First Floor #238 – There's No Roadmap
a.k.a. Thoughts on Jackmaster, an interview with Palms Trax, plus a round-up of the latest electronic music news and a fresh slate of new track recommendations.
Jackmaster died. Surely most of you have seen the news by now, which broke last Saturday when the Scottish DJ’s family posted on Instagram that he’d passed away in Ibiza “following complications arising from an accidental head injury.”
Social media, not surprisingly, has been flooded with tributes and remembrances this week, many of them from people whose formative clubbing experiences coincided with Jackmaster’s meteoric ascent during the late 2000s and early 2010s. Over the past few days, I’ve read so many stories—some of them sad, some of them hilarious, some of them brimming with awe, but all of them full of love for a man who embodied the phrase “force of nature,” at least when he was at his best.
“At his best,” however, has proven to be the tricky part. It’s impossible to ignore how many of the artists, labels, promoters, venues, journalists and publications who are now lining up to praise Jackmaster spent the past six years actively shunning the man. They weren’t without reason; in 2018, Jackmaster attempted to forcibly kiss and grab multiple staff members at Bristol’s Love Saves the Day festival. He claimed to be blacked out on GHB at the time, and more generally was grappling with an addiction, but he didn’t attempt to leverage that to excuse his actions. He owned up to what he did, publicly apologized multiple times, stepped away from DJing for a time, granted interviews about the incident and seemed genuinely contrite while asking for forgiveness.
Does that mean he automatically deserved to have his old career back? Of course not. Actions have consequences, and sometimes those consequences are permanent. Jackmaster not surprisingly wasn’t welcomed back everywhere, but once he started DJing again, he still had steady bookings. Few of them were in the tastemaker-approved scenes and venues where he’d first made his name, but there’s no question that things could have been far worse for him. He was still a professional DJ, and as far as I could tell, he was working, but beyond that? If I’m being completely honest, I have only a vague idea what his behavior, both public and private, was like during the past six years.
I’m guessing a lot of other people in dance music, including folks who, like me, knew Jackmaster personally, were in the same boat. For all intents and purposes, he’d been disappeared from the culture (or at least the corner of the culture that self-declared “cool” people inhabit), not necessarily out of malice, but certainly out of convenience. In a time when the day-to-day discourse has largely been turned over to bad-faith shitposters and conflict-incentivizing algorithms, even established cultural figures have figured out that it’s usually safer to avoid anything—and anyone—that might draw the ire of the internet’s clout-chasing moralists. It doesn’t matter that the justice meted out online tends to be arbitrary and incomplete; the consequences can be severe, and once someone lands on the “bad” list, associating with them becomes extremely risky, particularly in a context of scene / industry where nearly everyone’s position—and income—feels precarious to begin with.
To be clear, Jackmaster did a bad thing. An awful thing. It’s likely not a coincidence that so few of the fond remembrances have been penned by women, and given his admitted problems with drugs and alcohol, there could absolutely be other skeletons in his closet. I’m not here to launder his reputation, and frankly, now that he’s gone, any attempt to do so feels pretty futile.
But irrespective of whether or not Jackmaster was a “bad” man, was he beyond redemption? And in the context of a grossly narcissistic and mercilessly profit-seeking enterprise like dance music, what is redemption even supposed to look like? As much as the culture has developed a taste for tearing figures down, it has yet to develop a roadmap for how those figures can potentially be welcomed back into the fold. There’s not even a workable vocabulary to discuss such things, which helps explain why so many of Jackmaster’s friends, colleagues and fans—who clearly still had plenty of love and respect for the man—not only didn’t speak up on his behalf, but spent the past six years acting as though he didn’t exist.
Perhaps that’s why, of all the posts I’ve seen about Jackmaster, it was this one from Skream that stopped me in my tracks:
I felt guilty reading that. I’m guessing a lot of people did. While the exact details of Jackmaster’s death are unknown, the path his life went down in the past few years was the result, at least in part, of a collective failure—a failure of will, a failure of empathy and, honesty, a failure of courage. When he was alive, nobody wanted to have the tough conversation, and even now that he’s gone, many of those paying tribute can’t bring themselves to speak honestly, making vague allusions to his “demons” or the “controversy” and “troubles” that surrounded him. Some of that can be chalked up to not wanting to speak ill of the dead, but there’s also a lot of guilt and fear at work too. No one wants to be cancelled, or even trolled online, for relitigating what happened to a dead man.
Resident Advisor’s Gabriel Szatan deserves credit for trying, as his stirring remembrance is one of the few attempts to honor Jackmaster’s legacy without shying away from the ugly bits of the story. It must have been incredibly difficult to write, especially knowing that anything he said would be torn to shreds by angry online commenters. (And yes, that has absolutely happened.) Yet as glad as I am that he wrote this piece, I can’t help but remember that just last week, RA labeled Jackmaster as a “disreputable artist” in an article about the contemporary Ibiza scene, the subtle implication being that seeing being booked anywhere was an indication of bad taste and, more importantly, unscrupulous morals.
A few days later, Resident Advisor was actively celebrating the man’s legacy.
No matter how measured Szatan’s words were, there’s something really gross about that, just as there’s something gross about how this entire scenario has played out. It’s depressing that in the aftermath of Jackmaster’s death, the biggest public tribute to his life happened at Amnesia in Ibiza, where a smiling photo of the man was projected on a giant screen while girls in bikinis robotically danced on a podium below. Did he deserve better than that? I don’t know, but the question should have been considered more thoroughly, and long before he died.
… And on that uplifting note, let’s get into the rest of today’s First Floor digest. Below you’ll find the usual assortment of news items, new release announcements and reading links, along with a fresh slate of new track recommendations. (And yes, all of my recommendations are from releases that dropped during the past week.) There’s also a special guest recommendation from LA composer / producer Celia Hollander, so keep an eye out for that.
Last but not least, you may have seen that earlier this week I published an interview with Palms Trax. A link to the conversation can be found below, and the paywall is currently (albeit temporarily) down, so move quickly if you want to give it a read. It’s not often that someone can make me laugh out loud (several times) while detailing their crushing anxiety, but Palms Trax is a uniquely charming artist.
I think that’s everything, so let’s get started.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
Every Tuesday, First Floor publishes a long-form piece that’s initially made available to paid newsletter subscribers only. But if you’re not part of the paid tier, now’s your chance to see what you missed! The latest piece is now (temporarily) open to everyone, and it’s an interview with Palms Trax. An eminently quotable and perpetually self-deprecating artist, he’s long been one of dance music’s truth tellers, and in this conversation, he’s deeply honest about himself, reflecting on how anxiety profoundly shaped his career, and why he’s suddenly feeling like a “dinosaur” in the aftermath of the pandemic. (For the record, he’s all of 33 years old.)
ANOTHER THING I DID
First Floor has returned to dublab BCN for a new season of monthly radio shows, and the first episode of this latest go-round aired last week. The show has since been archived here, and it includes new music from CS + Kreme, Jay Glass Dubs, LWS, JIALING & Farsight, mu tate, Merca Bae, 1morning and several other artists. (The complete tracklist has also been posted online.)
REAL QUICK
A round-up of the last week’s most interesting electronic music news, plus links to interviews, articles and other things I think are worth sharing.
As part of Pitchfork’s ongoing The Best of the 2020s so far series—which First Floor examined more closely last week—Philip Sherburne was tasked with summing up the past five years of electronic music. His wide-ranging feature does a solid job covering all the major developments, from the impact of COVID (and its lingering effects) to the current sense that something genuinely new is desperately needed. (Full disclosure: The article also briefly refers to my work and describes me as the “scene ombudsman,” a title that, even if it was meant in jest, I’m absolutely thrilled to accept.)
Only four months after her hire as the editor of Crack magazine was first announced, music journalist Lauren Martin yesterday shockingly announced that she’d been made redundant, along with some other members of the staff. No further details are available as of now, but it’s not clear what this means for the health of the publication or how its editorial direction will be affected.
In other music journalism news, five former Pitchfork journalists—Jill Mapes, Dylan Green, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Ryan Dombal and Andy Cush—this week launched a new editorial platform called Hearing Things. A New York Times feature explains that the venture is 50% owned by those writers, while the other 50% is owned by former music promoter Vaughn Millette, who invested an “undisclosed sum” in the business. Aiming to stay independent, Hearing Things hopes to sustain itself via reader subscriptions, and promises to avoid the click-chasing behavior that defines much of today’s music journalism. (That said, there’s also a page on the site that signals an openness to advertising and brand partnerships, as long as editorial decisions can continue to be made independently.)
There was a time that “no phones on the dancefloor” was strictly a Berlin thing, and was closely associated with clubs like Berghain. But as April Clare Welsh lays out in a new Beatportal feature, the idea has picked up steam around the globe, with “no phones” policies now being implemented even in commercial dance music havens like Ibiza.
Shackleton has long been one of electronic music’s most elusive figures, and at one point went more than a decade without agreeing to an interview. Although he’s loosened up a bit during the past few years, it’s still a major shock that he agreed to have a lengthy conversation with Scuba on the latest episode of the Not a Diving Podcast. Pretty soon we won’t be able to call him elusive anymore!
Moin was interviewed by First Floor back in 2022, and though a new feature by Tony Inglis for The Quietus does succinctly rehash the UK trio’s backstory, it also tackles the making of their forthcoming third album, You Never End, on which they’ve for the first time collaborated with a number of guest vocalists.
Despite being released on Hyperdub, Iceboy Violet and Nueen’s excellent You Said You’d Hold My Hand Through the Fire album seemed to come and go pretty quickly when it was released this past June. But before the record completely slips into the digital ether, Crack magazine enlisted Isaac Muk to interview the unorthodox duo, who detailed their long-distance collaboration and the emotional turmoil that helped fuel the LP’s creation.
Jeff Mills has probably been interviewed thousands of times—and yes, that includes a 2021 conversation with First Floor. But while most journalists want to ask him about the glory days of Detroit techno, Bruce Tantum’s new DJ Mag cover story primarily focuses on where Mills is at in 2024, digging into his various musical adventures and also soliciting his thoughts on not just the current state of techno, but where he hopes the genre might go in the years to come.
Anyone who follows The Bug on Bandcamp knows that the UK bass icon has been exceedingly busy during the past few years—in 2021 he talked to First Floor specifically about his work as Kevin Richard Martin. Now that he’s just released a new LP called The Machine, he’s done a Q&A with The Quietus’ Skye Butchard, who gets him talking about the wide variety of projects he’s added to his catalog.
OBLIGATORY BOOK MENTION
My first book is out now. It’s called First Floor Vol. 1: Reflections on Electronic Music Culture, and you can order it from my publisher Velocity Press. However, if you’re outside of the UK, I recommend that you either inquire at your favorite local bookshop or try one of the online sales links that have been compiled here.
JUST ANNOUNCED
A round-up of noteworthy new and upcoming releases announced during the past week.
upsammy has an album on the way. The Dutch artist describes Strange Meridians as her “new ambient record,” and it’s also going to be the inaugural release on topo2, a promising new venture from Bert de Rooij, who previously spent many years behind the scenes as Dekmantel’s head of festivals and label. As explained in an introductory post, topo2 will function as a label, but being enthusiastic about electronic music more generally is the main goal, which means that it plans to champion other labels’ releases as well. In the meantime though, Strange Meridians is slated to arrive on November 22, and two of its tracks have already been shared here.
What a difference a few months can make. After spending years off the grid—an act he explained in more detail in a recent First Floor interview—Dubbel Dutch has jumped back into the fray, and will soon be offering up his third release of 2024. Anthems from the Abyss consists solely of material he made this year, and the track “My Way” is available now. The rest of the EP will be issued on November 1 via Dubbel Dutch’s own Rare Earth Tones imprint.
Back in May, Actress put together a Resident Advisor podcast mix that solely consisted of his own previously unreleased music. That mix, which apparently includes more than 100 of the enigmatic UK artist’s tracks, is now being given a proper release by Smalltown Supersound. The LP is called Дарен Дж. Каннінгем (which appears to be Darren J. Cunningham in Ukrainian), and it will surface on November 15.
Lifted, the long-running, genre-agnostic collaboration between Future Times founder Max D, Matt Papich and a rotating cast of contributors, has completed a new full-length. Trellis, which features artists like Dustin Wong, Mezey, Jeremy Hyman, Jordan GCZ, Tim Kinsella, Motion Graphics and Earthen Sea, will be the group’s first outing on the always excellent LA label Peak Oil. Before it lands on November 22, two tracks from the LP have already been shared here.
Tim Reaper never waits too long between releases, and the UK junglist—who was interviewed by First Floor back in August—just dropped a new record with his close friend and frequent collaborator Dwarde. What’s intriguing is that the Early Nights EP, which came out last week on the Hardcore Energy label, isn’t a pure jungle record, and finds the pair delving headlong into hardcore and techno sounds instead.
Matrixxman famously said that being a DJ is “embarrassing”—which prompted First Floor to write an entire essay on the topic—but he continues producing at an impressive clip. Last week he offered up a surprise new EP, Truthsayer, which he made in collaboration with Spanish artist Beatrice. It’s available in full now via his own label, The Grid.
CELIA HOLLANDER HAS BETTER TASTE THAN I DO
First Floor is effectively a one-person operation, but every edition of the Thursday digest 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. Today’s recommendation comes from Celia Hollander, a Los Angeles-based composer and producer whose conceptually driven electroacoustic creations have appeared on labels like Leaving Records, Longform Editions, Recital and Noumenal Loom. Specifically interested in the act of listening and how it intersects and is influenced by larger social/cultural systems, her work can be complex and provocative, but also quite playful and even beautiful. Next month she’ll be releasing a new album called Perfect Conditions, and each one of 16 its tracks examines a different combination of nature’s four essential elements (air, earth, fire, water). Ahead of that, she’s carved out a few moments to share something from one of her favorite albums.
Fernando Falcão “Amanhecer Tabajara (À Alceu Valença)” (Selva Discos)
This summer, Memória das Águas became one of my favorite albums. I’ve listened to it numerous times but it has such a dynamic range of emotions and sounds that it offers a different experience every time. “Amanhecer Tabajara” is one of the more minimal songs but it’s the one that originally got my attention; the first time the flutes came in I got shivers. The liner notes for the record describe that Fernando Falcão became “a wanted man” after becoming radicalized and involved in protests in Brazil in 1968. He lived in exile in France for 15 years, where he built musical instruments, some of which are used on the album. This whole album has a wild life force and simmering undercurrent that seems to effectively capture a human realm of mystery, multiplicity and dynamism.
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.
comforter2 “14 (Peach Remix)” (Nous’klaer)
Peach does her best work in the DJ booth, but this remix, which is easily the best thing the spritely London-based Canadian has produced since her 2018 breakout “Silky,” makes clear that her studio talents aren’t to be overlooked. The original “14,” appeared on last year’s Tell Me Something Happy (Before I Fall Asleep)—the debut full-length from comforter2 (a.k.a. the Dutch duo of Tammo Hesselink and Mary—and it’s a sultry, post-punk-infused slice of house music, one that pleasantly recalls the indie-dance heyday of the early 2000s. (Nous’klaer isn’t wrong to describe the project as “a band for club heads and a club act for band heads.”) Peach’s rework keeps that vibe intact, thickening up the song’s angular bassline and riding it in a way that would have made The Rapture proud. But she also adds a bit of glitter to the mix, making sure that the song’s dreamily detached vocal clips and alluring “oohs” sparkle atop her bouncy, DFA-adjacent groove.
Doc Sleep “Deep Breath” (Kulture Galerie)
Speaking of post-punk, there are traces of Liquid Liquid and no wave-era skronk in “Deep Breath,” a highlight of Kulture Galerie’s new Volume Three compilation EP. Even when she’s focused on the dancefloor, Doc Sleep tends to gravitate towards eccentric rhythms, and this tune is delightfully unorthodox, its clacking drums and dubby textures buoyed by its unassuming (albeit irrepressibly bubbling) bassline. Add in some splashy synth chords that could have been lifted from an old Armand Van Helden record, and “Deep Breath” is a chuggy little gem.
DJ Plead & rRoxymore “Celestial City” (Smalltown Supersound)
Five years in the making, Read Round City is the debut collaborative EP from DJ Plead and rRoxymore, and as anyone who’s heard their individual works might expect, the record is all about rhythmic exploration. That said, it’s not a collection of bare-bones drum workouts, nor do the pair seem particularly interested in crafting speaker-rattling thumpers. There’s a surprising lightness to the record, and standout opener “Celestial City” demonstrates its creators’ ear for melody, pairing its ever-changing percussive wanderings with a variety of twinkling synths and floaty pads. What results isn’t quite techno, but calling it bass music feels also feels like a stretch; if anything, it’s similar in spirit to what Olof Dreijer has been doing lately, and the song’s percolating polyrhythms are effervescent enough to lure in dance music fans of all stripes.
Fred P “Love the Space” (Self-released)
“Deep” is the word most often used to describe house mainstay Fred P (a.k.a. Black Jazz Consortium), but this week the veteran producer flipped his own script with a pair of self-released EPs, both of which are titled Filthy Traxxx. Arriving with little accompanying information—the official blurb promises “Raw Dirty DJ Tools”—the records set subtlety aside, prioritizing jacking rhythms and hooky vocal clips instead. “Love the Space” is the best of the bunch, and its high-stepping drums are backed by a bassline that’s positively nasty. The vibe is very ’90s, and the track has got just enough shuffle in its step to conjure fond memories of Mood II Swing, but irrespective of its place in the house canon, this soulful strutter is a whole lot of fun.
IMOGEN “Breathe Again” (Tresor)
Arriving on the iconic Tresor label, IMOGEN’s new Metanoia EP not surprisingly dedicates most of its runtime to techno, but its most thrilling offering is “Breathe Again,” on which the UK artist takes a rowdy detour into the hardcore continuum. With its rumbling breakbeats, the track swaps out techno polish for rave-ready havoc, and IMOGEN’s meaty bass drones provide an additional gut-scrambling wallop. Primed for the biggest of big rooms, this is one of those tunes that sounds best with the volume turned way up.
Guava “365 Days of Summer” (ELSI)
Summer is over in the Northern Hemisphere, especially in Guava’s current home of Berlin, but the British producer appears determined to keep the season’s warm melodies and laid-back grooves flowing all year round. “365 Days of Summer” is the title track of his latest EP, and its chilled funk immediately sparks visions of backyard hangs and lazy afternoons by the pool. The Mood Hut label feels like an obvious reference point, but “365 Days of Summer” is a bit perkier, and a lot more whimsical. It’s a little nostalgic too, but the song’s soft-focus sensibilities should still give off enough heat to keep dancers feeling cozy during the doldrums of winter.
Ambient 7 “Escape” (Music from Memory)
Modern Living “Snow Bird” (Music from Memory)
Considering the strength of the first Virtual Dreams compilation, fans of ambient-leaning Japanese house and techno have good reason to be excited about its newly released sequel. Yet Virtual Dreams II: Ambient Explorations In The House & Techno Age, Japan 1993-1999 carries an additional emotional weight: it’s the final release curated by Music from Memory co-founder Jamie Tiller, and its arrival this week coincided with the one-year anniversary of his untimely death last year. That fact does cast something of a pall over the record, but its contents are truly sublime, showcasing track after track of precision-crafted mood music that gracefully hovers at the edge of the dancefloor. The highlights are numerous, but Ambient 7’s “Escape” is a cosmic glider, its weightless chimes and sumptuous swells effortlessly drifting atop a slow-mo, almost trip-hop beat. Modern Living’s “Snow Bird” is even more inviting, and exudes a sense of luxury with its cinematic strings, which wouldn’t be out of place in a James Bond theme. The song itself is a bit jazzy—loungey even—but it also employs a sort of Balearic funk, its plush aesthetic quickly dissolving the pedestrain worries of the outside world.
Xoloft Infected Puberty Arc “So Sad” (Valcrond Video)
Best known as Torn Hawk, New Jersey native Luke Wyatt seems to be in the midst of a purple patch. During the past month, his Valcrond Video imprint has issued work from a string of previously unknown aliases (e.g. Snipes Tax Shadow, Dark Central Stem, Thornhawk, Sky Bow), and while none of the projects are specifically credited to Wyatt, it’s a safe bet that the often unorthodox experimental guitarist is behind them all. Xoloft Infected Puberty Arc is the latest addition to the list, and its Made by a Kid EP deals in dreamy permutations of shoegaze and jangle-pop. This isn’t make-your-ears-bleed guitar squall; the opening chords of the standout “So Sad” could have been lifted from a Goo Goo Dolls song, but once the pillowy reverb kicks in, the track quickly goes to a more enriching place, its gently looping riffs seemingly perfect for long nights of staring at the stars, contemplating lost loves and wondering what might have been.
KMRU “MR2” (OFNOT)
Aho Ssan “They Heard Us” (OFNOT)
In a time when it’s become trendy for museums to tout their efforts to “decolonize” themselves, it’s often unclear what exactly that means, especially when so many of their collections are still full of artifacts acquired via colonial plunder. There’s no clear blueprint for how to move forward, and while the answer is sometimes as simple as “give the objects back,” what’s the correct course of action with collections that extend beyond physical objects? The Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium has a massive sound archive, and in 2021, that archive was opened to Kenyan sound artist KMRU, who used the museum’s collection as the building blocks for his 2022 album Temporary Stored.
Now he’s returned with Temporary Stored II, a sequel on which his latest compositions are joined by works from Aho Ssan, Lamin Fofana, Nyokabi Kariũki and Jessica Ekomane. All the the artists were given access to the museum’s archives, and, like KMRU, all of them have direct ties to colonized peoples and places, which makes for an emotionally weighty release. KMRU himself provides more than half of the tracks, of which “MR2” is the most riveting, layering moody textures atop field recordings of African singing and what sounds like the steady thumps, dings and scrapes of physical labor. Listening, one can only imagine the (likely horrifying) conditions under which that labor took place, but KMRU sits in that discomfort, amplifying the recorded workers’ struggle—and their resilience.
With compilation closer “They Heard Us,” French artist (and regular KMRU collaborator) Aho Ssan takes a noisier approach, building a veritable wall of sound using manipulated field recordings and a healthy dose of distortion. It’s a piece that demands your attention, and as its vocal recordings cry out from a morass of swooshing textures and crackling static, it’s difficult not to think of how many historical cries went unanswered—and how they often continue to go unanswered in the present day.
Water Damage “Reel LE” (Longform Editions)
Longform Editions’ latest batch of bimonthly compositions surfaced yesterday, and it included impressive pieces from Eli Winter, Post Moves and Babe, Terror. (The latter’s sprawling “Pescadou Gualapagouse” was also accompanied by an archive-heavy short film.) However, it was Water Damage that truly stood out, possibly because “Reel LE” the most rocking thing Longform Editions has ever released. Hailing from Austin, Water Damage is a collective—its fluctuating membership currently includes more eaze and number of other musicians, including folks with ties to groups like Swans, Black Eyes and Spray Paint—and their 37-minute suite channels the ghosts of noisy ’80s rock bands like Sonic Youth and Hüsker Dü. While its length may seem imposing, the piece itself is oddly hypnotic, its ever-present (and mostly guitar-induced) squall noisily squeaking and squealing as the bass and drums settle into an oddly spellbinding groove. Is long-form stoner rock a thing? I think it is now.
That brings us to the end of today’s First Floor digest. 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.)
Until next time,
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.