little tricky.
BBH: Projekt: PM, When The Voices Come
May 11, 2010 – 10:01 PM
Kuri Kondrak considers Edgar Sinio’s When The Voices Come EP as Projekt: PM, which helped put Guidance Recordings on the Chicago house map in 1996.
BBH: Anthony Rother, Sex With The Machines
April 28, 2010 – 10:01 AM
Growing up listening to the sounds of Kraftwerk, there was one thing in the forefront of Anthony Rother’s mind when he started producing music: introducing others to the chilling machine funk of electro. Through his own Psi49Net label and on others like Kanzleramt he pushed his mechanical, dry take on the genre, proving himself a vital part of an electro revival that was also being championed by people like Drexciya, Aux 88, and latterly the Interdimensional Transmissions crew. Later work on his Datapunk imprint has explored further reaching territories, angling more towards the grey area between electro and techno, but at Rother’s roots lie the bone dry communications of a supposed future in which man is surpassed by machines of his own making.
BBH: The Subjective, Tremmer/Critical
April 14, 2010 – 10:01 AM
One of England’s premier techno outfits of the nineties, Colin McBean and Cisco Ferreira are best known as The Advent. Their discography as The Advent reaches back to 1994, though Ferreira scored early releases in 1988 on R & S and in 1989 on Fragile, while the two collaborated as early as 1990 in the group K.C.C. As The Advent they crafted hard-nosed looped techno tracks and occasionally indulged in a spot of electro. When the feeling took them they would divert towards something a bit more melodic under the name Man Made (as on their brilliant Space Wreck 12″ for Fragile) or as The Subjective, even dabbling in filtered disco house as G-Flame & Mr G. Arguably one of their finest releases was “Tremmer/Critical” as The Subjective on Dave Angel’s Rotation label in 1997. It was a notable release at the time for fusing together the hard, fast techno they were known for with shimmering, ethereal melodies that lay in direct contrast to their uncompromising, near industrial sound.
BBH: Glenn Underground, Future Shock
April 7, 2010 – 10:01 AM
Within the scope of Chicago’s early/mid ’90s house renaissance Glenn Crocker, aka Glenn Underground, played a strong role in helping to define what was an emerging new sound for city. Along with fellow artists Boo Williams, DJ Sneak, Tim Harper and several others they formed a dichotomous current that for several years was defined by the direction of the Cajual and Relief labels: disco-styled house for the former and banging raw tracks for the latter. European labels quickly picked up on this and plucked nearly all of the aspiring new faces on the scene for at least one 12″ and at most two albums. Crocker was one such artist that technically got his start on Eindhoven-based label, Djax-Up-Beats, with the Future Shock 12″ in 1993.
BBH: Groove Committee, I Want You To Know
March 24, 2010 – 10:01 AM
Nu Groove, perhaps the most famous name in New York house after Strictly Rhythm, is an infamously difficult label to assess. Frank and Karen Mendez had originally started the imprint in 1988 as an outlet for Rheji and Ronald Burrell, former R&B producers (and twin brothers) who had recently parted ways with a major label. But by the time they pressed their last slab in 1992, the label had released over 100 records in seemingly as many club music subgenres. While the Burrells’ early singles remain fresh (especially Rheji’s, in this reviewer’s humble opinion), and the label provided a crucial early home to the likes of Frankie Bones, Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez pre-Masters At Work, and Victor Simonelli (see below), not all of the mélange holds up so well. Despite Nu Groove’s status as a completist’s worst nightmare, its pervasive underground-ness — disco soul emanating from brittle, staunchly low-tech sounds; a reputation built on a minimum image — manages to tie this behemoth of a catalog together. And as Underground Quality sends similar backroom ripples through the house music universe from the Tri-State Area once more, Nu Groove 12″s will undoubtedly wiggle their way out of dusty used bins at a somewhat faster rate.
BBH: South Street Player, (Who?) Keeps Changing Your Mind
March 10, 2010 – 11:01 AM
You’ll read a lot about how house music and in particular vocal tracks, lift you up, carry you along with a feeling, make you moist around the tear ducts. For me, most of that carries about as much weight as hearing kids in California harp on about P.L.U.R. back in the mid 90’s while they sucked on pacifiers and sported gargantuan, street sweeping baggy jeans. But I have to be honest that there are a select few vocal house tunes that can, to this day, send a shiver up my spine and have me dabbing at the corners of my eyes. Roland Clark’s South Street Player alias only graced two releases, but throughout his entire career that has spanned over twenty years this Strictly Rhythm release under that name is undoubtedly the highlight.
BBH: Circuit Breaker, The End (1991-1996)
February 17, 2010 – 11:01 AM
He may be a media-savvy new technology evangelist these days, but back in the mid 90’s Richie Hawtin was the kind of sketchily dark character you would think twice about leaving your kids with. The Canadian producer was known during that period for the gloriously haunting ambient techno of FUSE — which occasionally and unforgettably on “Substance Abuse” veered into the kind of deranged acid that this installment of BBH focuses on — and the complex poly-rhythms and LSD-referencing menace of his Plastikman project. Yet despite the rumors of acid tabs embossed onto copies of his debut Plastikman album, Sheet One, there was a far more belligerent side to his character: Circuit Breaker. This double pack, released in 1996, charts the laying to rest of the Probe Records sub-label, an outlet that had allowed Hawtin to explore this grungier, edgier identity.