Accounts of Theo Parrish gigs often begin with the enigmatic DJ clearing the floor. The jazz, Afrobeat, dub reggae, and soul records he is known to drop tend to startle festivalgoers and dabblers who have come to expect nothing but four-to-the-floor from a dance DJ. Read on, though, and it turns out that just about every Theo Parrish set ends with minds blown and booties shaken, those experimental jazz cuts moving feet as ably as acid house bangers. Once hooked, you may find yourself going out of your way to hear the man spin. It seems likely that Parrish would occupy the role of DJ’s DJ, a selector and mixer whose dedication to the art is matched by few, even if he had never put out a record. But Theo Parrish has put out some records. Since his first release on Kenny Dixon Jr.’s KDJ, Parrish’s own Sound Signature has become a buy-on-sight label for even the most discriminating DJs and fans. Keeping subtle, complex, emotional deep house on the map for the past two decades, he has developed his style while maintaining a singular aesthetic. LWE recently checked in with Theo Parrish, finding him as busy — and as brilliant — as ever.

You recently reached a potentially new audience with your LCD Soundsystem remix, a combination that not many people might have expected. How did that come about? Do you think the prevalence of disco and house-based sounds that labels like DFA have engendered is a positive development for the music?

Theo Parrish: They hit me up and their approach was attractive; they said pick anything you want and sent the full album in parts. I don’t really recognize any current production as genre specific, so I hear a head nod and a wink to disco in their sound, but it’s the ethic — the DIY ethic. That’s where the value is.

You clearly have one of the deepest record collections around. Where are your favorite places to buy records?

I know a lot of people with a whole lot more, but I buy anywhere and everywhere. Some spots, depending on what I find, are my favorite that day after being dry for weeks. Some are account drainers, meaning they are rarely dry. Favorite cities with lotsa diggin’ possibilities for what I like: Chicago, Detroit, Minnesota, Toronto, Kansas City, Cincinatti, Osaka, Tokyo, London, Manchester, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Berlin. Just google local stores in those cities and go get your knuckles dusty.

The records you became known for early on were often sample-based and tracky, while you’ve since then experimented with vocals, group improvisation, and other techniques. How has your musical style evolved, in terms of your approach to production and your understanding of your own work?

I get bored very easily. I relied heavily on samples simply for lack of equipment. As I acquired more equipment the creative possibilities grew. I was sampling less and learning to play, and started to get to know some talented live players (like Jerry the Cat, John Douglas, Duminie Deporres). I had to try to keep up with them in the studio — and prerecorded stuff doesn’t change on the fly, you have to program it to — so the idea of being in the moment and learning about the ever-elusive pocket came when I was working with The Rotating Assembly. Those rehearsals had a large impact. It galvanized the theory of dedicated practice to build skill. I then found it limiting to sample larger blocks of music, so individual sounds, little bits, became more of what I would use for my sound pallette, and then less and less. Then I would only sample myself, and get drums from multiple sources: records, keyboards, live kit. Then I got tired of sampling altogether. That went into playing everything realtime and recording it. That was a big step, and don’t really expect to master that, just only improve. It’s currently what I wrestle with now, along with incorporating the methods I have a moderate grasp of already.

Some of your most recent releases have been vocal tracks, from 2008′s Chemistry to the most recent records with Bill Beaver and Danny Banks, and your DJ sets always incorporate soul and disco songs. Do you write words as well as music? How do you collaborate with a vocalist or instrumentalist?

Depends on the vocalist. With Bill Beaver, he comes up with lyrics off of the top of his head. First take. You better catch that first one, too. With Danny Banks, he had a written song, and all I had to do with was work on his phrase spacing. He’s so skilled, he was running all these backgrounds. Some idiot put it out there that there was AutoTune involved: No! No bloodclaat AutoTune in my studio! Blasphemer! Listen to the damn song. Anyway. For Genevieve Maranttette, I wrote “You Forgot,” “Split me Open,” and for Karen Bosco I wrote “Melt.” Lakecia Hughes came off the top for “Summertime Is here.” Monica Blaire, as on “They Say” and “Second Chances,” hears the song, then writes, and an hour later it’s laid down — efficient. Alena Waters offers solid suggestions in arrangement that always make sense to follow, that provides places for her to sing around and with. Very intuitive. As for the instrumentalists I’ve been blessed to work with, particularly John and Duminie, I just tend to give them adjectives. I can trust their taste.

The Leron Carson release on Sound Signature, while widely loved, has been shrouded in mystery. Who is he, and where did the music come from?

Leron is a lifelong friend from Chicago. We came up in the same area. We started making songs at 14 or 15 years old, almost every weekend until I went away to college. The songs I released by him had been on a cassette he gave me and were done in those early years. He’s always been a sorely overlooked talent.

You’ve had a residency at London’s Plastic People, which has been under threat of closure. As the trend moves towards giant superclubs, where have you found that the best parties takes place, and what makes them special?

You can’t judge a party before you get there, so it’s quite random. So many factors affect any given night. The issue with superclubs is the lack of intimacy. Smaller venues solve that, but it’s difficult to find smaller venues with powerful systems. A small club with a powerful soundsystem is always a good foundation. You have the intimacy, and a good system allows a wider range of songs to be presented outside of their percieved setting. The people have a chance to experience a wider range of emotional connection or repulsion.

The Three Chairs compilation CD, Spectrum, gave a lot of listeners a chance to catch up some hard-to-find records. Will there be more releases from the group in the future?

We shall see…

What else can we expect from Sound Signature in 2010?

Sketches. Sketches is a concept I came up with for some unreleased material I mastered without the songs being complete with all the elements. It was an experiment to force myself to get back to some basic production ethics I wanted to reacquaint myself with. It will be available only in Detroit for festival time, and I am only doing 150 copies and four separate pieces of vinyl, each one with a differently painted jacket. The only songs that may reappear on later 12″s this year are “Something About Detroit,” “Thumpasaurus,” and “Kites On Pluto.” I’m playing them out now to see which ones need more or can be released as is. Coming soon is the Sound Signature Sounds Pt. 2 compilation CD including Sound Signatures titles only available on vinyl from the catalog, and Translations, a CD comp of remixes and edits that are no longer available or previously unreleased.

[Strut]

The Blank Generation sounds less like a collection of tracks than it does the words of a storyteller, an account of historical events related by someone who was there. The witness is producer Bob Blank, whose narration is captured by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton. The DJ Historians, in their first collaborative release with Strut, have anthologized 13 tracks that Blank helped commit to tape between 1971 and 1985. The resulting album is both an essential document of cultural history and, as one of its tracks puts it, a better than good time.

The setting of the story told here is Manhattan, in a now difficult to imagine era before Mayor Giuliani had his way with Times Square. On the island’s Lower East Side, a (sub)cultural renaissance was in full swing, producing a cacophonous harmony of multifaceted origins and outcomes that left such a complex network of historical effects in its wake it becomes difficult to keep track. The scene is chronicled in Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Downtown 81, a work of documentary fiction that runs parallel to this album. Just as Basquiat is seen walking through alleyways, lofts, clubs, and studios seeking the essence of contemporary culture, Bob Blank can be heard traveling through musical forms, documenting a movement retroactively fragmented by historiographical error.

As the tale is most often told, disco, post-punk rock, and jazz were not just separate genres, but sworn enemies. Though DJ mixes by the likes of Larry Levan already offer evidence to the contrary, this anthology proves that connections between the era’s musics were not only forged on dance floors — they originated in the records themselves. Few may have expected at the time that the figures who would most affect the shape of music to come were not flashy soloists or charismatic frontmen, but behind-the-scenes workers like Blank. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, the standard narrative insists. But as Marx pointed out, while history has to be lived forwards, it can only be understood backwards.

Viewed through the prism of the present, producers of Bob Blank’s generation reveal themselves as the architects of a musical landscape that has engendered both celebrity craftsmen like Timbaland and reclusive artists like Burial. Appropriately, Blank is most closely associated with disco; his work on Jimmy Sabater’s kitschy 1975 “To Be With You” made him responsible for one of NYC’s first disco 12-inches. There is disco to spare on this compilation, including Debby Blackwell’s euphoric “Once You Got Me Going,” Mikki’s hard-edged “Itching For Love,” and soul legend Gladys Knight’s aforementioned unofficial title track “It’s A Better Than Good Time.” With the latter two featuring John Morales and Walter Gibbons on remixing duties, respectively, Blank’s classic disco credentials are undeniable.

Yet he appears at the margins of the genre as well, with equally remarkable results. Patrick Adams’ Bumblebee Unlimited project, which has an unpredictability that transcends its gimmicky nature, is present with the percussive “I Got A Big Bee.” Like all the Bumblebee tracks, the entomological imagery both generates the entirety of the song’s lyrical content and defies any meaningful interpretation. Driven by another strange allegory, Leroy Burgess’ arrangement of Fonda Rae’s herky-jerky “Over Like A Fat Rat” makes it easy to dance to this. You can detect the bass line that would later form the foundation of Eric B. and Rakim’s seminal debut single, “Eric B. Is President.” “Music Trance,” by Charanga ’76 — named for a style of Cuban dance music — combines a quintessential disco flow with lyrics en español and Latin-inflected piano and brass arpeggios.

One of Blank’s most celebrated affiliations in the disco/not-disco continuum is with the legendary Arthur Russell, who is present on the mesmerizing “Wax The Van” — credited to Lola, the vocalist on Russell’s most famous disco cuts and Blank’s then-wife — and the charming “State of the Art,” by Russell’s rarely-heard new wave group The Necessaries. But the sweep of this album doesn’t end with a disco practitioner’s rock experimentation. Milton Hamilton’s groovy “Crystalized” is an irresistible facsimile of late-sixties psychedelic pop, while the disorienting “Emile” — by Blank’s own project, The Aural Exciters — combines lap steel guitar, vibraphone, and ominous moans, anticipating the nebulous approach to music sometimes referred to as “post-rock.”

The sensibility that informs work like this clearly comes from a perceptive listener, and Blank’s knowledge of the ancestral origins of contemporary music is represented here as well. As an engineer on Sun Ra’s Lanquidity — one of the finest albums of jazz’s fusion era — Blank recorded “When Pathways Meet,” which sounds like a Fletcher Henderson arrangement of a folk song from Saturn. James Blood Ulmer, a disciple of Ornette Coleman’s harmolodic school of improvisation, offers the inarguable “Jazz Is The Teacher, Funk Is The Preacher,” substituting a steel resonator guitar for a mirrored ball and redirecting the Mississippi Delta into the discotheques of the Lower East Side. “A Cruise To The Moon,” from no wave goddess Lydia Lunch’s album Queen Of Siam, is the inverse of those recordings, finding a group of young punks adopting the mannerisms of a jazz band. The dissonant, but swinging, horn riffs form a sonic Ludlow Street for celebrated punk instrumentalist Robert Quine to pace across.

The guitarist’s appearance on this collection presents a direct link to the album from which Brewster and Broughton presumably borrowed The Blank Generation‘s title: Richard Hell and the Voidoid’s landmark debut, the first recorded showcase for Quine’s twisted solo work. For Hell, the title was a declaration of a sociocultural void — his generation could not adopt the facile assumptions of the Sixties counterculture, and punk rhetoric took rock and roll to an extreme that turned it into its own negation. Fittingly, this compilation is a perfect complement to Hell’s manifesto. After the cleaning of the cultural slate with the nihilism of punk, a reconstruction became possible, enabling a vision of utopian plurality and hybridity that the music to follow has been trying to catch up to ever since. Take it or leave it.

Moritz Von Oswald is simultaneously one of the most influential and enigmatic figures in techno. As part of Basic Channel, Maurizio, Rhythm and Sound, and other configurations with Mark Ernestus and a revolving cast of musicians and vocalists, Von Oswald became one of Europe’s first techno innovators. Basic Channel defined dance minimalism early on, both through a love of repetition as a form of change, and a willingness to let the music speak for itself. More recently, Von Oswald has demonstrated that his reach extends far past the dub-inflected electronic soundscapes he helped introduce to dance music, with stunning remixes of not just Tony Allen, but also Ravel and Mussorgsky. Finally, last year’s Vertical Ascent matched Von Oswald with Sasu Ripatti (Vladislav Delay, Luomo) and Max Loderbauer (nsi, Sun Electric) in an improvisational group, yielding a standout release of 2009 by any measure. LWE had the distinct privilege of speaking with Moritz Von Oswald in advance of his trio’s American debut at New York’s Unsound Festival. Like his music itself, Von Oswald’s approach to thinking about music is simple and direct. But like his music, depth and complexity are immediately apparent.

How did you get the idea to start an improvisational group, and how did you get connected with your collaborators Max Loderbauer and Sasu Ripatti?

I knew Sasu for a long time, because he did a record on one of our labels, Chain Reaction. So I’ve known him for 10 years or so. And I also knew that he’s interested in jamming, and I wanted to have a group that plays without any rehearsals, very simple. That just goes into recording without knowing each other too well. So very advanced improvisation was one of the key points. Making strong sounds and live playing, keeping it simple. As simple as I could. I’ve known Max for maybe 20 years, because when he came to Berlin we did a little collaboration on some — I wouldn’t say major stuff, but some small work. If you have a group with not too many members, you have to have trust in their facilities. And that’s what I had from those days. I knew that Sasu has a very great knowledge of sound and playing, and that’s exactly how it came out. With Max, I knew he has a very good sense of melody, and very, um — cute sounds, you know? This is what always attracted me to his productions. What he was doing was always very sweet-minded. And I liked that. If you listen to the record, you notice there’s a heavy dance rhythm. So Max breaks this up. It doesn’t affect the richness of the whole thing. It’s actually the opposite. It adds another layer to it.

A fully improvisational group in electronic music is pretty rare. Were there any groups, electronic or not, that you wanted to use as a model?

Not so much. I just wanted to have live playing, simple and spontaneous, with trust in the facilities of the other members, to develop a strong collaboration.

Have you done any projects like this in the past?

Not really, it’s the first time I tried this out. It came out because I worked in the studio for such a long time, which can sometimes be the opposite of this. Not so spontaneous. I like that, I like to focus on details. But I also like to just play! I mean, this is quite detailed. The record is very detailed in its sound picture. But it’s not overproduced.

The Moritz Von Oswald Trio in action. Photo by Rene Passet

How does the typical session proceed? Does everyone have a particular compositional role?

We get together and just play. We record from the first note.

So everything is new? Nothing is pre-written?

Nothing.

So how do you prevent things from going wrong, so to speak?

There is nothing wrong! I like the leftovers. I like when something is not precise, not just in “the right place.” I left everything we did and tried to work with it. Because nowadays you have all these precise records, and everything is in the right place because you can have access to it so much. I try to avoid this. And I think it worked, you know? With live playing, it’s a chance to try out stuff that you would never have imagined is possible.

So when people attend the Trio’s upcoming American debut performance in New York, are they going to hear something entirely different from the record?

Not entirely, but quite different. It will be improvised and very spontaneous.

What instruments will you use live? What’s your gear setup?

It’s just keyboards and percussion. We’ll also have a guest: Carl Craig from Detroit. Same thing — no rehearsal, just respect and trust.

Allow us to introduce ourselves: (left to right) Max Loderbauer, Moritz Von Oswald, Sasu Ripatti

You have another group with Carl Craig as well, along with Francesco Tristano, called Shape.

We formed last year.

What’s the approach to that? Is it a similar method?

Not really, because Francesco is a very well-trained pianist. It’s more like a club beat, very clubby. But also improvised, with some sax players and some different musicians. It’s quite different. We have a performance in London on the 12th of February. It’s gonna come out beautiful, I think.

It sounds like you’re moving in a lot of different directions with your current work, getting away from the conventional style of techno and approach to techno. Do you mostly listen to music outside of techno these days?

Yeah, I do. I listen to jazz, to classical, to experimental and avant-garde. A lot of dub as well. I just have fun with some sounds. Not too many concepts, just fun.

Will you continue producing club records?

Yeah! I’m doing remixes; these are going to come out as well. ReComposed is a very good example of how house can work with electronics from a different source. That’s why I like the record a lot. It broadens the mind, or at least I think it should.

It’s clear from your collaboration with the members of your group that you keep up with contemporary producers in dance music, in electronic music. Are there any other producers or DJs you’ve been listening to currently?

DJs, not so much. But I like what Carl is doing all the time. So we might work for together for some more projects. I don’t know, we’ll see.

Would you like to have more DJ gigs, playing techno?

Yeah, why not? No problem. I like club stuff.

Have you been doing much of that?

Not so much.

Did you get bored with it, or have you just been busy?

It’s just a question of having time. Time is short. That’s the main reason I don’t have so many releases for the club. But they will soon come.

Yeah? Do you have any upcoming projects you can tell us about?

I can’t tell.

[Sound Signature]

Though “Red Lightbulb Theory” has been charted by, among others, Lawrence and Tama Sumo, and comes “highly recommended” at nearly every vinyl outlet, one wonders if anyone besides Theo Parrish, whose Sound Signature label put the record out, and Omar-S, who is credited with engineering and editing work, knows just who the hell Leron Carson is. Dude has the sparsest Discogs entry I’ve ever seen, with only one previous release listed: the B-side of SS012, “The 1987 EP,” which featured his (almost literally) hypnotic “China Trax” along with Parrish’s “Insane Asylum.” Apparently, the five tracks on this two-record set come from the same sessions as “China Trax” — recorded when Carson was fifteen years old. In Parrish’s own words, this music was “hand made, meaning no sequencing was used for the keys on any of the songs featured, using cassette tape overdubs — a lost science.”

“Lost science,” indeed. This release feels like an artifact of ancient technology, one of those primitive contraptions in sci-fi movies that does things none of the modern scientists can figure out. Appropriately, the fidelity on the record is marred by tape hiss and distortion; whether this sounds thrillingly raw or unacceptably amateur depends on the listener’s sympathies and the context (a Theo Parrish DJ set comes to mind). As for the music itself, produced by this precocious teenager during the later years of Chicago house’s golden age, it may surprise you. While the scene’s music was at its maximum pH level, a year after Phuture’s debut, Carson’s sound was an almost polar opposite of acid’s aggressive squelch. This EP’s A1 track, “Mechanism,” opens the record by epitomizing its aesthetic principles: minimalism, dissonance, and textural complexity. Its almost unchanging bass line — an occasional key modulation keeps it from crossing the line of boredom — lays the groundwork for a meticulous exploration of the rhythmic potentialities of house’s eternal 4/4.

“The Unknown,” a high-speed, atonal banger, is hard enough to demonstrate that Detroit’s influence on Chicago in the late 80′s had become just as profound as its inverse. “Dedicated” is a more subtle take on the same vibe, with a boogie-funk drum roll tempering its attack. It seems at first to take a page from Kenny Dixon’s playbook with the gratuitous crowd noise, but close listening reveals this is the sound of Martin Luther King Jr.’s introduction at the 1964 March On Washington. With all the controversy today over politically-charged deep house voiceovers, “Dedication” offers a compelling historical precedent. “China II” is, appropriately, a reprise of “China Trax,” with its melodically and tonally modulating melody reminiscent of Steve Poindexter’s “Computer Madness.” The title track closes out the set with its most surprising, and most contemporary cut. “Red Lightbulb” matches a floating pad to a dubby bass, with the most melodic and rhythmic variation of any track on the record. It proves that this record is no museum piece. If used with care, its components sound as good today as anything that came out this year.

[N/A]

Rainer Trüby’s name (slightly misspelled) is the one on this record’s label, but he is not the only person responsible for the music in its grooves. There is a whole cast of characters to go through, but since Trüby is not exactly a household name himself, it might as well start with him. A key player in the nebulous “future jazz” sub-genre, Trüby titled his 2003 debut album Elevator Music, cheekily anticipating the criticisms most likely to be leveled at his smooth, mellow music. Danilo Plessow, better known by his production alias Motor City Drum Ensemble, is a collaborator on these two tracks. Equally crucial, however, are certain other collaborators unaware of their own involvement: Roy Ayers, Syreeta Wright, and Stevie Wonder. Ayers is mentioned by name on “Ayers Rock,” based on an uncredited track (tracks?) by the legendary soul-jazz vibraphonist. It is reminiscent of one of Plessow’s edits as MCDE: a chiming Rhodes, snatches of a soulful female vocal, and real hands really clapping. You’ve heard it all before, but you rarely hear it done this well.

“Ayers Rock” is a gratifying track, but its flip, “To Know You,” is beyond belief. To appreciate its achievement, consider the other two names cited above. Syreeta Wright is best known for a minor R&B hit in 1975, the inscrutably charming “Harmour Love,” penned by her then-husband Stevie Wonder. Film-goers became familiar with it in 2005 as the deceptively happy introduction to Phil Morrison’s unsettling cinematic exploration of white identity, Junebug. But there’s more to Syreeta Wright, who released two excellent LPs in the early seventies, featuring voluminous input from Wonder. Unfortunately, both are long out of print. One hopes that the master tapes — along with those of Eddie Kendricks’ People… Hold On, Wonder’s Where I’m Coming From, and other classic-but-unavailable soul albums — have been sitting on some record company shelf obscured from view by the Beatles tapes. Now that those relics are out of the way, maybe we’ll get the reissues we really need.

“To Know You Is To Love You” is a duet with Stevie Wonder from Syreeta’s 1972 self-titled debut. It is not quite the space-age R&B Wonder perfected on his own albums of that period, opting instead for a bluesy Stax-Volt vibe. Though the title, which is also the first line Wonder sings, sets the stage for a saccharine love song, things are not as they appear. “But to know me,” Stevie adds, “is not that way, you see.” Trüby and Plessow strip away nearly everything from the song except this ambivalent couplet. They restructure the harmony of its underlying keyboard vamp, turning the minor-key melodrama of the original lyric into a coldly detached statement of fact. It is impossible to discern an intention in Wonder’s voice. Is this a rejection, or a plea? Is it a tortured lament, or a cynical boast? There are no more words to say.

“To Know You” brings “To Know You Is To Love You” into the sonic future Stevie Wonder imagined in his classic work. Trüby and Plessow squirt Bootsy-esque bass all over the groove, drenching it to the bone in a funk you can smell. Square-tone riffs, shimmering 303 melodies, subtle string stabs, and percolating hi-hat variations make the track thrillingly unpredictable, suggesting intense emotions bubbling under the surface of its lyrical sentiment. For those who can’t look beneath that surface, this track might seem as stolid musically as Wonder’s voice seems emotionally. That old term “elevator music” might even come up. Is this record elevator music? Maybe it is. But need I remind you what comes out of elevators when the right people get stuck in them?

This Labor Day weekend at Randall’s Island, NYC, Made Events held its first Electric Zoo festival. LWE sent Chris Miller and Shuja Haider to scope it out. Electric Zoo instantly distinguishes itself as one of very few large dance music festivals in the Northeast. In spite of its disco and house pedigree, New York has not been home to an event comparable to Detroit’s Movement Festival; one attempt in 2008, Minitek, was notoriously plagued by technical difficulties. Electric Zoo, on the other hand, neatly caged in over 50 acts. The lineup featured a number of artists on the cutting edge of New York’s disco, house, and indie scenes, while some overseas acts rarely seen on these shores rounded out the weekend. The weather was perfect, and attendance was good. For the most part, sound was loud and clear, performers were easy to see, and everything was easily accessible. And while pizza and beer were available, so were falafel and coconut water. Was there a catch? Sort of.

While we jumped at the chance to see so many underground and just-above-ground dance acts in one weekend, fans of trance and the kind of trash that has somehow become known as “electro” got to see plenty of their favorites too. Never mind that, at least to your humble correspondents, these sorts of music have nothing to do with decent house and techno besides the use of similar equipment. The problem here was in the scheduling. For instance, it is not unreasonable to assume that festival goers wishing to hear Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas might also want to catch Frankie Knuckles and Andy Butler, while those who intended to subject themselves to Armin Van Buren might also be inclined to witness Benny Benassi. Unfortunately, both pairs of acts were scheduled simultaneously, forcing the LWE crew to sometimes squabble over who got to see what, and to sometimes stand around waiting for an agreeable act to start. In the end, though, we managed between us to take in just about everything of interest to LWE readers. And we are glad we did. Here’s how it went.

Saturday:

Answer: Just showing up is good enough: Seth Troxler

12:00 PM: It’s odd to find a DJ as hyped as Seth Troxler opening Electric Zoo’ Main Stage, playing to a vast, nearly empty field. Troxler shows a canny understanding of the situation though, focusing his set on the kind of melodic and/or vocal house that doesn’t sound too awkward when no one is dancing. The Frankie Knuckles remix of “Blind” sounds great on this sunny afternoon, and serves as a preview for the Knuckles and Andy Butler set to come on Sunday.

Martin Buttrich staring down those big banging chords

12:30 PM: Martin Buttrich, on the other hand, isn’t quite as well prepared. He opens the Sunday School Hilltop stage with a pumping live set of his own material and his productions with Loco Dice. Although well put together, the energy level of his set is incommensurate with that of the sparse dance floor. Too bad; he might have torn the place up a few hours later.

Mark Ernestus and Milton Henry conjuring dub spirits

2:00 PM: The grassy knolls of Randall’s Island have begun to fill out. Your correspondents make their way back to the Main Stage, expecting François K and original dub poet Mutabaruka, as scheduled. Instead, we are surprised to see a gaunt, blond gentleman in a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “Jamaica Super Dub” setting up, with a dapper, bearded black man in a fedora and red, yellow, and green belt standing and smiling at the crowd. François c’est pas, this is Basic Channel/Rhythm & Sound don Mark Ernestus with Jamaican vocalist Milton Henry. Ernestus and Henry’s set has less to do with techno than it does pure dub reggae, and the dread emanating from the Main Stage’s imposing speakers prompts a rapid exodus from the fluorescent sunglasses set. Ernestus selects and engineers a wide array of dub classics, including the Congoes’ massive “Congoman,” a Lee “Scratch” Perry production well-known in the dance world through its Carl Craig edit. Henry sashays his way across the stage, signifying, crooning, and occasionally emitting a demonic groan; Ernestus drenches his voice with reverb and echo, tweaking it throughout for maximum effect. Most of Ernestus and Henry’s set is played to about 20 listeners. For a performance by one of techno’s most legendary figures, in the style of the first community practice of electronic music — the Jamaican soundsystem — this kind of turnout is disheartening.

2:30 PM: The mirrorballs dangling over the hip young things in the Grove Discotheque tent make the whole affair look like a scene from Whit Stillman’s Last Days of Disco, and the clean-cut boys of Holy Ghost! fit right in. Their selections happen to be excellent: Charles B and Adonis’ glorious “Lack of Love” deserves to be heard more often, and the house and disco classics that follow, including Joe Smooth’s “Promised Land,” keep up the high standard. When their DJ skills are found wanting — the two occasionally seem to be in each other’s way — their solid record collection makes up for it.

At least one looks interested: Holy Ghost! behind the decks

Mutabaruka lets the poetry flow

3:15 PM: François K and Mutabaruka have shown up, and take Ernestus and Henry’s slot on the Main Stage. Surprisingly, K rifles through some dubsteppy Tectonic records until Mutabaruka’s majestic entrance. Opening with his always-stunning literary masterpiece “Dis Poem,” Mutabaruka drops some serious science. High-modernist poet W.H. Auden famously declared that “poetry makes nothing happen,” but Mutabaruka flips the script. “Dis poem will not change things,” he intones. “Dis poem need to be changed.” His brilliant, politically charged verse works well with the dubbier grooves in his selector’s arsenal, but some bizarre track selections become disruptive. One ‘ardkore drum and bass choon takes everyone by surprise — especially Mutabaruka.

4:00 PM: DJ Mehdi, professional to a fault, rescues Holy Ghost! from a skipping record and begins to regale the growing crowd with a seemingly endless supply of screeches and swooshes.

Ben Watt in action

4:45 PM: Buzzin’ Fly head honcho Ben Watt, formerly of British popsters Everything But the Girl, takes to the Main Stage to mix up a selection of modern house and tech-house, building up speed after the dub stylings preceding him. As afternoon gives way to evening, Watt gets the Main Stage crowd going tastefully before trance takes over and “taste” seems like a distant memory.

5:00 PM: François K’s second appearance, a solo set at the Sunday School Hilltop, upholds his tendency for pathological eclecticism. Though the breadth can get disorienting, he does play some of the best records aired on the Island that day, including Theo Parrish’s latest, “Space Station.”

5:30 PM: Ed Banger manager Busy P takes over from DJ Mehdi, getting on the mic at one point to scorn New York’s supposed preference for trance. Your correspondents do not have long to scratch their heads and try to figure out what exactly the difference is supposed to be between trance and the trash Busy P plays before he drops a remix of Foreigner’s “Cold As Ice.” If only we were joking. Exit LWE.

Baked to a crisp: Luciano adds another festival notch to his belt

6:30 PM: Luciano follows François K for a very Luciano set. If you’ve heard him play in the past couple years, or have checked out one of the last ten Cadenza releases, you know how he sounded. We try to get into it, but an underwhelming remix of Luomo’s classic “Tessio” serves as a reminder of how much better it could have been. Luciano’s set brings to light one of the festival’s few technical problems, which mostly afflicted the Sunday School Hilltop. The adjacent Riverside Arena, site of lowest-common-denominator drivel for most of the weekend, has blared loudly enough that its murk can be heard nearly everywhere. A sense of dynamics in Luciano’s set is lost; every time he cuts the bass, mindless thuds from next door obscure any subtleties.

7:00 PM: L.A. celebrity-DJ Steve Aoki begins a set composed solely of breakdowns. The occasional beat seems present only to prevent nausea.

Danny Tenaglia will be heard by any means necessary, including shouting

8:00 PM: It is hard to think of anything to say about Danny Tenaglia, other than that he is too loud. You can’t blame him though, after what Luciano had to deal with. Apparently Afefe Iku’s “Mirror Dance” gets a spin while the LWE crew is resting its ears, but Tenaglia’s set does not stand out.

To be closer to his idol, he makes her wear it all the time

8:45 PM: Throughout the day, glassy-eyed cultists have been spotted wearing t-shirts, hats, and even papier-mâché masks made in the image or likeness of their rodent god. Deadmau5′s set means a pilgrimage of the majority of the festival’s population to the Main Stage for his gimmicky progressive-whatever. He closes by Rick-Rolling the crowd, which might have been trite in a timely way a couple years ago, rather than just trite. The strains of “Never Gonna Give You Up” echoing across the field are the best music heard from the Main Stage for the rest of the evening, as Armin Van Buren begins his set shortly after. We move to the Sunday School Hilltop, in search of techno.

Speedy J in slow-mo

9:30 PM: Speedy J enters, plays the same track for over an hour. Wait two minutes, kill bass. Wait 30 seconds, drop bass. Rinse, repeat.

Sunday

“Look away! I’m ridiculous!”

1:00 PM: Your correspondents arrive too late for Tom Middleton’s Main Stage “Chillout Set” and head over to the Grove Discotheque to see Runaway’s Marcos Cabral. Cabral is clearly a knowledgeable and proficient DJ; his set includes Pepe Bradock’s “Deep Burnt” and comparable deep house jams. If only he had some dancers in front of him.

Château Flight cranking out a highlight set

1:15 PM: We head back to the Main Stage to catch Château Flight. Not certain whether to expect a live performance or a DJ mix, we are floored by what we get. The Parisian duo plays a deliberately paced live set of deep, well-constructed music, and have the shamefully few people here captivated. The sounds flow from Drexciyan electro to Innervisions-style deep house to Eno-esque ambience and back; the tracks are all new to us. Their approach is characterized by a tasteful use of software that is about musical content, not gimmicky effects. Already a highlight of the day, Château Flight has even the burly Main Stage security guard pumping his fist.

Junior Boy Jeremy Greenspan proves his worth on the turntables

2:00 PM: One LWE delegate pops back and forth from the Main Stage to the Grove Discotheque, to hear Jeremy Greenspan of the Junior Boys playing a rare DJ set. Greenspan is a more than competent DJ, whose housey set, including a dub mix of Farley Jackmaster Funk’s “Love Can’t Turn Around,” offers clear insight into the music he produces as mastermind of the Junior Boys.

You can’t see it, but his eyes are smiling as well: Prins Thomas

Lindstrøm searches for where to go next

2:15 PM: Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas have mysteriously opted not to play together, in spite of their shared billing, instead splitting their block down the middle. Thomas, betraying his prog-rock leanings with a Dungen t-shirt, opens with a DJ set; Lindstrøm follows with a live performance. At times Thomas leans more heavily on the indulgences that sometimes characterize the cosmic sub-genre than he does on the groovier disco-house he might have played at a later hour, but a lazy Sunday like this might be the best time for that sort of thing. Lindstrøm runs through live renditions of tracks from his acclaimed Where You Go I Go Too, as well as some deeper cuts; he gets surprisingly housey by the time he finishes.

“This is my disco death stare,” admits Andy Butler

Doing what he does best: Frankie Knuckles at work

3:00 PM: With all the Chicago house getting caned in the Grove Discotheque, it’s fitting that a veteran like Frankie Knuckles should fill the floor. He and Hercules and Love Affair’s Andy Butler don’t tag team; they break up their two and a half hours into alternating mini-sets. Ironically, it is Butler who sticks to more old-school sounds, navigating the boundary between funk and kitsch deliciously. Knuckles’ sets are not quite as raw, and his tracks sound more contemporary. His deep house grooves are full of diva vocals, synth-flute solos, and so on, but they never get corny. “Strings of Life” is a surprise, but fits right in. Knuckles and Butler turn out to be a great team, playing some of the best music we hear all weekend. Not that we expected any less.

Matthew Dear debuting a new haircut, soon to be seen on techno hipsters everywhere

4:00 PM: Matthew Dear, billed as Audion, performs a live set, consisting of unreleased material, recent singles like “Look at the Moon,” and bits of older hits like “Noiser” and “Mouth to Mouth.” Slow and heavy, Dear’s set fulfills a need for mind-warping techno at a festival mostly inclined towards house and and trance. The sound starts to get muddy about halfway in, which brings things back to reality, but the crowd keeps on dancing.

5:00 PM: Adam Beyer follows Audion with his trademark pummeling minimal techno. This does not hold our attention.

“Please, I need gum or something for my massive jaws to gnaw on!”

5:30 PM: Tom Middleton is back for a peak time set at the Grove Discotheque. He plays exactly the kind of music one would expect from a man wearing an 8-bit smiley face pendant. Lacking any nostalgia for the Second Summer of Love, LWE is a bit perturbed. We put up with Middleton’s constant calls for dancers to make “T”s with their hands, but a Star Wars Cantina-esque rave track drives us away.

Steve Bug keeping busy

6:30 PM: We head to the Sunday School Hilltop to see Poker Flat and Dessous boss Steve Bug. As mentioned, the festival as a whole has not made techno its primary focus; we wonder what kind of a representative Bug will be. As it turns out, both Steve Bug and techno itself triumph at Electric Zoo. The effervescent Bug buzzes and flies behind the decks with infectious enthusiasm, offering one of the best sets of the weekend. Flowing effortlessly, he does not sacrifice musicality for speed, subtlety for propulsion. Donnacha Costello’s recent “Miss Synclaviera” and Carl Craig’s remix of Theo Parrish’s “Falling Up” are characteristic peaks.

A thousand points of light: James Holden

7:00 PM: Nathan Fake and his boss James Holden occasion the only LWE excursions into the Riverside Arena. As befits this locale, their sets are plagued with bad sound and obnoxious visuals. Fake is surprisingly aggressive, while Holden tempers his out-there instincts in favor of a degraded populism. After taking a couple peeks, we decide to stick with Bug.

“I swear to god, Pat, if you don’t play the 16 minute Patrick Cowley remix of “I Feel Love” I’m leaving this instant.” Pat Mahoney and James Murphy with their Special Disco Version

8:30 PM: The triple threat of ATB, David Guetta, and Richie Hawtin on the other three stages has left the Grove Discotheque almost empty as James Murphy and Pat Mahoney begin their “Special Disco Version” DJ set. This is not lost on Murphy, but anyone expecting a spiteful reaction from the hardened cynic of “Losing My Edge” has misunderstood him. “Thanks for being here,” says our gracious host. “I know there’s a lot going on right now.” Dancers willing to stick with Murphy and Mahoney are treated to a Paradise Garage-style mix-up of disco and house — or as Murphy puts it, “nice music” — that never resorts to the obvious. Sylvester’s blissful “Over and Over” is given two airings, and is equally welcome the second time. Indeed, this timeless music is impossible to get sick of, and Murphy grins, raises his hands, and sings along like he is hearing it all for the first time. Mahoney, though comparatively reserved, more than holds his own as a DJ.

[Attention trainspotters: this set is the second time, after one of Andy Butler's mini-sets, that we hear a stomping track with a disco bass line and piano vamping, featuring a male vocal refrain consisting of the words, "the way you're making me feel." An obscure Chicago house jam? The latest DFA white label? It is an encouraging sign of the times that we can't tell the difference.]

“Ooh, a free moment to check Twitter!” Richie Hawtin

9:30 PM: It has become a curious experience seeing Richie Hawtin play; one doesn’t know whether to pay more attention to him or his Twitter feed. Hawtin closes out the festival at the Sunday School Hilltop, but like most of the other techno sets at Electric Zoo, his doesn’t grab us. The tweets his Traktor patch is emitting claim he plays Alva Noto and Plastikman, but his cutting and pasting makes the tracks unrecognizable, and his set as a whole lacks the subtlety those names would otherwise imply. Returning to the Discotheque, we find that Electric Zoo is winding to a close. It’s been a great weekend, but we anticipate improvement. Trance superstars get enough gigs, and many of the acts who played to empty tents deserve packed floors. With more discriminating programming, Electric Zoo could put New York on the dance festival map. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for next year. (Review by Shuja Haider and Chris Miller)

“We love you LWE!”

[Atavisme]

Pépé Bradock’s catalog falls into a few different modes. There’s elegant deep house (the famous “Deep Burnt,” the achingly beautiful “6 Million Pintades” EP, most recently “Mandragore”), hip-hop and electro-inflected grooves (several tracks from his early “Un Pepe En Or” EPs), and eccentric experiments (the fucked up “Rhapsody in Pain”). Though Bradock seems to have left overt hip-hop behind while maintaining the influence in subtler ways, deep house and experimental electronica are in full effect on his excellent new 12″, “Swimsuit Issue 1789.”

“Path of Most Resistance” starts out with a beat reminiscent of Lil Louis’ classic “Video Clash” before piano chords and Bradock’s trademark vocal cut-ups appear. The stomping rhythm blends synergistically with these poignant harmonies, while delicate melodic insinuations emerge; occasional reductions to just percussion are nearly shocking. “CU @ Minna & Lafayette,” though not quite as stunning, mines the same territory with remarkable results. The addictive bass line and jazzy chord progression here are amended with fluttering synths and string samples, filtered until their approach has visceral effects. Bradock’s methods have been refined over the years to a masterful, unified style, a synthesis of programming and sampling, achieving an idiosyncratic yet widely appealing result. Though the stuttering, collage aspect of his work can often make his tracks bear a similarity to micro-house, Bradock maintains a humanist impulse more in line with hip-hop producers like the late J Dilla.

“Unapologetic Weightlessness” closes out the record with an example of Bradock’s, well, unapologetic insistence on avant-garde experimentation. The track is a loping, beatless synth workout that seems drawn from the most outré jazz fusion. It’s unlikely to be on regular rotation at your local club, but it might blow some heads if used carefully. In a way, it is most representative of Bradock’s artistic mission: an uncompromisingly postmodern, plugged-in revision of soul music, equally representative of sonic traditions as it is of its creator’s passionate, slightly twisted genius.

“Intelligence” is not a word that comes up often in house music. In this context, it almost seems like a challenge; this record wasn’t titled for “Soul” or “Sex,” or any of the other social concepts excessively invoked in dance discourse. Though an intellectual emphasis is unusual, it shouldn’t be a surprise; this EP is the inaugural release for Laid, a vinyl-only subsidiary of Hamburg’s reliable Dial, and features music by lesser-known Detroit heavy Rick Wade. Founders Lawrence and Carsten Jost have made Dial’s name synonymous with a style of house that is both cerebral and emotional, without sacrificing its danceability. It’s a style, like much of today’s best house music, that is deeply indebted to Rick Wade. Though Wade arguably kicked off the contemporary deep house sound with 1994 releases on his own Harmonie Park label, you’ll have a hard time finding original pressings of his classic records, any of his mixes for download, or more than a couple interviews with him. Fortunately, Rush Hour, Funky Chocolate, and Wade’s own Harmonie Park have been steadily reissuing some of his best work, and Laid 001 should only confirm his presence in house music’s Dancehall of Fame with three typically soulful, sexy, and yes, intelligent tracks.

Wade often talks about his interest in anime, and is himself an animator working on his first feature. There is an appropriately cinematic feel to much of his work, with its dramatic, swooping strings and dynamic textural shifts. Consider the sci-fi narration by Morgan Freeman (from forgotten Spielberg vehicle War of the Worlds) on lead off track “Ricky’s Groove.” As he describes an alien civilization observing Earth, the haunting melody and soft shrieking noise effectively evoke an extraterrestrial atmosphere; imagine that green babe taking William Shatner by the hand and leading him to the hippest club in Alpha Centauri. However, anime and science fiction are not the only genres relevant to Wade’s music; the influence of 70′s blaxploitation is more than apparent. Though this seems to be one of the few Rick Wade records not to have a track with the word “pimp” in the title, “The D” more than makes up for it with its chiming Rhodes vamp, funky bass line, and forlorn trumpet riff. Like many of Wade’s best tracks, it would fit perfectly in a soundtrack for Shaft On Mars. The title track keeps the sci-funk vibe going, with a twisting chromatic chord progression and trippy effects that never obscure the propulsive beat. This is a record that lives up to its description, maintaining a standard that has characterized the output of both Rick Wade and Dial Records. These tracks will keep a dancer’s feet moving, but they’ll keep a listener’s synapses firing too.

Dance music has always had a DIY spirit that puts punk to shame. Not in a band? Just put on some records. Can’t play an instrument? Buy a sequencer. Can’t get signed? Start your own label. It is this mindset that brings us Disco Nihilist’s first release, in both literal and aesthetic terms. Label Love What You Feel is masterminded by Thomas Cox — proprietor of infinitestatemachine and frequent LWE commenter — who discovered the Austin, Texas producer’s work through Myspace. The process of putting out the record (no surprise, it’s vinyl only) has even been documented in a series of posts on ISM. The label seems to be aptly titled; this is not the work of professionals or insiders, but of dedicated fans.

It is not only the release of the record that bears the traces of that bricolage approach characteristic of early dance music. The press release proudly proclaims that Disco Nihilist not only produces his tracks on analog sequencers, he records them to cassette tape. It sounds like it. No movie-soundtrack pads here, no swooshing breakdowns, no Pro-Tooled diva vocals. If this record is out of touch with the present, it’s because it reclaims the music of the past’s insistence on sounding like the future. While overproduced dance music makes use of technology in a manner reminiscent of Transformers 2, Disco Nihilist’s work is more like Shane Carruth’s 2004 masterpiece Primer: low budget, low profile, and highly awesome.

These four untitled tracks are clearly made by someone who loves house music, has studied it closely, and has trimmed it down to essentials. Snare rolls and kick flutters on “A1″ weave through insistent chords and a funky 303, with deep, meditative results; “B2″ makes a similar formula dark and aggressive. “A2″ is a sparse workout for blips and beeps, while the dubby, spaced-out “B1″ milks an 808 cowbell for all it’s worth. Which is a hell of a lot, in case you were wondering. This record is an auspicious debut for both artist and label — hopefully the future brings not just more from them, but more like them as well.

[Honest Jon's Records]

“Live” is a tricky word in electronic music. Live sets, even by favorite producers, are too often disappointing. In reducing performance to a traditional recital mode, selections are limited to the artist in question’s own tracks, a sense of flow can get lost in the shuffle, and worst of all, the performer is frequently seen doing little more than staring at a computer screen, occasionally clicking. The effects of this approach — not naming any names, but I’ve heard laptop sets which featured a sound uncannily reminiscent of the “you’ve got mail” tone — can be frustrating at best, depressing at worst. Part of what’s exciting about electronic dance music is the spontaneous flux, the dispersed authorship, the paradoxical live-ness of a great DJ set. So what’s the point of “live” performance, anyway?

With Vertical Ascent, Moritz Von Oswald, Sasu Ripatti, and Max Loderbauer offer a compelling argument in its favor. The Moritz Von Oswald Trio is appropriately presented like a jazz ensemble, in which the leader gets top billing but his numerically specified group is of vital importance. Though Von Oswald is the most eminent participant for his innovative and vastly influential work as half of Basic Channel, Maurizio, and Rhythm & Sound, to name a few, Ripatti and Loderbauer make their presence felt. In fact, Ripatti, better known as Luomo or Vladislav Delay, could arguably be considered the creative engine of the trio’s performance style. A trained jazz percussionist who cites Philly Joe Jones — the energetic drummer of Miles Davis’ first great quintet — as a major influence, Ripatti’s intricate, shifting rhythms, played on a drum set of his own construction, form a complex imaginary landscape for his bandmates to color with their inventive and emotive synth work. Loderbauer is also experienced with an improvisatory approach to live performance, in a mostly ambient mode with his earlier group Sun Electric and now with Tobias Freund in NSI.

None of this would matter if the music wasn’t fantastic, and there is no doubt it is. Each track is simply named “Pattern” and its respective number, but perhaps the plural would have been more appropriate. There are levels upon levels of patterns at work here that, in spite of frequent genre allusions, add up to something startlingly original. The drifting tones of “Pattern 1″ are anchored by a pulsating high-hat pattern that seems alternately jazzy, funky, or housey, while “Pattern 3″ seems to glide into and out of a Latin clavé. Ripatti never lets a loop rest, adding to and restructuring rhythms that both draw from and inspire complementary shifts in the synthesizers. “Pattern 2″ is the slowest, most ambient of the four tracks, its kick drum lurching between the sound of mallets striking guitar strings while Von Oswald sprinkles atonal Fender Rhodes improvisations on top. “Pattern 4″ is where the leader’s celebrated dub reggae influence — one of his most influential contributions to techno — is heard in full form. With sweeping synth washes coating a monstrous bass line and a strangely effervescent cowbell sound, the track sounds like Lee “Scratch” Perry and Edgard Varèse stuck in a space shuttle with nothing but a mixing board to keep them company.

The interplay we hear from this band — and it is a band — brings to mind the work and theory of another jazz legend, Ornette Coleman. Appearing in the late fifties with a style of improvisation in which timbre, melody, and rhythm became as or more important than harmony, Coleman shocked the music world with his radically innovative quartet — and later, for his landmark Free Jazz album, a double quartet — which in retrospect seems not only virtuosic, but downright telepathic. Coleman eventually gave a name to his improvisatory theory: harmolodics. This idea is, in many ways, is a precedent for dance music: though some DJs mix by key, most of us match beats and tones. The Moritz Von Oswald Trio has made this connection even more apparent, by using electronic instruments and dance styles to improvise freely in the manner of Coleman’s Free Jazz, for which almost nothing was written beforehand. Von Oswald edited Vertical Ascent together from parts of various freeform jam sessions recorded with Tobias Freund, bringing to mind Miles Davis and Teo Macero’s work in the 1970s when reel-to-reel audio tapes and scissors were instruments as essential as Miles’ trumpet.

Add the Moritz Von Oswald Trio to names like Octave One, Kraftwerk, Underground Resistance, and the few others on a short list of live electronic music performers who are truly worth hearing. We can only keep our fingers crossed that more appearances by this group are forthcoming; in the meantime, Vertical Ascent is an essential, absorbing listen.