First Floor #147 – Does What Music a DJ Plays Still Matter?
a.k.a. Thoughts on the changing nature of dance music fandom, plus a round-up of the week's electronic music news and a big batch of new track recommendations.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
Every Tuesday, First Floor publishes a long-form piece that’s exclusively made available to paid newsletter subscribers only. A brief overview of the latest one is below, and its paywall has now been temporarily removed for the next 24 hours.
THE RISE OF THE AVATAR DJ
What makes a DJ worth seeing?
Is it their skills behind the decks? The music they play? Their access to tracks that aren’t widely available?
Maybe there was a time when music was at the center of a DJ’s appeal—and how they were marketed to the public—but in 2022, things aren’t that simple. In a time when social media tends to define the cultural narrative, fans expect their favorite artists to be perpetually online and music industry figures increasingly base their decisions (at least in part) on Instagram follower counts and who’s gone viral on TikTok, successful DJs have to be more than just people who quietly show up at the club and play some tunes. They’re now public personalities, and while music can be one of the ways they connect with audiences, it’s no longer the only way, and is rarely enough on its own. A DJ’s persona can be funny, political, intellectual, fashionable, scandalous or something else entirely, but whatever it is, they need to represent something. They’ve become avatars for the intangible, and when it comes to marketability, “What music do they play?” is no longer the most important question.
How did this happen? And how does it affect the dynamics of dance music, both publicly and behind the scenes? I put together some thoughts on the matter in an essay published earlier this week, and it’s now available (temporarily) for everyone to read in full here.
REAL QUICK
A round-up of the last week’s most interesting electronic music news, plus links to interviews, mixes, articles and other things I think are worth sharing.
Accounts of the Nyege Nyege festival in Uganda—including a recent New York Times writeup that touched on this year’s event—tend to be overwhelmingly positive, but yesterday Resident Advisor published a frankly shocking feature by Whitney Wei that casts the 2022 edition in a much darker light. The piece details a litany of logistical, safety and security issues—including accounts of criminal gangs, robberies and sexual assaults—that marred this year’s festivities, and traces many of those issues back to a single man who scammed Nyege Nyege’s organizers (and others) on a seemingly massive scale.
Mixcloud announced impending changes to its Basic (i.e. free) tier this week, stating that after December 1, users who don’t sign up for the company’s paid Pro tier will be limited to a maximum of 10 published shows. (For artists who use the service to host all of their DJ mixes and / or radio shows, this is significant.) The move clearly seems designed to raise income, and the announcement—which was written by CEO Nico Perez—concedes that Mixcloud’s “royalty and hosting costs have risen” and that the company itself is “not currently profitable.”
Part of Todd Burns’ Music Journalism Insider newsletter, Notes on Process is an ongoing (and eye-opening) series in which he teams up with a music writer and dissects one of their articles within the context of a Google doc. For the latest edition, he’s teamed up with Chal Ravens—one of electronic music’s most talented scribes—and together they examine her recent Scratcha DVA cover story for The Wire magazine.
By his own admission, writer Ted Gioia is the “Dr. Doom of the music scene,” but in a new essay for his Honest Broker newsletter, he lays out an optimistic case for the future of the industry, one in which musicians and other creators could potentially be empowered like never before.
With their new Feorm Falorx album due to arrive next week, vaunted UK duo Plaid met up with Test Pressing’s Apiento and Matthew Allum for a wide-ranging interview.
After more than a decade as one of bass music’s most inventive outposts, Astrophonica has been named Beatportal’s latest Label of the Month, and the accompanying feature—written by Jake Hirst—dives into the imprint’s history with founder Charlie Fieber (a.k.a. Fracture).
Ibiza’s club and music culture isn’t for everyone, but the environmental and sustainability issues faced by the famed Balearic island ought to be. A new Mixmag feature by Jack Ramage details how a pandemic-induced slowdown has prompted many of Ibiza’s residents to open question the island’s reliance on tourism and nightlife, and considers whether some kind of sustainable balance might eventually be possible.
A new documentary, 25 Years of UK Garage, is set to drop on December 5 and will include appearances by So Solid Crew, Ms. Dynamite, Heartless Crew and numerous others. The film’s trailer can be seen here.
JUST ANNOUNCED
A round-up of noteworthy new and upcoming releases announced during the past week.
Galcher Lustwerk’s 100% Galcher—which, as the name implies, consisted entirely of his own music—was arguably the most important DJ mix of the 2010s, and while some of its individual tracks eventually found their way into the world, the whole thing was never given a proper release. That will soon change, as Ghostly has teamed up with the NYC artist for an extensive reissue that will offer all of 100% Galcher’s songs, unmixed, on vinyl, CD and digital formats. It’s slated to arrive on December 2, but in the meantime, Lustwerk has shared a new video for the track “Put On.”
Regardless of how one feels about “deconstructed club,” no release did more to put that term on the cultural radar than Jam City’s influential 2012 album Classical Curves. Originally released on Night Slugs, the LP is now slated to be reissued on the UK producer’s own Earthly imprint, albeit in an expanded form that includes 10 rare and previously unreleased tracks. Details of the package, which arrives November 4 (i.e. tomorrow), are here.
Although the record was first mentioned as part of the Fabric Originals label launch, details of Helena Hauff’s forthcoming EP for the imprint have now been unveiled. Entitled Living with Ladybirds, it’s set for a November 11 release, and one of its tracks, “Touching Plastic,” has already been made available.
Hollie Kenniff’s gorgeous The Quiet Drift LP was one of last year’s most criminally overlooked albums, and now the Canadian-American ambient artist has finished a new full-length, We All Have Places That We Miss, that will be issued by Western Vinyl on January 30. Ahead of that, opening number “Shifting Winds” has been shared.
Bay Area experimental / bass producer Only Now (a.k.a. Kush Arora), whose scorching Indian Unclassical Vol. 1 was another one of last year’s underappreciated gems, has prepared a new EP. Timeslave (II), which includes a guest appearance by Iggor Cavalera and is slated to drop on November 11 via the artist’s own Kush Arora label, is actually a sequel to his 2017 Timeslave EP for Infinite Machine, and one of its tracks, “Instinct” (a collaboration with Sunken Cages), is available now.
It was bound to happen. After years of quietly being one of Mexico City’s most talented bass / techno producers, Nico has finally linked up with N.A.A.F.I—arguably the city’s most prominent electronic music label—for a new EP. Entitled Si, it’s scheduled to arrive on November 18, although lead track “The Sound” has already been shared.
Panda Bear is all over electronic music these days. On the heels of his joint album with Sonic Boom, along with guest appearances on recent releases by Teebs, George FitzGerald and Nosaj Thing, the Animal Collective singer has apparently now lent his pipes to a new single from Lifted, one of Max D’s many projects. No audio has been shared yet, but the song is due to surface tomorrow (November 4) on Future Times.
Kenyan bass manipulator Slikback never waits long to drop new music, and FINAL_ is his latest offering. Out now, it’s available—like all of his releases—as a name-your-price download on Bandcamp.
NEW THIS WEEK
The following is a selection of my favorite tunes from releases that came out during the past week or so. The ones in the ‘Big Three’ section are the songs I especially want to highlight (and therefore have longer write-ups), but the tracks in the ‘Best of the Rest’ section are also very much worth your time. In both sections, you can click the track titles to hear each song individually, or you can also just head over to this convenient Buy Music Club list to find them all in one place.
THE BIG THREE
Moin “Melon” (AD 93)
Moin “Foot Wrong” (AD 93)
Who would have thought that the year’s best post-hardcore album would be made by a couple of Brits who spent their formative years gorging on jungle and rave music? Moin—a group that also features Valentina Magaletti, who’s arguably one of the best drummers on the planet—may be unlikely underground rock heroes, but after making quite an impression with 2021’s brilliant Moot! LP, they’ve now returned with Paste, a similarly potent album of taut grooves, angsty guitar squall and striking vocal samples.
As the band explained in their recent First Floor interview, they aren’t purposely looking to recreate the sounds of ’90s icons like Fugazi and Slint. (Their working process is actually a lot closer to that of a techno act than anyone who recorded back in the day at Washington DC’s seminal Inner Ear Studios.) Still, Paste is unlikely to deter those comparisons—which, much to Moin’s credit, are usually made quite enthusiastically—particularly once fans hear “Melon,” a brawny, distortion-filled number anchored by an unforgettable vocal clip that defiantly says, “You don’t know me, but I know you. I sure as fuck know you.” Similarly excellent is LP opener “Foot Wrong,” a low-slung bruiser whose deliberate swagger and feral yelps make for a properly eerie atmosphere.
Nueen “Lev” (Balmat)
Nueen “Let Me Be Gone for a While” (Balmat)
Although he has no official ties to the extended West Mineral Ltd. universe, it would nonetheless be easy to lump Nueen in with Huerco S. and his various affiliates, as he often traffics in the same sort of defiantly digital and heavily textural ambient(ish) sounds. That being said, his new Diagrams of Thought album makes clear that the Mallorca native (who currently resides in Barcelona) is no mere soundalike; while his contemporaries often lean into noise, distortion and experimental music’s haunted underbelly, Nueen seems to prefer a brighter and generally cleaner path, particularly on the LP’s first half.
Given his birthplace, it’s tempting to place Nueen’s music in some sort of Balearic context, but Diagrams of Thought probably owes more to Ryuichi Sakamoto than the iconic sounds of the Mediterranean isles. Album standout “Lev” offers up a celestial hybrid of new age and ’80s funk, pitting its rubbery bassline and high-gloss chimes against a series of spine-tingling melodies that could have comfortably soundtracked an old episode of The X-Files. “Let Me Be Gone,” which kicks off the album’s darker (and occasionally beat-oriented) back nine, is another highlight, and though it relies on a similar sound palette, the track’s crystalline tones and waltz-like procession ultimately lend it an almost regal quality.
J. Albert “Fried” (Self-released)
J. Albert “Give” (Self-released)
Rightly or not, the New York scene often takes up an outsized share of the electronic music discourse, but the prolific J. Albert is someone who refreshingly tends to let his music do the talking. The fourth installment of his Good Music Mixtape series dropped last week—to be clear, all four volumes have come out in 2022—and it once again displays his genre-hopping talents, moving through ambient drones, dubbed-out techno, avant-garde rap beats, jazz-inflected drum & bass and more, most of it impossible to neatly categorize. “Give” is an obvious high point, its wonky beat constructions sitting somewhere between glitchy IDM and the blunted sounds of early Brainfeeder, but “Fried” is the mixtape’s true centerpiece, a blown-out, hard-pounding and relentlessly looping vocal tune that sounds something like a collaboration between Actress and members of Nyege Nyege crew if they’d all decamped to Queens for a few weeks.
BEST OF THE REST
Arp Nova & Silence Groove “August Rush” (ThirtyOne)
Over the past few years, many of the releases on Doc Scott’s ThirtyOne Recordings have tapped into the dark, sci-fi sounds of Y2K-era tech-step drum & bass, but Arp Nova & Silence Groove’s new August Rush EP flips that script, pairing its high-speed breakbeats with a brightly gleaming color palette. The whole record is worth checking, but its sparkling title track sets the tone, offering something that’s closer in spirit to Sonic the Hedgehog than The Matrix.
Losoul “D1” (Running Back)
Featuring both tracks from Losoul’s original 1996 release on Playhouse, along with a pair of subsequent remixes from Theo Parrish and Gerd, Running Back’s new reissue of the Open Door EP is bound to be an enticing pickup for house heads in search of a trip down memory lane. That said, it’s the loopy “D1”—the only previously unreleased tune on the record—that proves to be most rewarding, its chopped-and-filtered funk groove cycling along for eight immensely satisfying minutes.
Ruse “Masami” (Scuffed)
The world of bass music often feels like a ridiculously overcrowded place, yet every time one starts to think that every drop of vitality has been squeezed out of the hardcore continuum, a tune like “Masami” comes along. The title track of a new EP from Ruse—a Bristol producer who previously went by the name Silene—it combines thick sheets of sludgy, dubstep-style bassweight with digital crunch and what sounds like a busted techno rhythm. It’s rare that sloshing around in the muck feels this fun.
Naphta “Pieśń rusalna (feat. Mala Herba)” (Tańce)
When electronic music mingles with folk sounds, it usually happens in the more ambient / experimental realm, but Polish artist Naphta has dragged his homeland’s folk traditions straight onto the dancefloor with the evocative new Żałość LP. An effort drenched in melancholy—his label says the title is Polish for “grief,” although it can also seemingly be translated as “misery” and “sorrow”—it reaches an emotional zenith on “Pieśń rusalna,” where the plaintive wails of Mala Herba run up against dread-inducing drone, club-ready percussion and a barrage of snarling bass blasts.
Nosaj Thing “Process” (LuckyMe)
Although nothing can top “Blue Hour”—Nosaj Thing’s gorgeous, trip-hop-reminiscent collaboration with Julianna Barwick that’s easily one of 2022’s best tunes—there’s plenty to love about the LA producer’s new Continua album. One of only two tracks on the LP that doesn’t feature a credited all-star guest, “Process” is a seductive bit of avant-R&B, a cozy tune whose unnamed female vocalist—who, according to this track-by-track breakdown of Continua that Nosaj Thing provided to Dummy, appears to actually be Barwick, albeit in cut-up sample form—manages to communicate more emotion with her wordless cooing than actual lyrics ever could.
Artefakt “Brain Dripper” (Delsin)
Dutch duo Arefakt has never been a traditional techno outfit, but on their new Brain Dripper EP, they largely cast aside the genre’s kick drum-centric rigidity, whimsically venturing into ambient, IDM and the kind of majestic melodics that frequently pop up in classic progressive house. “Brain Dipper” showcases the immersive results, its dreamlike melodies playfully darting and drifting amongst the song’s off-kilter (but still dancefloor-ready) rhythms.
Hugo Massien “Deep Blue” (Unknown to the Unknown)
Is melancholy raving the best raving? “Deep Blue,” a highlight of Hugo Massien’s new Fuzzy Logic EP, certainly makes a strong case for getting wistful on the dancefloor. In a move reminiscent of Bicep’s most memorable tunes, the always reliable (and often strangely overlooked) UK producer takes a big emotional swing—and connects—combining big room breaks (which do display a hint of 2-step flavor) with warbling synth swells and the kind of sentimental tweaked vocal samples that prompt folks to tearfully call up their ex in the middle of the night.
Blue Hour “True” (Blue Hour)
As the title implies, the new Origins EP is an exploration of Blue Hour’s past, and specifically the sounds he consumed as a young dance music fan in his native UK. “True” is one of the record’s standout cuts, and it feels like a wide-eyed tribute to classic breakbeat techno, with a bit of early trance mixed in. Not terribly far off from what labels like Lost Language were doing in the early 2000s, it’s unabashedly big, but even with its assortment of soaring strings, fantastical melodies and eyes-closed, hands-in-the-air moments, it somehow never goes completely over the top.
Leo Anibaldi “Muta 5 (Donato Dozzy Remix)” (Vargmal)
First released in 1993, Leo Anibaldi’s “Muta 5” still holds up today as a slice of dubby, somewhat restless psychedelic techno. That’s likely why the track has been included on the new Classics EP, but it’s also been given a fresh coat of paint by fellow Italian Donato Dozzy, whose remix offers a more consistent low-end bump while maintaining the original’s subtle sense of sci-fi paranoia.
Michael Claus “Soft Bloom” (100% Silk)
The cover of Michael Claus’ new Lavender Palace cassette features what looks like a blazing, pink- and purple-hued sunset, and gentle strut of “Soft Bloom”—one of the tape’s clear highlights—seems tailor-made for an afternoon of lounging by the sea and watching the slowly sun dip behind the horizon. The song’s mellow, new-age-meets-house vibe does take cues from labels like Mood Hut, but the San Francisco producer puts his own stamp on things, dialing back the groove and allowing his pastel synths to calmly take flight.
Sulk Rooms “Transmissions” (Werra Foxma)
Built around what sounds like a simple, slowly repeating organ riff, “Transmissions”—a haunted standout from Sulk Rooms’ new Viewers album—has an almost devotional quality. Yet the song’s gradual pace also gives it a palpable sense of tension, with each passing moment adding to the sensation that something sinister is afoot. The track still sounds like something that might have been recorded in a cathedral, but only if John Carpenter had slipped into the building and calmly begun playing in hopes of conjuring a pagan spirit or two.
Norio “Tsubute” (Hush Hush)
The new Somebody LP was created in the Japanese countryside—more specifically, in the mountainous Gunma prefecture—and while the album will most likely be filed in the ambient bin at most shops, it’s not necessarily a pastoral listen. As elegant as Norio’s compositions are, they’re also frequently quite lively, most notably on “Tsubute,” where a tinkling piano loop gracefully bounds along, its subtly buoyant stride intermittently enhanced by lush strings and tiny patches of digital crunch.
Anja Lauvdal “Tehanu” (Smalltown Supersound)
The opening track on Anja Lauvdal’s debut album From a Story Now Lost—an LP the Norwegian musician enlisted Laurel Halo to produce—it’s unclear whether “Tehanu” is inspired by the Ursula K. Le Guin book of the same name. Nevertheless, the song’s soft chimes and plush drones, which coalesce into a kind of ethereal (if slightly moody) strain of new age, do feel like they’re of a piece with the legendary sci-fi author’s understated magic.
Lawrence English “Another Ending (Theme to TraumaZone)” (Room40)
Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone might be Adam Curtis’ most relentlessly grim work to date—considering the rest of famed documentarian’s work, that’s really saying something—and Room40 boss Lawrence English has beautifully captured the series’ bleak tone with “Another Ending.” A grey, echo-laden composition in which choir-like melodies intermingle with slowly rumbling trains, the tumbling descent of its sparse, reverb-soaked percussion feels like a metaphorical stand-in for the crumbling remnants of the Soviet empire.
That’s it for today’s edition of First Floor. Thank you so much for reading the newsletter, and as always, I do hope that you enjoyed the tunes. (Don’t forget, you can find them all on this handy Buy Music Club list, and if you like them, please buy them.)
Have a good week,
Shawn
Shawn Reynaldo is a freelance writer, editor, presenter and project manager. Find him on LinkedIn and Twitter, or you can just drop him an email to get in touch about projects, collaborations or potential work opportunities.