henrik schwarz, ame, dixon - the grandfather paradox

can we talk about this mix cuz i think it is one of the best commercial mixes i have heard in a long time (it's up there with stuff like psyche out. actually i think i am going to listen to sleepwalk next!). i think it will likely appeal to house freaks, beardos, bespectacled historians, minimalists, crate diggers, etc. the first cd is a mix and the second cd is an unmixed comp. there is a nice review over at resident advisor.

mix tracklist:
01. Steve Reich & Pat Metheny - Electric Counterpoint - Fast (Movement 3)
02. Etienne Jaumet - Repeat After Me (Âme Mix)
03. Kenneth Bager - Fragment Eleven… The Day After Yesterday Pt.1
04. Liquid Liquid - Lock Groove (Out)
05. Cymande - For Baby Oh
06. Patrick Moraz - Metamorphoses 1st Movement (Live)
07. To Rococo Rot - Testfeld
08. Mathematics - Blue Water
09. I:Cube - Acid Tablet
10. Ø - Atomit
11. Conrad Schnitzler - Electrocon 11
12. Green Pickles feat. Billy Lo & M. Pittman - Feedback
13. La Funk Mob - Motor Bass Gets Phunked Up (Richie Hawtin's Electrophunk Mix)
14. John Carpenter - The President Is Gone
15. Yusef Lateef - The Three Faces Of Bala
16. Robert Hood - Minus
17. Raymond Scott - Bass-Line Generator
18. Moondog - Invocation

i have very much been wanting to hear this since i read about it a month or so back. bit hard to discuss until i do, though - tricky are there any bits in particular that stand out for you? i don't know a fair few of these tracks.

well, the best part of it (and the reason i started the thread) is that it is so cohesive and well done that you don't even need to know that some of the tracks are 30-40 years old. it sounds like a minimal house mix in the most generic and best way if that makes sense. from the very beginning, it just floats out at you and there is little in the way of wasted space or fluke-y experimentation or minimal excess (that's minimal as in the genre) even though it is quite psychedelic. it is not overly pious (to use a pet word around these parts lately) and it is not sickly smooth or oppressively sequenced. there these are all qualities that my ears associate with a classic mix. you may have different tastes ^_^

ps i found it on the interwebs, but i am buying a copy asap

That looks really really good.

it is! i was wondering if you were going to stop by this thread.

tracklist looks A+++

+1, been feeling this all last week until i stopped smoking pot to stave off a sinus infection. :(

pretty great. the idea's cool, but the mix stands on its own. it doesn't seem like a museum exhibit.

yeah, this is pretty fuckin great

ok so this is the first thing i've d/l'd and then immediately ordered in a long time. maybe since sci-fi hifi luciano. plus i threw in a cymande cd on top. so this thread has cost me $25...

Been looking forward to this as well, can't wait for the US release. The second, unmixed CD:

01. Conrad Schnitzler - Elektrocon 11
02. Steve Reich & Pat Metheny - Electric Counterpoint - Fast (Movement 3)
03. Liquid Liquid - Lock Groove (Out)
04. To Rococo Rot - Testfeld
05. Patrick Moraz - Metamorphoses 1st Movement (Live)
06. Young Marble Giants - N.i.t.a
07. Kenneth Bager - Fragment Eleven… The Day After Yesterday Pt.1
08. Arthur Russell - Make 1, 2
09. John Carpenter - The President Is Gone
10. Robert Hood - Minus
11. Raymond Scott - Bass-Line Generator
12. Pyrolator - November Mühlheim
13. Cymande - For Baby Oh
14. Can - Sunday Jam

ok yup this mix is awesome. interesting seeing 4 tracks on the unmixed cd not that aren't included on the mix, esp young marble giants- would've been cool if they'd have worked that one in

i fell like im impressed with everything henrik schwarz has ever been involved with

Funny, Schwarz have really fallen off for me. And Ame (other than than "Fiori", which I still think is masterful) and Dixon never really captivated me. But this looks really nice.

Jeez, sorry for the grammar issues there.

DEFINITELY Psyche Out level

It's a great mix -- this is what the Moritz von Oswald/Carl Craig collab *should* have sounded like. It started out pretty good and had a nice build, but after twenty minutes I realized that there wasn't going to be any payoff ... they were just going to keep looping the same Ravel and Mussorgsky samples over and over. This mix finds a way to combine the old school electronic stuff with "modern" beats without sounding gimmicky.

this looks great

it is great!

xpost
i don't see what's wrong with Recomposed not having any "payoff", nor does it loop the same samples over and over. it's subtle and shifting and minimal in the best sense of using space and limited palette to go exploring. i love a big crescendo as much as anyone but after listening to it a few times i realized it didn't need one. and to call it gimmicky is hating a bit i think. gimmicky would be dropping detroit techno stabs and 130 bpm beats underneath the unedited originals - basically what i was expecting on first listen. what it actually does is far more nuanced and interesting and to call it gimmicky makes me think you made your mind up before listening to it....

Actually, your impression was exactly what I was expecting (and hoping for)! It seemed to me that the main "gimmick" was "let's sample classical music and turn it into an hour-long piece", i.e. the most important thing was to go long, and stretch it out for an hour, without any real sense of what they wanted to accomplish in that hour. I wasn't looking for a payoff with breakdowns and huge crescendos. I think it would have been a better album if they'd split it up into several shorter tracks, because there are several points where the sonic shifts feel too abrupt. But "The Grandfather Paradox" flows very well, like a minimal house mix (as others have said), without abrupt transitions. It really feels like a long, cohesive minimal electronic piece despite the smorgasbord of different components.

this mix is so dope

must actually listen to this then!

08. Mathematics - Blue Water

should read "Metamatics - Blue Water".

10. Ø - Atomit

i thought i owned the rights to this :-(

and to call it gimmicky is hating a bit i think. gimmicky would be dropping detroit techno stabs and 130 bpm beats underneath the unedited originals - basically what i was expecting on first listen. what it actually does is far more nuanced and

so does it add beats that weren't there in the original recordings?

yesss. and they're gorgeous, those beats.

But "The Grandfather Paradox" flows very well, like a minimal house mix (as others have said), without abrupt transitions. It really feels like a long, cohesive minimal electronic piece despite the smorgasbord of different components.

while it may flow like a minimal house mix, i really would be weary of calling this mix minimal house. i guess i always attributed a certain level of high-tech glitchiness to minimal house, whereas the textures on this mix are in general more organic. there's even some tribal drumming and bell loops that make it feel much more like 'minimalism' in the traditional sense than 'minimal house' in many parts. i'm not saying the sound isn't there, just that it is only one of the mannnnny different types of music being played here and imo doesn't really define the mix

i think it very much is like a minimal house mix, but the term has become so problematic that many will disagree. I'm thinking eg "Solomon's Prayer" on Cadenza. That's what this mix (almost all of it!) sounds like. Listened once today and enjoyed but will need some more listens for it to sink in.

there's even some tribal drumming and bell loops that make it feel much more like 'minimalism' in the traditional sense than 'minimal house' in many parts.

sort of the point, right? minimal-house guys paying tribute to minimalism in toto. although not even everything in the mix is actually minimalist, which is good -- it seems like it was guided by a general principle (including just "shit we like") instead of any kind of rigid ideology.

definitely the point.

think it will likely appeal to house freaks, beardos, bespectacled historians, minimalists, crate diggers, etc.

^^^seems about right

yeah there is a difference between minimal house and minimal. when i call this one minimal house, it's because the tracks are made with analog equipment as opposed to software. i don't know if that's actually true of all of the tracks in this mix, but it's the most succinct way i can think of putting it. "solomon's prayer" is a good example. i would add dan bell's commercial mixes as a comparison as well. and maybe even de9 where the mixes are squarely in the techno software-edit camp, but the tracks are reduced to drum machines and analog tones.

the "recomposed" discussion as a point of comparison is interesting. to me that mix/album just sounds really expensive and far more ornate than this mix.

Innervisions really have set themselves up as the bastions of good record collection taste in German house haven't they? A while back there was a mix of dreamy krautrock/Terry Riley/etc. stuff that Ame had made streaming from their website.

it's quite thrilling the way that mix from Electric Counterpoint to Repeat After Me goes from sounding totally wrong to being the coolest thing ever once your head gets round it.

^^ yeah i stopped this on the first playthrough because i was struck at how it sounded so off, then came together so well. "how'd they do that??"

'minus' > 'bass line generator' > 'invocation' is such a great finish.

I really love this mix, it would sound incredible at 6am in the embers of a house party. And yeah that first transition is glorious. Love the way they tease us with a bit of Rej midway through as well.

lol i just came to this thread to post about how every time the i:cube track starts to fade in i think it's going to turn into "rej"

A++++++++

05. Patrick Moraz - Metamorphoses 1st Movement (Live)

track is crazy awesome, this guy was in Yes and the Moody Blues?? wow.

oh yeah, still haven't heard this

i think it's okay but i don't think it's quite the "event" that people are making it out to be. it's just like a second DJ kicks for schwarz with an unmixed disc tacked on and i don't think it's particularly more impressive than schwarz's first DJ kicks (which was mighty fine!) and in fact i think i prefer the first dj kicks.

I've been listening to the unmixed comp. more often tbh. I like the mix too though.

Agree with vahid here, though this is still good.

it's interesting but it's not very exciting.

this, the trus'me album from last year, and the dj koze comp are my favorite full-lengths from this year. that said, i do not listen to this one so much (partly due to music overload). still, though, i think this is much more than ok (i even bought the t-shirt) -- what other commercial mix this year has been better? for forthcoming stuff, i am personally looking forward to the prins thomas mix for playhouse and not much else.

the prins mix for robert johnson seems really good, tho only listened once so far

good to hear!

i forgot to put dj sprinkles in my list of favorites. doh!!

shit, i forgot to add a ton of stuff to my favorites. oh well. sorry for derailing the thread.

it's interesting but it's not very exciting.

― Local Garda, Wednesday, April 15, 2009 12:11 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i'd go w/this so far. v glad to have it and to have heard a few of the tracks on it for the first time but not ~into~ it as a mix. (caveat, have not listened on headphones yet.)

assuming omar-s doesn't count for my favourite commercial mix of the year, i'd go with the aus music comp by will saul or the chloé live @ robert johnson one.

optimo best of uk garage mix cd coming soon on nice n' ripe.

Remember to include Kavana "Will You Wait For Me (Shanks & Bigfoot Remix)", Yardcure Cru's "Life That We Livin" and Doc B & Eagle E's "Pure Rumours".

Sometimes I wonder has the world actually ended when I read these dance threads.

No my neighbour just banged on the floor, it has not ended. Though he may be a cockroach.

it's not mainstream-canonical obv but...i haven't heard about half the acts on, say, that optimo mix, but i've heard them repeatedly namechecked in magazines, on the internet, by a certain demographic, and compiling an entire mix full of nurse with wound, arthur russell, eno and so on feels very...unsurprising and a bit didactic. i'm sure the mix is good but it makes me not want to listen to it.

Hey Lex, it's interesting that you say that, but I'd suggest that your reaction has as much to do with a general long-tail-hype fatigue. When I reviewed Sleepwalk, I had the inadvertent luck of receiving it as a single MP3 with no tracklisting. And just sinking into the mix over the period of a few days of heavy listening, having no idea what most of the tracks were, was a delightful experience; when I finally read the tracklisting, I never would have guessed that certain artists were behind their respective passages in the mix. It would be nice if we could approach all mixes that way; unfortunately, probably not terribly practical.

"what is the common thread you guys are seeing in all of those mixes? eclecticism? unconventional selections?

shouldn't those elements be a part of any good dj set?

― i am the eye in the sky... (psychgawsple)"

this is what i was thinking. but even if you take it to mean

"not eclecticism generally, but the tracing of a secret history of a current sound. This idea has been around forever obv but I think the number of mixes doing this has been increasing over the course of this decade.

― Tim F"

i still feel like this is what most good deejays do all the time. granted, this may not have been the case on commercially released mix CDs until very recently. i like the fact that this is becoming more common on the mainstream level, since this is really what i find interesting about deejaying in the first place. any joker can play the 10 new hot joints in the same genre, it takes someone who knows a ton about music and who has some skills to piece together things that don't obviously belong together and make them make sense emotionally.

I agree this trend is can definitely be didactic (i dont mind this tho, depending!) and a bit "do you see?" - think this is totally understandable tho. People have other stuff they love and I think it can be great to hear stuff from far and wide brought into a mix. In general I prefer mixes that are quite homogenous and I'm not really into the free-for-all eclectism - but when people bring in other stuff but it doesn't feel like they have (is this counter-intuitive?) I think it can work really well - hearing Los Jaivas, Fanica Luca, Joao Donato or Marika Papagika dropped in with with Matthias Tanzmann or whatever can really work for me

Mainly I like to hear a thing I haven't heard before I think

That thread got me thinking about the alternative version of his DJ-Kicks you could download with a code on http://www.henrikschwarz.k7.com/... I misplaced the MP3, anybody have it?

comps that "explained" Burial and Silent Shout.

what're these called? i'm curious

also: i much prefer the grandfather paradox to schwarz' dj kicks. and optimo's sleepwalk mix really doesn't come across as didactic at all, its really playful and vv good.

er, sorry "not a mix"

Hey Lex, it's interesting that you say that, but I'd suggest that your reaction has as much to do with a general long-tail-hype fatigue

oh absolutely. it's just that a canon seems to be ossifying around a particular collection of groups, most represented on these mixes/not-mixes, and it's all talked about in terms of how "important" it is. it's all v "good record collection taste" as tim said earlier. all very...correct, the right thing to like, somehow.

anad again, i'm sure it's a good comp, but the sense of that is a turn-off for me.

it's always good to be skeptical, although i would say that the "good record collection taste" property of these mixes in question is not really a new phenomenon for commercial dj mixes. it's more a refinement of something that has already existed.

That thread got me thinking about the alternative version of his DJ-Kicks you could download with a code on http://www.henrikschwarz.k7.com/... I misplaced the MP3, anybody have it?

― crispyben, Thursday, 30 April 2009 14:35 (1 hour ago)

yeah i'm interested in this too, i bought the CD but it didn't come with a download code for some reason...

I don't really think its a 'refinement' long term; its more like watching the shape of discourse around certain styles mutate over time.

I agree with pipecock above to a degree but there still feels like something pretty similar & niche-y about a lot of this stuff I have to say. By that I mean like, it feels kinda like folks are giving this props for transcending the generic genre set w out acknowledging there are common ideologies and assumptions in a lot of these mixes wrt audience and familiarity. Kinda looking for a miccio-style overreductive summation but i'm typing on a cell phone & haven't heard all the mixes mentioned so ignore me if i'm talking out my ass

I agree that these releases have a certain similarity to them, but I feel like that also has something to do with the tools used on most of them, namely the hyper-perfect computer assisted mixes where everything is forced to fit through timestretching and whatnot. Theo Parrish and Harvey are two cats who make mixes that are similar in connecting dots but by working within the constraints that vinyl has, their mixes end up sounding much more alive and less rigid.

Ha I just knew that last pipecock post was coming.

"giving this props for transcending the generic genre set w out acknowledging there are common ideologies and assumptions in a lot of these mixes wrt audience and familiarity"

Giving props for transcending the generic genre set is almost always fallacious. I mean, give props by all means, but not for that. It's a false explanation for the occasional impressiveness of this kind of join-the-dots approach. (I feel strongly about this: I'm still smarting slightly about a review I wrote once which tried to dismiss the notion of transcendence as inappropriate, and then through the editing process became "x transcends y")

I think Lex is right to the extent that this stuff is rapidly becoming a sort of genre-not-genre with lots of increasingly codified rules and mythologies etc. (i.e. what deej is saying basically). i.e. think about the position of Chris & Cosey now compared to three/four years ago (when they graced Psyche Out).

As such I'm much more interested in thinking of this stuff as a genre and working out what it is in the selections that makes them work together as a piece, rather than just hail the transcendent visionary genius of the selectors.

One of the nice things about "balearic" I feel is that, because it puts that kind of between-the-tracks-eclecticism at the very centre of its self-definition as a genre, it tends to reduce the cult of transcendent genius that would otherwise accumulate around artists and DJs who join the dots within the basic parameters of that style. What would have been "transcendent" is now just "balearic".

UK funky provides another good, albeit less distantly related example: because of the sheer range of the music within is borders (from Perempay and Dee's "Time To Let Go" at one end through to Lil' Silva and Scottie D at the other), the actual eclecticism of DJ sets are just accepted as a matter of course, insofar as what is being reproduced of is the eclecticism-of-the-genre rather than eclecticism-across-genres.

k about the position of Chris & Cosey now compared to three/four years ago

curious to know what has happened to their position in the last three / four years.

Basically they're a lot more namedropped now. Which is not a reason not to play them!

To be clear: I think that within this rather narrow context getting terribly worked up over whether choices are "obvious" or not sets up an unnecessary, infinitely receding horizon of enforced obscurity.

To use Chris & Cosey as an example, the fact that they are a lot more namedropped now than previously doesn't change the fact that:

a) they are great; and

b) most people are still unlikely to have heard (of) them; hence

c) they are worthy of more retrospective promotion and canonisation

Also the thing about many of these liminal figures (Arthur Russel is probably a clearer example of this) is that they're not totally arbitrarily chosen. If you want an Arthur Russell vibe you've almost got to go to the guy himself - e.g. nothing else really sounds like "This Is How We Walk On The Moon" or "In The Light of the Miracle".

I'm much more likely to be irritated/perplexed by acts of canonization where I feel like the person canonized has been privileged at the expense of other artists making music of a similar style and equal worth.

Having said that, Chris & Cosey (and Arthur Russell for that matter) now feel more part of a "genre" (albeit one constructed retrospectively) than they did a while back. Again, for the avoidance of doubt: this isn't necessarily a bad thing!

so, basically, what we have here is a case of accumulating history.

or histories, rather. seems to be the opposite of ossification to me.

"or histories, rather. seems to be the opposite of ossification to me."

Well i guess it's more like ossification and disintegration occurring simultaneously, in the same way that waves crashing onto the shore can build or diminish a beach.

If you get an artist who was previously uncontextualisable getting invoked only with respect to a very particular notion of their quality/nature/contribution/context, then that's ossification.

But if instead they're being situated differently within different stories and arguments, that's disintegration.

Most of the time in the process of stuff being defined both of the above actions are happening at once, insofar as music becomes absorbed under a convenient catch-all label (or, at least, idea), but in doing so comes into constellation with other musics with which previously it would not have been associated, thereby destabilising our sense of what the music is "about".

i.e. "balearic" has given some sense of solidity and stability to the constellation of music to which it applies, and in the act of calling e.g. Studio "balearic", we ossify the music's stylistic meaning relative to whatever more convoluted explanation we might have used previously. Conversely, insofar as calling Studio "balearic" associates them with A Mountain of One on the one hand and Aeroplane on the other, the tag also destabilises.

And of course stuff gets wrested from one history into another: Material mean something different depending on whether they're being invoked in a secret history of disco-punk or a secret history of balearic.

"If you get an artist who was previously uncontextualisable getting invoked only with respect to a very particular notion of their quality/nature/contribution/context, then that's ossification."

hmm, ok, then the question is why was the artist uncontextualizable? and to whom?

Well it's more a case of less to more contextualisable. There is more of a contextualising discourse around Arthur Russell (attaching him to a loose disco-not-disco/balearic tradition) now than there was 10 years ago. This is not surprising or a bad thing - a large part of it is simply because his stuff is more available now!

I think "ossification" carries negative connotations that are unfortunate. Would "deterritorialisation" and "reterritorialisation" suit better, their reek of continental philosophy notwithstanding?

yeah those words actually make it make more sense. i like the idea of the rhizome. in engineering or mathematical terms, it's called a graph (as opposed to a hierarchical tree, graphs can have arcs with direction or can contain cycles/loops - it's far more sophisticated than it sounds).

so, let me get this straight, the claim here is simply that certain mixes (or musical contexts) appear over time and change the critical discourse around an artist. that sounds reasonable, but to me it seems like there is a tendency here (at least in this thread) to privilege the current critical discourse over the larger musical discourse, which is backwards. for example, the orb sampled steve reich for "little fluffy clouds" back in the 90s, jeff mills was in a group with ties to the industrial world, etc, etc: where does this figure into the current discussion? does carl craig remixing throbbing gristle carry more weight than chris and cosey being included in "psyche out"? what about techno's affinities or indebtedness to jazz? or the blues? it just goes on and on and on so when songs or artists get slotted into this or that canon or discourse, there is guaranteed to be some level of incompleteness.

it is interesting because in the wire's review of "the grandfather paradox", the reviewer was critical of the mix not including artists like timbaland, which i think is completely ludicrous because it attempts to apply the stuff in my previous paragraph to construction of a dj mix. exactly where would timbaland fit in this mix sonically and thematically?

If it helps anyone any, I had to review this all as one track myself--and while I did have a track list, it's not as if I sat there staring at it or even really looking until the time came to write it up. Besides, disc two, which is unmixed, is my favorite just because I always use its last track, Can's "Sunday Jam," whenever I do my happy-hour gig on Wednesday nights.

Chris and Cosey had a remix pack in the mid 90's featuring house and techno artists such as Carl Craig. I think you guys are confusing YOUR knowledge of what is out there with the general knowledge that is out there. Every single influence is not going to be popular all the time but their shit is still out there and already in it's proper context whether you know it or not. There are no real surprises anymore, people have been playing this shit for 35+ years. Someone involved knows and plays every record out there, hype or no.

Chris and Cosey had a remix pack in the mid 90's featuring house and techno artists such as Carl Craig

i released that on my old label.

Well actually pipecock that was one of the points I was making: someone can (and often unfortunately will) always come along and say "I was playing this first, I knew about it before you", so getting too caught up in claims of "I (re)introduced this to popular consciousness" is tempting fate to cast you as foolish.

Chris & Cosey may have had fans and a good reputation before this decade, sure, but I think nonetheless they're still much more talked about/played than they were at the start of this decade at least (I can't speak knowledgeably about their rep in the mid-90s because I was 13 yrs old at the time). This doesn't change the quality of the music, but it changes how some people will "read" the act of playing them.

Also what on earth does "already in it's proper context" mean? Is it more proper for Carl Craig to remix C&C than for Optimo to play them? (HA XPOST STIRMONSTER)

"that sounds reasonable, but to me it seems like there is a tendency here (at least in this thread) to privilege the current critical discourse over the larger musical discourse, which is backwards. for example, the orb sampled steve reich for "little fluffy clouds" back in the 90s, jeff mills was in a group with ties to the industrial world, etc, etc: where does this figure into the current discussion? does carl craig remixing throbbing gristle carry more weight than chris and cosey being included in "psyche out"? what about techno's affinities or indebtedness to jazz? or the blues? it just goes on and on and on so when songs or artists get slotted into this or that canon or discourse, there is guaranteed to be some level of incompleteness."

Ha you raised the issue in advance tricky. I think you're effectively agreeing with me here: to translate this statement back into the terms being used above, the discussion around particular artists has ossified/territorialised in favour of the present. That's not a good thing (though constantly repeating a mantra of pedigree, as some people do, is not the solution) but I think it's inevitable when 90% of music discussion does tend to be about stuff being released now. Especially in dance music where the context in which you experience stuff while out dancing currently seems a lot fresher to mind than whatever context applied five (or however many) years ago.

But as I imply above the issue of "carrying weight" is not one that I think is real or meaningful except in the narrow sense of "which record generated more discussion/soundalikes/answer records" etc. That narrow sense cannot be conflated with quality or vision or bravery any more than the top 20 charts can.

My point is just that music gets played by deejays as it comes out and then in perpetuity as other people hear them play it. It all moves organically. Any other perceptions are MISperceptions based on what a given person/crowd is used to hearing. In a place like Chicago I swear there are no new records, those guys have played eveything alreay if it could possibly make sense in the dance context.

There is no one true platonic dancefloor though pipecock. We were talking about (mis)perceptions in the first place - that is what this conversation is about. The fact that someone somewhere once played x tune doesn't mean that subsequently that tune cannot wax and wane in public consciousness.

sorry pipecock but i just don't believe that is true. there will always be other undiscovered records from the past that have yet to be played that could possibly make sense in the dance context.

What I'm tying to get at is that your perception of Arthur Russell not having been part of a larger scene is just as wrong as people now who might view him as "disco not disco" or whatever.

Stirmonster: unless a track is unreleased, SOMEONE plays/ed every record. YOU just haven't heard them do it yet.

have you seen stirmonster's record collection?

yeah tim i think we are agreeing. it's dangerous (or maybe unproductive) to forget the past, but the present is also fresh! it's weird in dance music right now because you have some factions diving headlong into the unknown future (dubstep) and then some factions getting to the future through the past. it's a good tension i think!

I am aware of who stirmonster is. I am also aware that he has not seen every dance deejay to ever play records.

Have you ever spoken to him? I reckon he actually might have...

Pipecock I don't think anyone here claimed Arthur Russell didn't slash doesn't have a big dance following - they're saying the context in which ppl understand the concept of 'Arthur Russell' (the man the music the concept) mutates and changes over time and place and from dancefloor to dancefloor. When the girl i'm seeing goes out dancing she knows maybe at best 10% of the traxx and really loves Arthur Russell bcuz she heard 'a little lost' once thanks 2 the wire type push he's gotten - when she hears that voice in a dance track & goes 'whoa' suddenly u are dealing w a different crowd understanding of what Arthur Russell means - this occurs in millions of variations on lots of different levels, context is not stable or constant. maybe dj ABC dropped an identical blend to one from the optimo tape- but the crowd's understanding of the meaning of what that song signifies could b

i am having trouble following this conversation

:-(

My point is just that music gets played by deejays as it comes out and then in perpetuity as other people hear them play it. It all moves organically. Any other perceptions are MISperceptions based on what a given person/crowd is used to hearing. In a place like Chicago I swear there are no new records, those guys have played eveything alreay if it could possibly make sense in the dance context.

― pipecock

i will say this, there seems to be the usual basic disconnect here: pipecock is building his argument around his particular "dance cognoscenti" he follows and everyone else seems more interested in talking about "the man on the street"

like for all we know, secretive chicago djs x, y and z might have been playing chris and cosey for years now, that doesn't change the fact that since the rise of the postpunk / disco-not-disco / balearic scenes you're just much much more likely to hear chris and cosey in a dance context, an RA podcast, a club night, whatever.

i know that's not a misperception, that's just a disconnect between what you cherish (examining deephousepages.com?) and what everyone else on ILX cherishes (examining broad trends)

stirmonster and i did meet once, but i met his record collection thru woebot.tv. the night we met tim sweeney hammered "lfo" and i bounced about the room like a loon. hmmm.

But even within the pipecock fantasy cognescenti there has to be room for evolution of thought (well obv there isn't but his unwillingness to recognize that context changes how songs work for ANY audience is real O_o

this dixon mix right now on pete tong is v v v good

I played the Get Physical mix so much ... and then forgot about it. Must dig out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p017c4rq

thanks - it's great!