I’m not gonna write up my whole experience at CURVS on Friday here in Lisbon. Safe to say that, after a lot of hoping it might happen one day, it was a real pleasure to finally do it. Nevertheless, since I do feel like writing something, here are some of the mixes — or ‘blends’ as the kids like to call them — I did during my set.

Grand High Priest - ‘Mary Mary (Moan Mix)’ x Green Velvet - ‘Answering Machine’

This was a little tribute to two of my favourite DJs: Prosumer and DJ Caring. After many years of not hearing the Grand High Priest tune out, I was there when Prosumer dropped the full-length mix at the Berlin CSD edition of Horsemeat Disco a couple of years ago (I wrote about that here). Ever since then I’ve been playing out two different versions off this 2009 digital release, neither of which seem to correspond to the original version but both of which bang nonetheless. The 9 minute ‘vocal mix’ is like the original but with a two minute long break early on in the track, during which the vocal builds and builds until the drop: super atmospheric and effective if you already have the crowd on your side.

The ‘Moan Mix’ is tighter and trackier, an excellent bridge track or — in this instance — a fun combination with another beat track like Green Velvet’s ‘Answering Machine’. DJ Caring played this latter tune at Planeta Manas a year or two ago, except either it was a remix or she layered it over a much housier track. So in tribute I did the same, layering ‘Answering Machine’ over ‘Mary Mary’ for several minutes and performing the obligatory fader cuts whenever the Green Velvet hook rang out: “I! Don’t! Need! This! Shit!”

Lisa Lee - ‘When Can I Call You (Tommy Musto & Frankie Bones British Telecom Mix)’ x Shantell & Dwayne - ‘Ring My Phone (Instrumental Dub Mix)’

This anecdote starts with two more favourite DJs. Despite having bought many Frankie Bones and Tommy Musto records over the years, I had never heard this particular Lisa Lee banger until Mike Servito and Jeffrey Sfire dropped it halfway through their closing b2b at The Bunker party on Monday night of Detroit Movement weekend, 2023. I had no idea what it was, I only knew it was exactly my kind of music. Luckily they put the recording online so I was able to look it up. I was amused to find it was called the ‘British Telecom Mix’ — surely made for me — and further gratified to find it was on Nu Groove and therefore on Bandcamp. The rolling break, trippy, flanging highs and eerie vocals push all my buttons so obviously I’ve been playing it a lot ever since.

When deciding what to play afterwards, I decided — in the lineage of livwutang — to stick with the telecommunications theme already established with ‘Answering Machine’ and mix Lisa Lee into ‘Ring My Phone’ by Shantell & Dwayne — though just the Eric Griffin-produced instrumental, because my patience for kid-rap vocals, while not zero (I do play L’Trimm quite a lot), is certainly limited.

Debbie Harry - ‘I Can See Clearly (Murk Habana Dub)’ x Cherie Lee - ‘Delirious (M---Y Mix)’ x Cherie Lee - ‘Delirious (Vocal Mix)’

I often say I don’t really do very much when I DJ, and that’s pretty true. In fact, in these times when your average DJ seems pathologically incapable of letting a break go by without fiddling with the filters, it’s almost a point of pride that I never touch the damn things in the first place. But when I’m super relaxed and having fun like I was at CURVS on Friday I do do some stuff. Like layer three Murk tracks together: first their ‘dub’ of a Debbie Harry tune (that bears absolutely no resemblance to the original, as I talked about with my friend Christa on her Refuge show Bubble World here, from 43m30s onwards); then the ‘M---Y Dub’ of ‘Delirious’ by Cherie Lee (of ‘Love Me Or Leave Me’ fame), which basically strips out all the main vocal to leave only Cherie’s moans and somewhat creepy laughter; and finally the ‘Vocal Mix’ of ‘Delirious’, leaving a significant overlap between the dub and vocal and playing with the phasing between the two. I guess sometimes I do earn my fee.

(Postscript 1: on writing this I have discovered that, despite sounding like a quintessential Murk production, ‘Delirious’ was not in fact produced by Murk themselves but by associates Frank Gonzalez & Mitchell Dupree and released on George Alvarado’s Nitebeat label, which essentially ran concurrently to, or maybe a year behind, Murk’s early 90s peak.)

(Postscript 2: since I mention it in that radio show, I feel like it’s worth screengrabbing the Discogs comments on that Debbie Harry remix for posterity:

Get me “Serious K-hole music for the drug induced and stupid” printed on a t-shirt, stat!)

Michael Cignarale - ‘Your Love Is My Drug (Instrumental)’ x Boo Williams - ‘Mortal Trance’

I only played three new tracks in my two hour set, two of which came at the very end: Peter Pressure’s ‘Morning Wood’, off the ‘In The Pocket’ project, and then an unreleased track by another artist I’m hoping to put out early next year. The rest of the set was old records, rips of old records, and an assortment of 2000s bangers that just felt right in that setting. The only other new one was this tune by Michael Cignarale, which I had to think carefully about playing because the production is so BIG. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a bit allergic to M1 organs — or organs of any kind to be honest — and even more allergic to snare rushes. But something about this particular tune does it for me, and I was willing to compromise on those points to fit it in. Of course I guessed it would cause the dancefloor to pop off, especially given the contrast to everything else I’d been playing, which had all been very rolling. And I was right: the breakdown and drop three minutes in got probably the biggest cheer of the night.

theBasement DiscosYOUR LOVE IS MY DRUG [TBX209], by Michael Cignarale

No shade to Michael (the track is really well done, that’s why I played it), but rather than feeling good about that tangible crowd reaction, I felt a bit cheap, like I always do when I sense that what I’m playing is somehow manipulative. I often wonder how it happens that other DJs end up playing solely manipulative music, featuring the same instantly gratifying tricks over and over again. Don’t they feel a bit dirty? My solution to this feeling on Friday was to reach for the headsiest thing I had in my (very small) record bag: my trusty copy of Boo Williams’ Residual EP, the 2010 Rush Hour reissue of four turn-of-the-millennium BW tracks, each of which is an absolute stomper. ‘Mortal Trance’ is probably my favourite (though ‘Eternal Mind’ gives it a run for its money) and I’ve been playing it on and off all year.

At this particular moment on Friday night, I think I wanted to prove to both myself and the dancefloor that, even though a lot of the best house music does have a formula, and does draw on well-worn tropes — which are tropes for the very simple reason that they really work — that doesn’t mean it always has to follow those formulae, and sometimes it can be raw and unexpected and even a bit awkward, which ‘Mortal Trance’ surely is, even as it absolutely slams. It’s also surprisingly slow, and it was a point of pride to me that I only had to pitch it up a bit, as I had progressively slowed down during my set and at this juncture was coasting along at a very modest 124bpm.

Final postscript

I hadn’t planned to bring records to this party because I thought there wouldn’t be any turntables, but the day before Bruno aka Phoebe, who was on after me, told me that he’d be playing some vinyl. So I thought why not, though I only had a very brief window between the trip I was on and the party to stop off at home and pack a tote bag. Maybe that’s why, when it came time to leave, I did remember to take my tote bag with me to the taxi, but then completely forgot to then take it out of the cab and into my own home. It was only halfway through the next morning that I saw a story on instagram — with a photo of the tote bag asking “Did anyone leave these records in a taxi last night?” — that I realised what I’d done. I take it as a bit of an indictment of my general relationship with my records that I wasn’t overly alarmed by the situation. My immediate reaction was “well, they were only cheap Chicago house records that I can replace”. Of course that’s a complacent response, and I’m sure if they hadn’t been found I’d be mourning several of them right now. A big thank you to Harpal and Sam for returning them to me. Several of them I’d owned for 15 years!