This is my slightly late in the year mix of tracks that were released around summertime, with a chart bothering cut from Rudimental, one of Dusky's better productions, and a track that should be in anyone's top 5 list of Tuff Jam tunes. Most of the stuff I play is Old Skool Garage so it's nice to get some new 'London' house tunes on vinyl that can supplement my largely retro collection. Someone on the Dissensus Forum has referred to this kind of stuff as house & bass though I'm not sure if anyone else has accepted this as a sub-genre title.
Like a lot of people I bought the Rudimental 12" for it's brilliant Skream remix of 'Hell Can Freeze' (one of the year's best tunes in my book). The A-side was an irritating commercial tune in the vein of Pendulum so I had Rudimental wrongly pegged as a crap D&B act. But when I got round to listening to that side of the record I came across the first tune of this mix- it's nice summertime sing-along music. Track 2 is one of Karl & Matt's classic dub mixes, if you haven't heard this by now you'll be in for a treat. The last tune is by Dusky, who I don't know a lot about. This is on the Naked Naked label who put out the excellent 'Somewhere' by Breach & Midland late last year. I don't know if Capital T has any recognisable elements from Garage or any other London based scene but it's got a nice smooth, maybe American vibe to it. 1. Rudimental ft Sinead Harnett- Baby (Asylum records 2013) 2. Tuff Jam- Key Dub (i! records 1997) 3. Dusky- Truth Capital T (Naked Naked 2013)
When I agreed to
do this tape I had come up with the idea for side B pretty early on.
Side A took a little longer. It had to be something different from what I
usually play, which is Old Skool House & Garage. I ended up going down a more laid back and soulful direction. Apart from the first two tracks it was fairly improvised. Without the need to beat match I had more time to think about what the next record should be, decide what would compliment the one currently playing. 1. Lone Catalysts- Lone Catalysts Instrumental- B.U.K.A. Entertainment 1999
I have very few hip hop records in my collection. This was something I bought in the Virgin Megastore in Belfast, probably around 2002- before I had decks. It took me a while to realise that to get the listening posts to work you had to bring your own needles, I was worried that I would break my 1980's record player trying to remove the headshell. I ended up buying a lot of tunes back then playing lucky dip in HMV & Virgin, with a surprising success rate it has to be said. A lot of Drum & Bass and House music, what little Garage they had for sale I was more familiar with so I knew what I was buying. The funny thing was that Belfast's proper underground store, Mixmaster, had proper listening posts and a tidy selection of classic Locked On promos that no shop outside the M25 had the right to have. I neglected this shop a bit because I knew those records would always be there- as proof I had the fact that they were around three years old by the time I was flicking through them- HMV & Virgin on the other hand had a higher turnover of stuff and if you didn't catch stuff early it would get shipped off to some sister store. The problem is that those great Garage tunes that I assumed 'would always be in Mixmaster' started to thin out when Mixmaster took the disastrous step of expanding into the adjacent unit (a foolish business move a bare year or two before decks would be made redundant by CDJ's!), then dying a slow death over a year or three, then turning into a bloody bong shop. By this stage I had embraced the record shops of Soho & London so it wasn't so much of a loss to me. But I digress. While I should have been buying my favourite genre of music in the city's only independent dance shop I was buying other stuff in the chain stores. By this time I had sussed out how to bring your own needle, and knowing Lone Catalysts had a great D&B remix I decided to hear this one out. Great instrumental, loving that kind of hip hop production. Virgin gave up on vinyl a year or two before HMV, pretty much the same thing happened in the much larger Oxford Street branches where it was clear they were mothballing the format. 2. Imagination- Body Talk- R & B 1981Leee John was known to me through his one Garage track with Steve Gurley, and it wasn't long before I found out how good 'Body Talk' was. I think it was on a Trevor Nelson documentary on TV where he listed this (and Loose Ends) as the Brits who could beat the Americans at their own game. Whoever produced this track is seriously talented, almost on a level to Quincy Jones' work for Jacko. In any case mixing this kind of stuff- with it's varying tempos and lack of 4 to the floor kicks- is a bit out of my comfort zone, so it's all edge rollers from now on. 3. And Why Not?- The Face- Island 1990Another English group devaluing the Stateside concept of this cassette. This wasn't the first record I ever bought, but it was the first single I ever asked to be bought for me, when I was 6. I suspect they were one hit wonders. My original 45 got snapped in half, as the cheap & nasty 7" format has a habit of doing. I eventually got this on LP around 2000 in Terry Hooley's Good Vibrations shop, which funnily enough is where I bought my first piece of vinyl the year before- a Goldie album. Going with the general mood of this tape up till now I would have probably drew for the Junior Giscombe and Loose Ends hit singles but I only have them on MP3, no use on my vinyl only set up. 4. Stardust- Blazin'- Republic 1989So with R&B not being much of an option I thought I'd take things into a 1980's House direction, and this tune from New Jersey's Blaze fits the bill and was a recent purchase so it was literally staring me in the face. They did some great deep house tunes in later years but frankly one adjective you don't associate with that genre is the word humour. Not so with this, the craziness of the vocals reminds me of the puppets in David Bowie's Labyrinth movie. 5. Mr Fingers- Washing Machine- Trax 1986A lot of this classic Chicago stuff was getting repressed by Simply 12 in the early 2000's, so any mug who showed up at HMV on a weekly basis could pick up a tonne of dance music's most popular tunes with little effort. I seem to remember in Sixth form missing one morning school class almost every week for a 'doctors appointment', but really I would hit the record shops and smuggle the twelves into school about five minutes prior to breaktime. Incidentally the Trax records originals are the most miserly thinnest pieces of vinyl ever, with run out grooves so big they could've easily have put it on a ten inch. If you don't know about 'Washing Machine' by know- get to know. 6. Warren Harris/ Hanna- Afternoon In Paris (N.Y. Mix)- Sound Signature 2005Heard this once on Benji B's Deviation show and I quickly forgot about it. Instead he battered another track on this E.P., 'Healing'. I eventually bought this record for that track alone, which was no mean feat because there's confusion over whether it was released under his own name or his Hanna alias (the sleeve says one thing and the record another). Suffice to say before discogs was there to put things straight, typing the wrong name into an online record shop's search box didn't come up with the right answers. This is probably one of my most played tracks so if I turn it onto anyone else (along with the IG Culture track on tape Side B as well) then it's a job well done. There's few things more satisfying in record collecting than buying a tune for a specific track, only to take it home and find the B-side is five times better (or one you've always wanted to have ID'd and never thought you would). 7. Producers From Another State- Play 4 Today (Vibes Mix)- Goldtone 1992I heard this on Omar S's excellent FYA 3 CDR, where he plays a classic house set with sometimes lackadaisical mixing- the selection is so good it doesn't matter and like Burial's fake vinyl crackle it adds character. This is perhaps the stand out track on that CD, a deep deep deep Jovonn production- haunting almost. It was a few years before I found out what it was called or who it was buy. Scandalously, It's also much better than the three other mixes of it that are on Youtube, so it needs exposed. 8. Phortune- Unity- Jack Trax 1989This was something I heard in a Soundcloud mix recently. Turns out it's by Phuture of Acid Trax fame. Took a quick look on Discogs but the 15-30 pound prices put me off. Then barely a fortnight later it turns up as I'm digging through the crates of Head Music, which is like the current Belfast incarnation of Virgin Megastores after countless management buyouts, long periods of closure, and moving to much more modest premises. They had this for the princely sum of £3. Surely this was God's way of telling me that this needs to be bought now. And it doesn't end there. They had another Jack Trax compilation for sale at the same price- the next track in the mix here. Assuming it to be of similar resale value I biught it as well despite not knowing any of the tunes on it- and generally being averse to early dance music releases that squeeze loads of quiet tracks onto a single side. 9. Ragtyme- I Can't Stay- Jack Trax 1989
And it turns out it's everything you could fucking want in an 1980's House track. I wasn't expecting this whatsoever. Marshall Jefferson, Frankie Knuckles & Byron Stingily on a forgettable pseudonym. I'm surprised a song of this calibre isn't as well known as things like 'Can You feel it', or Frankie Knuckles other hits. It's an ideal climax to side A of this tape. Well mastered too 10. Jay Dee/ Jay Dilla- Airworks 2006
But of course it's hard to measure how much time you've got left on a tape, and I didn't want to have it end in silence. So I deliberately picked something really short and really eccentric. So the best cut off the late Jay Dilla's 'Donuts' album is the perfect bookend. 25 years of black & dance music over the course of 25 minutes.
