Under The Influence

We were having a dinner party the other night and I had a mix on that I've been wanting one of my very well educated electro mates to hear for years. This track came on and those of us who had heard the mix before all agreed that it's one of the great moments of the mix. Said well educated Person identified it instantly as Hale Bopp (something of an old track as it turns out).

There are a number of phases that build and build during the track. It's the moment right at 1:43 where everything pulls together and it really kicks off. It's interesting how subtle the changes are throughout but somehow they give the whole thing a great momentum. Thanks to Gabriel and Dresden for throwing this on to their essential mix a few years back (and top work to the man that identified it). The rest of their album is downloading right at this moment.

Stumbled upon this little gem whilst pillaging Tolcha related material from emusic. It features Dallas (from Fat Freddy's Drop), one of my favourite vocalists. There are 3 versions on the album (um yeah, it's a single.... duh!), the original, Soulphiction mix and Tolcha mix. To be honest I've barely stopped to give anything other than the Tolcha remix a chance - I'm all about the Berlin grime.

As usual Dallas delivers a beautiful performance, and coupled with Tolcha's dark and dirty remix skills you get something quite special. A crescendo of broken beats and pulsing bass. I've been listening to it far too loud for altogether too many days now.

Would love to witness a Tolcha / Dallas jam session. In fact, I'd love to see Dallas jamming with lots of European musicians. A match made in heaven.

One of the dance highlights from Sonar 2007. Slicked up white suits, long flowing hair and keytars - they certainly have an ultra cool look... cool sound too.

The album itself is much smoother than I expected - when they played live the sound system was a bit quiet so I guess I figured the album itself would be more raucous. Great bit of work anyway. Silky electro beats with a jazzy edge.

Coupé is a stomping upbeat track, reminds me a bit of Leftfield. Cooper King has a really cool disco edge to it that then drops away into a funky 70s movie soundtrack vibe.

Great stuff.

Alex Schmidt is a dj... I think. I can't really figure out anything much about this guy. It's a random dance set I picked up from somewhere and it's bloody good. I'm very busy at work at the moment (computer geek by day) so I've made good use of this mix. I find that dj mixes (the more housey/electro ones) are great when I'm try to get things done in a hurry.

Mostly you get lots of deep dirty bass built on house/electro foundations. There's a song on here (track 9) that I know I know (it's a classic) but I have no idea what it is. Bugging the hell out of me.

Since I couldn't find anything out about this stuff online... hence the muntovision picture.

These guys infuse so many different styles into their music that I've been hard pushed to figure out just how to place them. That probably goes a long way to explaining why they've never really broken the mainstream market. To be fair they've had a couple of tracks that have become DJ essentials over the years. Jungle Brother (True Blue) is in almost every DnB DJ's record bag and many consider their classic I'll House You to be the foundation of the hip-house crossover genre.

Fans of Outkast, Arrested Development and the like will find a lot to enjoy here. The rhymes are intelligent and witty. Nods to other great hip-hop/pop works pervade many of the songs making it great for all the trainspotters. Thankfully The J. Beez don't suffer from the self-indulgent skit syndrome that other artists allow to destroy their work (there's only a single skit on the album and it's more of an introduction than anything).

Love & Hate is particularly interesting, sounding more like electro/disco club than hip-hop.