House Music so Deep that It’s at an All Time Low

So Deep that It’s at an All Time Low:

In Chicago in the 90’s, I learned about House Music from Derrick Carter. I had first heard House Music on WBMX, Oak Park like most Chicago area youth. My mind was blown in 1987 when I heard Armando Gallop play his song “Land of Confusion” on the radio. I felt strongly that the aliens had landed and that nothing would ever be the same. I already loved Chicago’s Wax Trax “Industrial” music, which was soon to be renamed “Electric Body Music” in the 90’s for its use of dancing drum machines, synth lines, and samples, but Armando’s, and his then partner Mike Dunn’s, “Acid House” took whatever psychedelic escape into alternate sonic textures and dance rhythms I was looking for as a fourteen-year-old to a whole new level.

I grew up on the Northside, a few blocks from the Campus of Northwestern University in the “village” of Wilmette, which was still on the Chicago “grid” of numbered north-south and east-west blocks, and which was the northern-most stop of the “El,” Linden St, but which seemed like a million miles away from the home of House Music in the 80’s on the Southside. House Music had a special home in Southside Catholic school fundraiser dances for reasons that I can’t get into right now, but besides my exposure to it on WBMX, when I went to Catholic youth summer camp in Wisconsin, the Southside campers came equipped with House mixtapes and new ways of dancing.

In Chicago in the 90’s, I saw Derrick Carter spinning at a club called “Belin” on the Northside. I had already been to some amazing warehouse parties where I heard House and Techno played at proper volume and on proper sound systems. I was completely obsessed with the sort of ecstatic trance that a 4 on the floor bass kick could evoke completely drug free. Electric body music, indeed. Derrick’s wise shamanism took the whole crossing the threshold of liminal realms-thing to a new level for me that evening. He mixed stuff, as a lot of Chicago Deejay's did, with a lot of disco and funk samples, which got me back in touch with the dreamy disco of my hazy younger years, which made it extra magical, extra liminal, extra ecstatic. I realized then that he was my favorite Deejay, so whenever I went to Gramophone to buy mixtapes, I only bought his from that point on.

His taste is what is reflected in this mix. I learned what was good from him. I probably heard him play each of these tracks over time on various of his mixtapes and outings and events. It has taken many years to track down these tracks, but it has gotten much easier now that I have learned how to cheat by using AI search engines rather than digging through the bins at gramophone.

Sound Stream: Motion: frolicking, 70’s, light jazz organ stutter-stepped and screwed up for the sampled-based collage crowd, perfect bliss

Chris Simmonds: Rush N Soul: ohh, the rush of bursting phantasms of alien light grounded in a chugging rhythm of many subtly textured hues

Chris Simmonds: New Old Shit: Wash me in the warm oscillations of the unwinding siren. I think she’s saying, “I'm going get you,” and she’s right, of course.

Mood II Swing: Ohh: funky bouncing bass, dreamy synth lines, and the capacious, rhythmic musing of elsewhere. One of my all-time favorites. This is paradise, I want to stay here.

Kerri Chandler: Bar a Thym: cowbell and one of the most abundant synth lines of all time from a true master of electric sound manipulations. I want some more.

DJ Spen: War Cry: Don’t go into spiritual warfare without this track, guaranteed to defeat demons. Wow! What a banger! You cannot lose when you step to this gospel.

Mood II Swing: Do It Your Way: how moving your own way and crisp, crunchy cymbals whipping their tight cycles all around a doppler effect room can show you novel, bodily intensities

Eddie Amor: House Music (Robosonic): from “Together Forever” by Exodus, one of the best disco samples ever! Wow, when this thing kicks in, I shiver with delight.

Todd Edwards: Wishing I Was Home: wistful and whimsical for your esoteric journey home. This is a Carpenter’s record all cut up and rearranged in a very particular order that makes your body buzz with pleasure.

Omar S: Gonna Luv You: This is that uncanny place that they call into being in Detroit somewhere between melancholy and deep joy when they mix up a batch of their hi-tech soul.

Julius Knight: Find a Friend: Sylvester from his song “Over and Over” along with the folks at a mythic, underground disco party chanting “Find a Friend” just before the whole scene disappears into a Brigadoon-like mist.

Mark Broom: Jackson Edits: This sample has got to be illegal, but Holy Shit does it jam, and the Fast Eddie acid line that it goes out on is to die for.

Le Visiteur: Let the Sunshine in: Herman Kelly’s “Dance to the Drummer’s Beat” has been sampled a lot, most notably by Run DMC, NWA, and Public Enemy, and it is put to very good use here. But when the Fifth Dimension’s love chant “Let the Sunshine in” comes ripping in, every hidden burden that you’ve been carrying will be lifted.

Chez Damier: Chez B. Untitled: The sound design on this synth line is unmatched. It just slams into you in euphoric, disco waves.

Jamie 3:26: Funkanova: Ron Hardy used to play the original Jazz-Funk “Wood Brass, and Steel” version from 1977, but this incredibly numinous and gleeful, late 70s Chicago Dance Floor favorite has been sampled, so many times in House Music, and for good reason.

Mark Broom: Break 97: I don’t know where these samples are from, but they are the sort of super fun, chanting and clapping, coupled with some wonderful piano house loops, that I love. These are the sounds of the lost, stomping dance floors full of ruckus weirdos that we all long for.

Kenny Dope: Tribal Seagulls: I think of this as electronic, Brazilian carnival music. This is the exact carnival parade that I want to march in either when I die and can do whatever I want, or some time before that if the opportunity pops up.

Mood II Swing: Move Me: Barbra Ann Teer spoken word samples appear through Mood II Swing’s catalog but listen to this track and tell me that it doesn’t sound like Basic Channel’s “Dub Techno.” Super psychoactive stuff.