First Floor #180 – Mellowing with Age
a.k.a. An interview with Simon Reynolds, plus a round-up of the week's electronic music news and a fresh batch of new track recommendations.
Do you want to read my interview with Simon Reynolds? Based on the initial response to my Tuesday mailout, I’m guessing the answer is “YES” for many First Floor readers, and I’m happy to say that it’s currently available for everyone to read. (Scroll down for more on that.)
Otherwise, the biggest happening in dance music this week was undoubtedly the death of DJ Deeon. While it was not entirely unexpected, the difficult health and financial situations he went through during the final years of his life really speak to so many of the structural shortcomings that plague not only dance music, but society at large, specifically in terms of how we treat artists (and especially artists of color), even when they’re regarded as bona fide legends.
There’s undoubtedly more to say on that topic, but for now let’s just get into today’s newsletter, which includes a special guest appearance by famed writer and DJ Bill Brewster. (It’s honestly just a coincidence—albeit a very happy one—that two of dance music’s most influential scribes are showing up in the same edition First Floor.) Elsewhere, I’ve put together the usual round-ups of electronic music news, new release announcements and interesting articles to check out, along with a healthy batch of new track recommendations. Let’s get into it.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
Every Tuesday, First Floor publishes a long-form piece that’s exclusively made available to paid newsletter subscribers only. The latest one, which is now (temporarily) open to everyone, is an interview with celebrated electronic and dance music writer Simon Reynolds, who talks about nostalgia, futurism, getting older and the current state of music journalism.
OBLIGATORY BOOK MENTION
My first book is out now. It’s called First Floor Vol. 1: Reflections on Electronic Music Culture, and folks can either order it from my publisher Velocity Press, or if they’re in the UK or Europe, find it in a local bookshop. (And yes, it’s also available on Amazon.) The book is still making its way to North America—copies are literally on a boat crossing the Atlantic, and should arrive within the next few weeks—but in the meantime, consider preordering it from your favorite shop or via one of the links here.
SOME OTHER THINGS I DID
Although Scuba had previously implemented a semi-official “no journalists” rule on his Not a Diving Podcast, the Hotflush founder decided to break that rule on this week’s episode, which features an in-depth interview with yours truly. As you might expect, we talked about First Floor (both the newsletter and the book), and specifically dived into many of the thorny economic and cultural issues currently faced by the electronic music sphere.
Aside from sending writer Jaša Bužinel a copy of my book, I actually had nothing to do with his latest Hyperspecific column, but he devoted its opening paragraphs to saying some very lovely words about First Floor Vol. 1 (and my work in general).
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.
As stated earlier, DJ Deeon passed away earlier this week. The announcement came via the Chicago artist’s Facebook page, and follows many years of health struggles by the beloved ghetto house icon. Although he was best known for his contributions to the Dance Mania label during the 1990s, Deeon was someone whose outsized influence on dance music extended well beyond his hometown, touching DJs and dancers across the globe. Social media has been filled with outpourings of grief in recent days, and numerous news stories have been published in the wake of his death, but I’d suggest checking out this remembrance that writer Joe Muggs put together for Mixmag, which includes not only his own words, but loving quotes from many of Deeon’s friends and peers.
Speaking of Joe Muggs, a few months ago the UK journalist launched a newsletter called Bass, Mids, Tops and the Rest. An extension of his 2020 book Bass, Mids, Tops, which offered an oral history of UK soundsystem culture through a series of in-depth interviews, the new newsletter continues in that same spirit, and has already published conversations with Fabio & Grooverider, Róisín Murphy, Grandmixxer and more.
The New Yorker tapped esteemed music writer Kelefa Sanneh to put together a feature on the global spread of amapiano, and while it’s easy for those of us in the know to immediately ask, “Aren’t they a little late?,” it’s a rather thorough (and enjoyable) piece that involves both on-the-ground reporting and a level of detail rarely seen in coverage of the loping South African genre.
Dan Brooks penned an opinion piece for the Guardian that’s sort of about Nirvana, but in reality dives into the notion of “selling out,” examining its impact on the culture both during the ’90s (i.e. when the idea was arguably at its height) and now (i.e. when it seems to carry little weight whatsoever).
rRoxymore is the subject of Beatportal’s latest cover story, and despite the French artist’s naturally shy nature, she opens up to writer Kristan J Caryl about her relationship with techno—and her tendency to subvert its musical and cultural norms.
Coffintexts has been profiled as part of Crack’s ongoing Rising series, and the article finds the Miami upstart talking to Jasmine Kent-Smith about her own musical past and her hometown’s creatively booming present.
At this point, the online antics and cloak-and-dagger secrecy of Two Shell have likely proven tiresome (or simply too complicated) for most casual listeners, but an intriguing (and very detailed) new feature that Nathan Evans assembled for No Bells posits that when it comes to the UK duo, the lack of easy accessibility is arguably the point. Moreover, he suggests that it represents a kind of intentional scarcity that’s been created for the purpose of fostering smaller communities of truly dedicated fans. (His hypothesis isn’t limited to Two Shell; the article also considers the similar tactics employed by “sci-fi club label” CloudCore.)
Rather than continuing to deal with the delays and backlogs that plague pressing plants around the world, LA techno stalwart Drumcell announced this week that he’s starting up a vinyl-pressing operation of his own, Onyx Record Press. Production is set to begin in August and pre-orders are being accepted now.
JUST ANNOUNCED
A round-up of noteworthy new and upcoming releases announced during the past week.
Barker has a new EP on the way, and while the Berlin-based Brit previously carved out a uniquely space for himself with his kickless strain of techno, he’s now flipped that script entirely. The forthcoming Unfixed EP is dedicated to “exploring both the variability and sonic possibilities of a kick drum,” and it’s set to arrive on August 25 via Smalltown Supersound. Ahead of that, lead track “Birmingham Screwdriver” has already been shared.
Lusine has been working with the Ghostly International label for two decades now, and the veteran Seattle producer will soon be returning to the imprint with a new full-length, Long Light. Described as having some of the most “direct” music he’s ever created, the LP will be released on September 15, although first single “Zero to Sixty” (which features the vocals of Sarah Jaffe) is available now.
Ploy is one of UK bass music’s most consistently exciting artists, and he’s completed a new EP for Timedance called For when we haven't slept. It’s slated to drop on July 28, but opening cut “Crazy BBY” is out now.
René Pawlowitz (a.k.a. Shed) rarely provides much advance notice before releasing new music, and the German producer has just today issued a new EP from his Head High alias. Break Away is available via his own Power House imprint.
“Handle It” technically isn’t a new Midland single—it’s a surprise new track the UK artist made in collaboration with NYC vocalist Fiorious—but it’s out now on the CHSN FMLY label.
Seb Wildblood will soon be releasing a new full-length called separation anxiety, and the LA-based UK artist, who also heads up the all my thoughts label, says the record is rooted in “coming to terms with abandonment.” The LP, which features collaborations with Tess Roby, Lawrence and others, is scheduled to arrive on September 13, but several tracks from the record—including new single “hear / here,” which features Laraaji—have been shared here.
Veteran noisenik Russell Haswell has finished a provocative new album for the Diagonal label. Reality Therapy is described as “a response to absorbing real-time live feeds on YouTube of breaking stories broadcast by news-gathering agencies in and around the Covid period,” and it’s due to surface on September 22. In the meantime, an animated video for opening track “Availability Heuristic” has been published.
Nearly a year removed from the release of their collaborative Reset LP, Panda Bear and Sonic Boom have enlisted UK dub legend Adrian Sherwood to reimagine the album. His version, which goes by the name Reset in Dub, will be issued via Domino on August 18, although LP cut “Whirlpool Dub” is available now.
The Chemical Brothers teased a new full-length when they recently announced a forthcoming new biography / career retrospective, and now the UK duo have shared more concrete details about the album. Entitled For That Beautiful Feeling, the LP includes a collaboration with Beck and will be released by EMI on September 8. First single “Live Again” (which features Halo Maud) was made available a few weeks ago, but now its accompanying video has also been shared.
BILL BREWSTER HAS BETTER TASTE THAN I DO
First Floor is effectively a one-person operation, but every edition of the newsletter cedes a small portion of the spotlight to an artist, writer or other figure from the music world, inviting them to recommend a piece of music. During a week where I published an interview with Simon Reynolds, it’s fitting that today’s recommendation comes from Bill Brewster, another one of dance music’s most storied scribes. He and Frank Broughton wrote the oft-referenced Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, and together they oversee DJHistory, which continues to be one of the genre’s richest historical resources. Brewster is also a veteran DJ, and was recently tapped to curate Vespertine, the latest edition of Late Night Tales’ long-running After Dark compilation series. That’s set to drop on August 4, but in the meantime, Brewster has dipped into his record bag and pulled out a choice selection from the year 1980.
Isabelle Mayereau “On A Trouvé...” (Disc’Az)
I only discovered this track because it features Sauveur Mallia, who played in Arpadys and Voyage, on bass. It’s an experimental track, very electronic, with Mayereau surreally documenting the things she finds while travelling about Paris (a baby in a dustbin, for instance). The rest of the LP is straight-up chanson. As much as I love buying current electronic music, these weird anomalous tracks that fall through the gaps are the things that I really get excited about (see also “Was Dog a Doughnut,” “Twilight,” etc.).
NEW THIS WEEK
The following is a selection of my favorite tunes from releases that came out during the past week or so. Click the track titles to hear each song individually, or you can also just head over to this convenient Buy Music Club list if you prefer to listen to them all in one place.
CORIN “vīsiōnem” (UIQ)
CORIN “arx” (UIQ)
CORIN “trānsīre” (UIQ)
Striking an effective balance between detailed sound design and body-moving club dynamics is a skill that only a handful of producers seem to possess, and though her new album undoubtedly leans more toward the former, Australian producer CORIN nonetheless appears to be part of that select cohort of musical tightrope walkers. Influenced in part by her “deep appreciation” of science-fiction soundtracks, the Lux Aeterna LP is often cold, precise and even industrial—in the literal sense of the word—but it’s also marked by a sort of immersive grandeur, with CORIN’s percussive assault and flittering synths evoking images of an interstellar conflict unfolding on the big screen.
“vīsiōnem” is one of the album’s more muscular numbers, its sledgehammer-like drum hits and ominously whirring basslines borrowing from classic dubstep, even as its glittering trance riffs and hyperactive rhythms ramp up the track’s inherent electricity. More sinister is “arx,” which dials up the drum attack while more or less ditching melody altogether, its oozy, grime-adjacent basslines hanging in the air with the relentless weight of a muggy summer afternoon. LP closer “trānsīre,” on the other hand, takes the opposite tack, defying gravity as it returns to a trance palette and lets loose a flock of wriggling neon. Although it’s far from beatless, the song’s sharp clicks and clacks sound like the fluttering of an insect’s wings against a glass window, their obvious urgency only adding to the song’s dramatic flair.
Natural Wonder Beauty Concept “Sword” (Mexican Summer)
Ana Roxanne is great. DJ Python is great. Natural Wonder Beauty Concept, the self-titled debut album from their new collaborative endeavor is… pretty good. Moving between ambient-ish meditation (“The Veil I”), a particularly ethereal strain of liquid drum & bass (“Natural Wonder Beauty Concept”), glitchy trip-hop (“Driving”) and more, the record sounds very much like the product of two established artists trying things out and searching for common ground, and if the project is to continue, the alien avant-pop of LP standout “Sword” wouldn’t be a bad thing for the duo to build upon. With its busted, IDM-ish beat, the song isn’t exactly primed for the dancefloor, but it’s charming all the same, exuding an almost tangible sense of wonder with its spaced-out synths and sweetly pitched vocal melodies.
DreamrDreamr “Velvet” (Shall Not Fade)
Perhaps it’s not surprising that music from an artist named DreamrDreamr would have distinctly floaty quality, but there’s more to “Velvet” than its seeming weightlessness. The lead track off Velvet Tracksuit—the London producer’s debut EP—it’s a celestial house cut better suited to cloud-hopping than anything that happens within the confines of the club, and the song’s alluringly pitch-shifted vocal lends its whimsical proceedings an extra dose of otherworldly magic.
Swayzak “Cone (Mix 2)” (Lapsus)
Swayzak “l.o.9.v.e. (Boat Mix, 2023 Edit)” (Lapsus)
Although “Cone (Mix 2)” and “l.o.9.v.e. (Boat Mix, 2023 Edit)” both appear on the new 25th anniversary reissue of Swayzak’s Snowboarding in Argentina album, neither track was part of the LP’s original release in 1998. Considering how many different editions of the record have existed over the years, this isn’t a wholly strange detail, but their initial absence does speak to how much quality music the UK duo—who, incidentally, had no actual ties to Argentina—were sitting on during the latter half of the ’90s. Departing from the melodic tech house that populates much of the album, “Cone (Mix 2)” combines spazzy breakbeats with plush pads, landing on something that sounds like Autechre making a Balearic record. The “Boat Mix” of the housier “l.o.9.v.e.” has a similar sort of Mediterranean sparkle, albeit with a more dramatic bent, as the song’s synthesized strings and punchy pulse seem to elegantly glide across the dancefloor.
Mathew Jonson “Into the 5D” (Kilómetro 4.5)
In an era when many producers are actively shaving their tracks down to just three or four minutes, Mathew Jonson continues to luxuriate in long-form expression. Not purely techno or house—but not necessarily tech house either, at least not in the pejorative sense of the word—“Into the 5D” is the Canadian veteran’s latest chilled epic, a slow-brewing bubbler that he’s filled with regal harp plucks, wiggly melodies and an understated sense of confident cool.
Sally C “All Love” (Big Saldo’s Chunkers)
Calling your label Big Saldo’s Chunkers is obviously good for a laugh, but it’s also a remarkably accurate descriptor of Sally C’s goofy spirit and speaker-thumping sound. A Belfast native based in Berlin, she’s opened her new Big Saldo's Chunker EP 003 with “All Love,” a fun-loving ’90s throwback that channels the work of artists like Terrence Parker, Blake Baxter and DJ Duke, but also nods to the kinds of unabashedly smiley (and, yes, commercial) bangers that once filled Jock Jams compilations and televised teen dance parties.
DJ Crisps “Never Gonna Stop” (Time Is Now)
Whatever inhibitions artists in the UK once had about dabbling in the chart-aspiring crossover dance sounds that filled the country’s airwaves during the ’90s and early 2000s, those concerns now seem to have disappeared. That development has unleashed more than a few truly terrible records, but it’s also birthed tunes like “Never Gonna Stop,” a truly joyous R&B-meets-garage number from DJ Crisps’ new You Stay on My Mind EP. Big, bouncy and powered by the unmistakable sound of a Korg M1 synth melody, this sassy shuffler offers six minutes of singalong euphoria.
Machinedrum feat. Jesse Boykins III “Wait 4 U (DJ Phil Remix)” (Ninja Tune)
Nearly three years have passed since Machinedrum released his A View of U album—a veritable eternity in the world of dance music, even before the perception-altering effects of the pandemic are factored in—but this new DJ Phil remix of LP cut “Wait 4 U” nonetheless feels incredibly fresh. Although the Chicago artist and longtime Teklife affiliate is best known for his footwork machinations, he’s kept the original version’s jungle rhythm relatively intact, though he’s done so while beefing up the drums and stripping back the melody, resulting in a rework that’s both moodier and more club-ready than its source material.
Piezo “Ottovolante” (Nervous Horizon)
An Italian bass music artist whose name has been seemingly everywhere in recent months, Piezo just dropped the Cyclic Wavez EP, his debut for the Nervous Horizon label and potentially his biggest record to date. “Ottovolante” is a clear standout, a feverishly percolating track with a manic melody that sounds like someone frantically pushing buttons on an old-school cordless phone. Though its galloping drums feel like they’re at any moment going to trip over themselves and crash into a wall, Piezo impressively keeps the song upright, reigning in the chaos just enough to do some (metaphorical) dancefloor damage.
An-i “Chapel Perilous” (Minimal Wave)
A snarling gem from An-i’s new Rabble EP, “Chapel Perilous” is billed as a “spaced-out journey into the psyche,” but those hoping for a peaceful excursion to the nearest astral plane should probably look elsewhere, as the track’s grotty machine rhythms are brimming with menace. The legacy of bands like Suicide and Ministry looms large here, and while many “industrial techno” tunes these days sound like ninth-generation copies of what was getting played at Berghain 10 years ago, An-i’s music maintains a gritty, lo-fi realness, its sweat and sleaze more suitable for basements than big rooms.
That’s all I’ve got for this 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.