Chez Damier

he has a series of collaborations with ron trent on the KMS and prescription labels. i believe they started with "the choice." they continued this style with KMS 054. the song don't try is amazing. it starts off right away, all the vocals, beats, and synths are there in the first measure, and then like a minute in this descending bassline drops. it's like buying a car that is really awesome and then you are driving home the dealership and the thing takes off into the sky and autopilots you home while making you breakfast. i don't know what synth they used to make the bass, but it sounds awesome, really bright. these tracks are really upbeat, NY influenced grooves. they have all these funky vocal snippets scattered everywhere. it's like when you hear some session player shouting out during a particularly amazing moment in a james brown song, except these are machine sequenced. later on prescription, the chez and trent stuff got slower and more relaxed and they produced the club tunes under separate names.

chez also had some records he produced himself for kms, like can you feel it and i never knew love. these two are definitely influenced by his labelmates inner city. big sounding vocal tunes and lots of melody. it seems like he has more of a disco tendency where ron trent leaned toward techno. KMS 049, which is untitled, has these philly disco sound strings programmed alongside these crazy wooshy synths and totally fucked up vocals. they actually come through the left channel untouched, but on the right, they've been pitchshifted into sub-james earl jones territory.

he also recorded as chuggles for prescription and had more disco house with "i remember dance." chuggles also did "thank you" which is almost 13 minutes long and has some disco motifs but does NOT sound like disco.

also, the "classic EP", which he did with santonio and stacey pullen, and also included a chuggles song. this is really spacey sounding. it's serendipitous that he and stacey pullen collaborated i think, because pullen's synth melodies sound really good over deep house beats.

i don't know if he has retired or not (discogs.com shows a few releases from 2004), it would be a shame if true.

i figured we couldn't have a ron trent thread without a chez damier thread.

later on prescription, the chez and trent stuff got slower and more relaxed and they produced the club tunes under separate names.

the exception is "hip to be disillusioned".

also, check the ron & chez remix of round one's "i'm your brother"!!

oh and chuggles is with ralph lawson

well, he sang on that Kids In Streets track in 2005.

Hip To Be Disillusioned is late Prescription? or is that later, on Prescription, the Chez and Trent... etc

I'm not trying to be snarky there by the way. the Prescription discography catalogue numbers are a bit of a nightmare for me, I have no idea what year it started in.

Thanks, elan. Your descriptions make me want to track down every one of those records!

i believe the first prescription record was "the wanderer" by romanthony. it's good.

i think the catalogue numbers go PRES000 through PRES128, then PR-5010 through PR-5021. the aybee deepblak'd is the latest new record i think, and there are also the prescription classic reissues that start with PRC.

resolved, i just meant that "... disillusioned" is more upbeat than the rest of their records together on prescription. i don't know the exact chronology, though.

054 is one of my favorite ever house tracks. So beautiful. It can be hard to fine but appears on the Ian Pooley Excursions mix CD.

kms54 got repressed not so long ago, thankfully

Chez has not retired, I don't think -am in Paris now and splurged way beyond my means (Betino's reocrd shop, 32 rue St-Antoine is the real deal) but couldn't find his 2004 releases for Trackmode :(

uuh that was 32 rue St-Sebastien actually- wuz drunk last nite, speaking of which, club-wise the real deal is at Djoon, 22 boulevard Vincent Auriol...

what is djoon? inquiring minds wanna know....
stupid question maybe but is KMS stuff available digitally?

Ayo Phil, we went w/Anto and even he enjoyed it. Unassuming club, soulful sounds & singalong, hands-in-the-air audience plus Afro dancer ciphers. Was a locals-only (Cheers) nite but they fly in le Claussell, l'Osunlade et al on a weekly basis. NYC teen prodigy duo les Martinez Brothers are playing tomorrow- the Sunday evening ritual is in place too. Oo la la! C'est bon.

http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/TUTORS.9.0.html?act_session=318

so, red bull music did an interview thing with chez damier. apparently there is a video you can watch but i couldn't figure it out so i read the transcription. but i want to see the video cause he plays unreleased tracks!

anyways, it is a very cool insight into how he and ron trent came up with their records - basically to sound awesome at the sound factory and ministry of sound clubs!

so chez damier has a new track out, "revive us (the tweak)". it's only available digitally. it's okay. some filtered synths hold it together. they sound like waves on a beach. lots of percussion. it's just okay as far as chez damier goes, in my opinion. there are lots of build ups and climaxes with the sound design so i suppose it's very much a dj tool but it's not great.

also, i'm not sure about how i classified chez as disco and ron trent as techno. sure, ron trent did the eternal classic 'altered states' but a lot of his solo stuff is not techno. like dance floor boogie delites, kurt harman project, all that later solo prescription stuff is deep house disco stuff that sounds like proto-current-king-street. but actually good because he can write a bassline.

they are both too complex to classify like that. i think chez probably has the best picture of their relationship (besides maybe ron?) and he said that their major difference is that ron trent was really relaxed while he (chez) had tons of energy for the dancefloor. he said their tracks were always a compromise between different energy levels.

and if you check ron trent's collaborations with braxton holmes, they really really sound like current king street deep house. but awesome and 15 years old.

i want to share a chez damier / stacey pullen song that has always made me hopeful and optimistic for the future when i feel bad. i hope you all enjoy it as much as i do. merry christmas!

chez damier & stacey pullen - forever

yeah, I'm gonna pull out that Collect Sounds Of Prescription comp again... Noni - Teach Me/Keep Me Satisfied awesome.

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Boot+Leg+With+Love

so, i finally heard this record he did called boot leg with love from 1998. it doesn't have his name anywhere on it but some dude on discogs says its him and it sounds a lot like him. the a-side tracks are both new mixes of his early cut "i never knew love", which seems to be a favorite of his for reinterpretation (see also his collaboration with marc kinchen on the grand lodge of luxor (thebes)). "i never knew love" was not much of a song compared to what came after. that inner city style was never really his strong point and the best chez damier tracks from that period are remixes by outsiders ("2 1/2 step" by marc kinchen and derrick may, the kinchen dub of "can you feel it", "help myself" by carl craig). here he came back with more experience and made the original version AWESOME. much more nimble, with an understanding of how to make the tracks's original elements work with the rhythm. the second track on this side seems to mesh his early aspirations to copy "big fun" with the rhythmic subtlety and dramatic compositional style he perfected once he found his voice. it's all in those "big fun" spank snares.

the b-side tracks sound unfinished. they are clearly intended for programmer's use only. the first one is based on a simple synth stab riff, some great chez drum programming, a little metallic sound that chafes against the rhythm and a minimal bassline. it's got a looong percussive breakdown in the middle. the second is a downtempo cut that i would say was actually by ron trent because it sounds a bit like his style from the time but it doesn't have a catchy half-time bassline so there is no way that it's by ron trent. it's also way too short. i guess it's sort of a looping disco song and it's a little boring if you listen close. it's probably a sample but i don't recognize it. unlike the other side, which sounds very full, the songs here sound wide open, making them easy to mix without worrying about dynamics too much.

this record is interesting to me because it seems to be the last thing chez damier released before he retired for the first time (he started his music career again in 2004 with releases on atal and track mode records). his last prescription record was in 1997, but i think he had already split with ron trent, at least in the studio, after 1995's "foot therapy" release. it appears that here he tried to tie up some of the loose ends of his weaker early records before calling it quits, ostensibly in violation of the publishing rights held by kms records over "i never knew love" (he has complained about not having publishing control over his early work in interviews. speaking at the red bull music academy about publishing rights he said, "And so in situations where you’re doing this and all of a sudden you find out years later that somebody own some of your publishing, some of your songs and you’re like ‘whoa’." he mentions more than once not having control over some of his songs.) but i wonder if someone so talented could really give up their art at the high point of their career to focus on other business opportunities (he gives this as the reason for his retirement in the RBMA interview. derrick may did it, but may is "the prima donna from fucking hell" according to george baker and it's not surprising that he would go pout in a corner for 15 years after some british people decided not to copy his style. pearson, on the other hand comes across as humble and a little self-conscious in interviews. co-managing the music institute with derrick may must have interesting). i wonder if instead he tried to release this record legitimately, realizing during the process that he didn't own the original songs, and quit out of frustration or disgust. his retirement is baffling to me. it seems like there are other things from that period left unfinished. for one, the chez n trent collaboration, which arguably ended at its peak, with last session and foot therapy. the release notes for the language record mention an upcoming "best of chez 'n' trent" cd, from which thethe language's "the meaning" is supposedly culled. this cd was never released (it should be). for some groups, a greatest hits album is a gravestone. others release several, demarcating their career into meaningful segments as it progresses. but the language was released in 1995, the year they ended their collaboration. i don't know what was intended by this note on a 12" record label, and it probably isn't related to boot leg with love, which came out three years after their split, on a french label. it's just weird and i wonder about the circumstances of the breakup.

also, my pal table has kindly agreed to host the boot leg with love tracks at his blog, http://deepmovements.blogspot.com/, so check that space in a few days.

i believe the first prescription record was "the wanderer" by romanthony. it's good.

haha, yeah it's "good" like sex

Looking forward to hearing these elan. You deserve some company on this thread.

http://deepmovements.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-im-feeling.html

enjoy guys! full 12" should be available from that page for the next two weeks.

nice find! b1 is tailored for the Derrick Carter +8 treatment, bet he's played that record thin...

DL'ing now. I'm a big fan of deepmovements table. I just got this yesterday and the Chez Damier is just right. I'd love to get the original release when I get rich.

i love that song. it's so good for mixing into the vocals and then switching the bass over real quick. i'd love to hear "the bah bah song" he did with santonio on the original release but i think i will have to wait until i am money enough to blow $100 on a record.

somewhere i have a full dat tape of ron and chez messing about in a studio in edinburgh circa 1994. i must try to find it (and find a dat player too!)

?!?!?! my ilx email doesn't work, but if you ever get that tape transferred, please hit me up at lfamular at geemail dot com

could it be related to this? http://www.discogs.com/release/520153

i guess that leeds and edinburgh are different

no it's not but it was around the same time. ron was over in edinburgh for a week staying at my then girlfriend's place and chez was around for several weeks. they were trying to record something for the label my partner and i then ran but never quite got around to finishing it. iirc there were a ton of sketches for tracks and some long jams on the tape, if i ever get it together i'll get it to you.

jesus, man. that sounds like a trove.

wow, i'd love to hear that tape!

wow i can't believe they were really in edinburgh recording...i live here and it seems incongruous haha! Did edinburgh have a good house scene back then?

user: area10records

this is MK , sorry Tambian dont take this the wrong way, but that is soooo untrue!!! chez is a good friend of mine, he is the one that brought me in to kevin saunderson , so i made sure i killed this for him, maydays mix had nothing to do with mine ,i didnt sample any strights and strings of life wasnt done on a juno 106 , derrick is a good friend of mine to, sorry bro just trying to keep it real... MK

KMS 049, which is untitled, has these philly disco sound strings programmed alongside these crazy wooshy synths and totally fucked up vocals. they actually come through the left channel untouched, but on the right, they've been pitchshifted into sub-james earl jones territory.

this, along with a selection of other KMS and detroity stuff in general, has been re-pressed (or booted) and has surfaced at the online shops over the last few days.

i'm really excited about seeing him dj tomorrow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5fGS2K59wA