Five For Friday
Splitradix - New Ireland Digital [CPU]
This track almost made me cry on first listen this morning.
GIDEÖN - Ritmo EP [Homocentric]
Accompanied by a forthright manifesto that explains why Homocentric Records was founded - “to re-establish the lines of Queer musical tradition at the heart of House Music, lost to AIDS and the recent capitalist desecration of dance music” - GIDEÖN’s debut EP puts its money where its mouth is right from the get go. Lead single ‘Aaron-Carl Lives On’ is a worthy tribute to the underappreciated and unapologetically gay producer. (“I wanna go down on you/If it’s the last thing that I do” to this day remains one of the best dancefloor chants going.) GIDEÖN cuts up Aaron-Carl’s speech in a way that adds further funk to the groove and also helps to dodge my usual complaint about self-referential house music.
The rest of the EP is replete with expertly done fills, slinky acid lines, more cut-up vocals (some more successful than others - I’m not the biggest fan of the sexy/creepy ones on ‘Ritmo’ for example) and - on ‘Over Back Then’ - an immensely satisfying Prescription bassline. As a statement this EP and the messaging around it feels grand but necessary, a mooring post in the flood of trite, ahistorical dross being produced by dance music’s ongoing assimilation into the heterosexual mainstream.
Jack Playmobil - Full Catalogue
The Jack Playmobil catalogue is now fully available for the first time on digital. A true original, the label owner works in a factory by day and, every so often, shows up at Belgian record shops with a new EP in bespoke packaging (or so I was told by Jakob at Crevette in Brussels). And the music? Utterly captivating and, frankly, all over the place. Superlative Berlin-to-Detroit electro and booty on Technology Machine. Modern coldwave meets IDM on Hopper. Dusty, seaside house on ‘Nehalennia’. And, of course, the track that started it all: the incomparable ‘Afterlife Resort’, the opening phrases of which transport me straight back to feeling light as a cloud at SE London afterparties ten years ago.
HAUS of ALTR - HOA21 [HAUS of ALTR]
Let’s just say that HAUS of ALTR is one of the most invigorating labels doing it right now. And aside from the bracing in-house contributions from MoMA Ready and partner in crime AceMo, this compilation features several guest favs: Escaflowne, Huey Mnemonic with a standout low-slung house jam, Kush Jones and Ray Kandinski, who provides a kind of organ ghetto house track that I’m curious to hear slowed down.
This one makes my head hurt a little. Where GIDEÖN looks to the source of house music over in the US, most of this EP from Gop Tun seems to cast its gaze back over the Atlantic from Brazil, to the UK and Belgium and the more plastic sounds of acid house, new beat, UKG and - the source of my headache - Europop and trance. Ceaseless Instagram stories have by this point so sensitised my ears to snare rushes, grating organs, inane timestretched vocals and so on that I now genuinely flinch whenever I hear them. But I *think*, on a good day at least, that this EP will survive these (in my opinion unnecessary) adornments through sheer force of spirit. On a bad day I reckon I will hate it, except perhaps the final track, ‘Quinta Noite’, which, for its classic beatdown groove, vocal samples and limber bassline, in the end sounds like it could fit on the Ritmo EP.