Sean Deason	NCW	The Black Dog

This mix is focused pretty tightly on a couple of upcoming releases – Elements Volume 3 by Sean Deason, and Panther Veil By NCW — and the very recent release by The Black Dog, LIBER DOGMA. It’s also one of the few mixes I’ve done that focuses on Techno almost exclusively. Though there’s plenty of the 4 on the floor beat that is techno’s hallmark, there’s other rhythmic grooves represented. I think that Techno is a feeling as much as it is a collection of common attributes, and these tracks represent a pretty wide range musically while staying true to that feeling.

The show itself was interesting because of a guest spot from DJ T, who played a short set of the sort of stuff I don’t really like — commercial ‘electro house’ — but it represents a generational difference. I thought T was a very nice guy, actually, so I don’t want the following to seem like I’m dissing him.

For anyone who’s been around dance music for a while — and I’ve been interested in it going back to the middle 1970s! — there’s always going to be stylistic breaks. I have a hard time getting into what’s currently popular with the 20-somethings, who don’t really know music that wasn’t made in the past 5 years. The current ‘it’ sound seems to be missing soul, and focuses on the least subtle and most ear-bleeding synth sounds. It seems to me that it’s immediate percursors are the music that I hated 10 years ago — poppy progressive house and commercial euro-trance. But I think it’s interesting that there’s a parallel underground scene, that the tracks in this set represent, that is every bit as current, and to me ismuch more musical, soulful, and durable.

But kids — what are you going to do with them. They like what they like. I’d like to think they can be taught about the history and ongoing relevancy of dance music going back 40 years or more, and I don’t think that calling what they like crap is a good way to start. I don’t want to be like middle aged people back in the 70s when I was a kid, holding tight to their Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey records.

This set was driven by a trip to Dave’s Records in Chicago, where I crouched on the floor going through the used $1 Dance Records. I also did what I usually do, which is look through a section of floor to ceiling shelves of records in my office I haven’t visited lately.

VINYL. IT’S A SICKNESS, REALLY

The past 2 Saturday nights I spent in the KRUI studios playing vinyl. I make no great claims for my mixing skills, but I guarantee this is 100% real for better or worse.

Rather than, as I have in the past, manually type in an HTML table, I made my track lists in Google Docs. That, unfortunately, is no way to get clean HTML tables, not only are they formatted for machine eyes only, they have tables nested in tables with annoying breaks. So I embedded the google docs with <iframe>, which has its own formatting annoyances. But it does get the information in this post with a minimum of retyping.

Oh wait, I spent 45 minutes googling around trying to come up with a nicer way to do that, & installed a WordPress plugin that was even fuglier. Oh well…

Download audio file (2010-10-23-Chaircrusher-KRUI-Set.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/2010-10-23-Chaircrusher-KRUI-Set.mp3

Download audio file (2010-10-30-Chaircrusher-KRUI-DJSet.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/2010-10-30-Chaircrusher-KRUI-DJSet.mp3

This is what Google Image Search comes up with if you search for “UK Bass”
Sequenced live in Ableton Live — 45 tracks in 99 minutes. Starts at 100 BPM and ends at 142. I find it hard to stick with one particular beat so there are some hectic transitions.

Download audio file (Chaircrusher-SeptemberMix.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-SeptemberMix.mp3

Download audio file (CoolyG-DubOrganizer7-Minimix.mp3)

I’ve been accused of having a crush on Cooly G. Why wouldn’t I? She’s talented, beautiful, and even cursory internet stalking on-line research indicates she’s got a bubbly, charismatic personality.

But my real crush is on Cooly G’s talents as a producer. Along with Roska, she’s one of the most visible faces of UK Funky. And she’s gained her prominence having only a single label release — Narst/Love Dub and a track on the Hyperdub 5 compilations. It’s easy to say why those tracks were great — the combination of her vocals, floating in and around the bass heavy beats — but hard to say how she does what she does. Using the tools all modern dance producers have, she seems to come to completely different conclusions.

UK Funky is marked by beat patterns that vary between traditional House and Soca rhythms. Cooly’s beats seem to fit into that same headspace, but they rarely drop into that same repetetive groove. Most producers get a groove going and then throw in change-ups every 4, 8, or 16 bars. Cooly’s beats seem to be all change-up, without losing their own particular quirky groove.

Alongside Cooly G’s DJ’ing and her Hyperdub releases, she’s also been releasing a series of digital-only “Dub Organizer” EPs. They’re only available only for Paypal purchase and announced at her Myspace and Facebook pages. The Dub Organizer tracks are cut from the same cloth as her Hyperdub release, but are arranged more simply — a spare synth line, maybe a sample and beats. They’re straight-up DJ tools, similar in intent to most of Roska’s releases, but a lot less repetitive.

The latest Dub Organizer, #7 in the series is 4 tracks. “ic db” is a driving rhythm that is a sophisticated, layered cousin of funky’s trademark Soca beat. This is quite literally a ‘riddim’ with the only tonal material being a drum sample being bent up and down. And yet it sounds anything but minimal, with different drums coming in and dropping out; the space in a track normally taken up by pitched melodies or chords is full of relentless percussion variations. “well mi seh db” is similarly spare, with only a very occasional trombone stab joining the percussion. “darn db” is based around a repeated synthesized female chorus loop and novel ‘kick on one & four” rhythm.

The star of the EP for me is “full ah sensi db” which is a brilliant re-imagining of dub reggae built around heavily echoed dub samples. In a sense it’s a dub of Dub — it reconnects the half-stepper beat of Dubstep with the original dub reggae sounds, leaving (if it’s possible) more space for sounds to echo in than in King Tubby’s productions. One of Cooly G’s favorite words is “dramatic” and on “full ah sensi db” the drama arises from a low-fi woodblock ‘clok’ sound reverberating darkly. Compared to the maximalist “echo soup” of the (also brilliant) Echospace album Liumin it amounts to approaching the dub template from the opposite hemisphere.

My minimix hits all tracks in this order: darnn db, ic db, well mi seh db, full ah sensi db. I wanted to give you an idea of how they sounded, but encourage you to follow up and support Cooly G by buying the release. Hence it’s watermarked with a robot voice saying “Cooly G Dub Organizer 7.” If you like what you hear, represent!

It’s been mad stupid hot in Iowa City this summer. I like it that way! There’s nothing wrong with sweating. Which is something you learn if you like to go dancing in a club. Somehow the hotter and sweatier it is, the better.

To satisfy this need for humidty I’ve assembled a mix out of things I’ve bought in the past few months. This comprises what I’m listening to when I’m walking the dogs late at night.

Thanks for promos to: Lenny Burden (Octave One) & Stefan Robbers (2Junxion). Drop me a line if you want to send me promos — chaircrusher at gmail dot com.

ALL OTHER TRACKS LEGALLY PURCHASED. Except for the Chaircrusher ones, which I produced.

Download audio file (Chaircrusher-Summer2010-Mix.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Summer2010-Mix.mp3

Track List

Out of work today with a cold, so I lashed up the mix I’d been collecting tracks for.  The theme, again, is dub techno & dubstep, with some detours into other genres.  The track selection basically came out of listing my ITunes library in the order of most recently added, and picking tracks that I liked.

Ordering was mostly by tempo so I could gradually accelerate — from 105 to 140bpm.  I find that there are tracks that are linked by mood but disjoint in tempo, and I hate playing stuff more than Technics standard plus or minus eight percent. Hence the gradual windup.  And I’m never again going to try and link to every fucking track in my track listing. It takes a long time!

Download audio file (Chaircrusher-AprilOfTwoMinds-DJMix.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-AprilOfTwoMinds-DJMix.mp3

1. Wilkin’s Mop – Explode
2. Murmer – Mesh
3. Deadbeat – Night Stepping
4. Stinkworx – Amira
5. Kerri Chandler – So Let The Wind Come
6. Nu era – A Third Of The Third
7. Bill Van Loo – A Detroit Sound
8. Sygaire & Defcon – Yigitler
9. Nu Era — Ringstone Round
10. Beat Pharmacy – Ghostship
11. Soul Phiction Reminisce All Over You
12. Laurent Garnier – Gnamankoudki
13. Kode 9 – Too Far Gone
14. Perverelist – Infinity Is Now
15. Joe – Rut
16. Breakage Instra_Mental – Late Night
17. Pangaea - Bear Witness
18. Vex’d – Fire

Here they are, hot off the presses. Turn your speakers DOWN before you play them because I noticed in studio that the bass on these is huge. Something I’ll watch out for on future mixes. Doesn’t sound distorted or bad, just HUGE.

Download audio file (Chaircrusher-04112009-Techno-Mix.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-04112009-Techno-Mix.mp3
Download audio file (Chaircrusher-04112009-House-Mix.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-04112009-House-Mix.mp3

Track Listings

Mix 1

Congos – Congoman (12″ Mix)
New World Aquarium – NY
Stinkworx – Coelacanth
Patrice Scott – Do You Feel Me
Chaircrusher – Sergeant Ridiculous
Deadbeat – Sun People
East Island – Master of Servir
Ame – Sun Sugar
XDB – Descap Live
VoomVoom – Sau Verought
Stewart Walker – Stundenzimmer
Serge Gainsbourg – New York USA (Chaircrusher Edit)
Bochum Welt – B2
2562 — Moog Dub
Raymond Scott – Toy Typewriter (Chaircrusher Remix)

Mix 2

Omar-S Luv U Alez
Rick Wade I can’t Take It
Patrice Scott Sunrise Dub Mix
Mike Huckaby Fantasy
Reggie Dokes Missing You
Moodyman Sweet Yesterday
Osunlade 139th Street
Ian Pooley In Other Words
Tyree Acid Crash
Steve Silk Hurley feat. M Doc — It’s Percussion
Cerrone Paradise – Joey Negro Remix
First Choice – Let No Man Put Asunder
Terrence Parker vs Joe Smooth Love’s Got Me High/Forever My Love
Derrick May vs Octave One Strings of Love/Blackwater

I don’t claim to be an expert on Dubstep. I’m not British for one thing, and my taste runs to stuff that really isn’t in the clubbing Dubstep comfort zone. What I like about Dubstep is its heritage twice or thrice removed from Jamaican Dub, its re-purposing of the 2 step shuffle from UK Garage, the deep bass, and most of all, the way certain producers go their own way when the big bucks are in cranking up with the next wobbly bass stepper.

Most of these are tracks I’ve acquired (by paying for them, funnily enough) along with a few oddities, like the Random Trio track, which turned up in odd corners of the internet. I’m sure I’m doing it all wrong, with respect to real Dubstep DJs, and I’m sure my track choice is probably way too obvious to some. But it’s something I enjoyed spending a few hours lashing together, and it’s meant to be an example of the form for an article I’m planning to write…

Download audio file (Chaircrusher-4000MilesWestOfLondon.mp3)
Direct Link For Download

RECORDING TECHNIQUE: Ableton Live, sequenced live with a MIDI controller. 43 minutes 33 seconds. I did edit the last mix after I was done, but everything else is just fingers in motion.

Track Listing

1. Martin – Vancouver (2562s Pour Natuur Mix)
2. Random Trio – Marachi Kinky
3. Scuba – Twista
4. Plastician – Unhappy Shopper
5. Vex’d – Ghost
6. Mark One – Doomed
7. Skream – Bahl Fwd
8. 2562 – Greyscale
9. Burial – U Hurt Me
10. Scuba – Timba
11. Kode 9 & Space Ape – 9 Samurai
12. Burial – Archangel
13. Martyn – Virgo