DJ EZ: Pure Garage and the DJs’ DJ
Before we start, a quick word of introduction. I was speaking to someone the other day about doing an interview for Line Noise and they assumed I meant this newsletter, rather than the podcast / radio show that gave the newsletter its name.
So maybe some of you don’t know about Line Noise. It was a podcast Philip Sherburne and I started in 2016, which continues today on Radio Primavera Sound as my solo adventure. (Philip went off and got a job on national radio, which you can’t really argue with.)
The idea of Line Noise, the podcast, is to pick at the threads of electronic music. There have been 152 episodes so far over the eight years, including interviews with everyone from Photek to Sofia Kourtesis, Goldie to Moritz von Oswald. It’s on Soundcloud and Spotify, so do check it out. I am sure you will find something to enjoy. And if you feel like giving us loads of stars / ratings / love both quantifiable and not, that would be very welcome.
DJ EZ: Pure Garage and the DJs’ DJ
The last few years have seen a definite Boiler Room-ification of dance music. I recently saw an advert for an event in Barcelona offering a “‘boiler room’ experience” for clubbers (I imagine the lack of capital letters there was VERY deliberate), which, as far as I could make out, involved a small club space in which you could crowd around the DJ. And just this month I was invited to a secret warehouse party “dedicated to recording and streaming artists’ DJ sets and performances”.
I didn’t go to either. While Boiler Room has done an excellent job over the years in showcasing new DJs - from Sherelle to Yung Singh - I don’t particularly want my brand of dance flail to be captured on camera for future generations and I don’t generally enjoy watching DJs at work, preferring to focus on the crowd.
The exception to this rule is Tottenham garage icon DJ EZ. This is a DJ whose technical trickery is so deft it has to be seen to be believed, a DJ who will leave you scratching your head with the same speed at which he scratches his records, hoping, praying, to pick up some idea of how the hell he does it.
There are hundreds of jaw-dropping DJ EZ mixes out there. But perhaps the best known - and probably the best introduction to his skill - is his Boiler Room x RBMA London set from December 2012. What this 45-minute set demonstrates is how EZ has mastered the CDJs better than any other DJ on the planet, pulling off tricks like the minute 14 beat juggle (perhaps not the right term - but what would you call it?), that would be impossible with vinyl.
The same section - in which he uses a tiny loop of Wookie’s Battle on one CDJ as his bass drum and Cleptomaniacs’ All I Do (Bump & Flex Dance Floor Dub) on the other as a percussive stutter - is one of a small number of instances when a DJ can genuinely be said to creating something totally and utterly new from their source material. It is, essentially, DJing as production, a brilliantly creative art.
Turntablists have been doing similarly creative things with their records for year. But what differentiates EZ, as a DJ, is what else he can do. He might be the DJ’s DJ. But he’s also the people’s spinner. Yes, EZ has the tricks; but they are always at service of the music and the dance. So EZ can do a devastating 45-minute set for the cameras. But he can also spin a gorgeous and totally listenable three and a half hour club set that keeps the crowd happily dancing. (And if you want to hear him kill it in the perfect club environment, then I recommend this mix from the 2004 Sidewinder Awards, alongside MCs Blive and Viper.)
There is, in fact, a moment towards the end of EZ’s RBMA set when it sounds like the CDJs are having technical problems and EZ responds by laying out 10 minutes of flawlessly mixed but reasonably conventional house and garage to the audience’s delight. Hell, he once played a 24-hour set for charity and he was STILL killing it towards the end.
One of the reasons that EZ can do this is that his musical selection is exceptional. Yes, he has go-to tracks that pop up in a lot of his mixes - MJ Cole’s Sincere, Sia’s Little Man, Wookie’s Battle - but he marries this to all-encompassing musical taste.
In that RBMA set, for example, he played speed garage (the Armand van Helden remix of CJ Bolland’s Sugar Daddy), US garage (Roy Davis Jr.’s Gabriel), classic house (MD Xpress’s God Made Me Funky), breakbeat (Jammin’s Go DJ), proto grime (So Solid Crew’s Dilemma) and 2-Step (Wookie’s Battle), creating a glorious mishmash of UKG-adjacent sounds that stretches right across the Atlantic.
EZ’s pacing is sublime, too. In the RBMA mix - an example I keep coming back to because it really does show all that is best about EZ - I love the way he plays two minutes of the ultra-minimal Dilemma, unaltered, to let the mix breath for a couple of minutes, before ploughing back into the maximalist tricks.
Brilliantly, he follows this up with the intro to Pied Piper & The Masters of Ceremonies’ Do You Really Like It, placing this cheesy über hit in the only space it would work and bringing me around to a song that I really don’t like. I love the way EZ can be such a tease too, endlessly promising Wookie’s anthemically pugilistic Scrappy in the RBMA mix, only to switch up to the same artist’s Down On Me almost as soon as Scrappy gets going.
This kind of extreme turntable trickery would be enough to guarantee EZ God status. But there’s more to him than just clubs. EZ hasn’t produced a lot of music but what he has done - and in particular his remix of B-15 Project’s Feel So Good - is excellent, making you wish he would spend a few more hours in the studio.
Add all this up and it is no surprise that EZ is a key figure in the garage scene, the one DJ you have to have playing your tunes, in clubs but also on his radio shows for stations like Freek FM and Kiss 100. It was EZ, for example, that Warner called on to mix the pivotal Pure Garage records, TV-advertised compilations that helped UKG to go mainstream in the early 2000s, a recognition of his importance as a garage tastemaker.
For garage, then, EZ is like DJ Qbert mixed with Funkmaster Flex, a combination of DJ trickery with scene-leading tastes and pure A&R skill, all wrapped up in a humble-looking bloke from North London.
More importantly, EZ is a reminder of everything a DJ should be, in skill, selection and taste, a one-man musical powerhouse of invention who is never, ever boring. Were a benevolent genie to come wooshing out of their hiding hole one day when I am cleaning out the lamps, one of my three wishes would definitely be to DJ like EZ. Failing that, we can always live vicariously by Boiler Room.
Some watching
La Mesías
The sickening, almost supernatural, power of religious fanaticism lies at the agonising heart of La Mesías, the series that has become a cult sensation in Spain.
La Mesías (“the Messiah”) traces the tale of a family brought up in religious squalor in the Catalan hills in the 1990s, separated from the world geographically, culturally and deliberately, by their hardline father, Pep, and mentally ill mother, Montserrat, who believes that she talks to God.
Under Montserrat’s direction the six youngest daughters create a pop group, Stella Maris, that is dedicated to spreading the word of God via a series of highly kitsch YouTube videos, the inspiration for the group coming from the real-life family Christian music group Flos Mariae. (Flos Mariae, incidentally, responded to the series, explaining that they had lived a happy family life, which had nothing in common with that of La Mesías.)
But it takes a while for this all to become apparent as directing duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi - aka los Javis - slowly peel back the narrative layers, jumping backwards and forwards in time, with an inventive and possibly diversionary alien subplot as a feint. It's not until the final moments of episode two (of seven) that the show actually pulls into focus with the arrival of Pep in full religious fervour.
It's a sickening tale of abuse carried out in the name of God, a slowly unrolling punch to the gut. The script is a masterpiece of gently laid breadcrumbs, leisurely laying out a trail for the viewer to follow, and the direction full of empathy and light surreal touches.
The acting, too, is superb throughout, with special mention for
Lola Dueñas who portrays the damaged and damaging Montserrat in adult life, as she moves from Pep’s passive partner into a terrifying messianic figure, saving herself but condemning her children to even greater suffering.
La Mesías is often grim. But it weighs this up with well-taken moments of levity - Enric, the oldest child, feeling his way around a Singing In The Rain dance routine; Stella Maris’ incredible videography - a fiercely difficult mixture that los Javis pulls off with aplomb.
La Mesías is one of the most thoughtful and though-provoking series I have seen in a long while, a show that ties up (most of) its strands at the end of episode seven, while leaving enough ambiguity to remain long in the mind. Los Javis have a small number of excellent shows already under their young belts - Paquita Salas, in particular, is hilarious - but La Mesías should, if justice is served, take them to the global audience they clearly deserve.
And when the actual Stella Maris appear at Primavera Sound 2024, I will be there, down the front, in rapt, ecstatic attention.
Some listening
Soweto Gospel Choir x Groove Terminator - Good Life (Impilo Emnande)
Here’s a brief list of things I love. A) Covers of Inner City’s Good Life. B) Gospel house. c) South African dance music in all its wonderful shapes and forms. Soweto Gospel Choir x Groove Terminator’s Good Life (Impilo Emnande) fulfils about two and a half of those criteria, with the unfortunately named Groove Terminator - I mean, why would you ever want to terminate a groove? - being Australian. Still, that’s more than enough for me: the original is house so relaxed it might as well be made of beanbags and there are some great South African remixes floating around too.
Petelo Vicka et Son Nzazi - Sungu Lubuka
Has an Analog Africa release ever disappointed? Well, they’re not about to start now: Sungu Lubuka is the first single taken from Congo Funk! - Sound Madness From The Shores Of The Mighty Congo River (Kinshasa/Brazzaville 1969-1982), a compilation of 14 songs, culled from 2,000, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Congo Republic, largely from the golden funk era of the 1970s, although Petelo Vicka et Son Nzazi’s mighty song was first released in 1982. Sungu Lubuka is an absolute monster of Congolese Rumba, touched with Afrobeat and Western funk, a groove that is somehow tightly coiled and strangely loose, all horns and sunshine intensity. The original will set you back €300 on Discogs and is totally worth it. And it’s not ever the best song on the record….
Cassie Kinoshi’s Seed - Gratitude Movement i
Is there anything better than orchestral jazz, when you’re really in the mood? Absolutely not. And the new song from Cassie Kinoshi’s Seed hit me square in the mood. Movement i has the grandiloquent swagger of an orchestra, together with the serpentine musicality of the best jazz records, the combination reminding me of those epic Charles Stepney productions that made Rotary Connection so brilliant. Movement i has the thick, rich luxury of burgundy silk or 70% chocolate.
Things I’ve done
Pitchfork review of Lee “Scratch” Perry
I really wanted King Perry - apparently Lee “Scratch” Perry’s final album - to be better than it was. Hopefully in this review I explained why it wasn’t quite worthy of Perry’s talents. He sounds lost and uninvited, which is a sad ending to a triumphant career. Still the album did send me back to Heart of the Congos, which is never a bad thing.
Line Noise with Crystal Murray
Paris-born singer, songwriter, producer and more Crystal Murray produces fabulous club-informed pop music. She is a great interviewee too - we talked about revenge, jazz, Paris and London, about clubbing, Elizabeth Fraser, Crystal’s forthcoming album and so much more.
The playlists
If you like my musical recommendations, then I advise you follow one of my playlists to keep up to date. One features all the best new music of 2024; the other the best new music since 2021, which is stretching the definition of “new” a bit I know but what are you going to do?