Just back from a visit to BPM records, I didn't really mean to go there, but I had to move my car so that I didn' get a ticket and I ended up moving it down to Hayes Valley for a couple of hours. I ended up with a pretty diverse selection, boosted by the inclusion of New Order's "Back To Mine" collection. I have respect for anyone tht puts Captain Beefheart and Joey Beltram in the same mix, this latest addition brings my "Energy Flash" collection to 6, only beaten by my "Papau New Guinea" vinyl. Anyway the New Order selection is mainly for myself, I doubt I'll get many chances to play it out (although I'd kill to get a party where I could get away with that degree of ecclecticism).
For my regular Monday night audiences I picked up the latest release from Phil Kieran, "My House", it's one of those wonderful percussive vocal tracks which basically chops up the phrase "My house is your house" - sampled from the Nelson Cruz classic. Anyone can sing along to this track and feel good about it, whether it's the house or the breaks mix, all the mixes have this dark growling backing track, this could almost be Underworld, except it's funkier than they like to be. Phil Kieran deserves a lot of respect, all of his releases are great dancefloor material, hell, he can make a 5 word lyric into a vocal anthem.
Speaking of Underworld, I caught their show in SF on Sunday, now it's just the two of them (Darren Emerson went off to be a DJ God) but since most of the music is electronic it didn't really affect their performance. The show was absulutely great entertainment, Underworld have released 4 albums and they've reached that point in their career where they can play a 2 hour set made up of everyone's favourite tracks. I can't imagine anyone was disappointed, although a lot of long term fans grimaced when they heard less hardcore fans refer to 'Born Slippy' as the 'Trainspotting Theme'.
So, I've added #4 in my weekly mix series - Dark Sparks, 75 minutes of house which is anything but deep, not perfect, but one take which is good enough. It's on the, mixes page for the next 7 days, and there's a few CD's if you get to meet me in person, maybe one day these will be collectors items, maybe not.
Also, check out this weeks Charts
Copyright 2002 Scott Manley