Monday Mixes (28/02/22)
A special Monday edition of Midweek Mixes to celebrate Prosumer’s wonderful three-part mix series for Stora Skuggan.
Prosumer: Three Mixes for Stora Skuggan
When I was at Prosumer’s party Heyday two weekends ago in Edinburgh there was a moment about halfway through his set where, from my vantage point on the stage, the 100-capacity room of Sneaky Pete’s suddenly felt transformed into a much bigger club, simply through the force of the music he was playing: a classic rolling groove with a spoken vocal about what I can’t remember, but catchy enough to be repeated by the young Edinburgh gays dancing next to me.
The lights helped too. Achim had made a point of learning how the console worked before the night began, carefully setting the spotlights to a warm mix of blue and red. You simply can’t go wrong with a bit of bisexual lighting, and by releasing just the right amount of smoke the space suddenly opened up into something bigger.
I danced there in the corner of the stage with G, who had given me the shock of my life by showing up unannounced (we are now 1-1 for surprise international dancefloor appearances), and could almost believe I was back at Panoramabar in the autumn of 2009, when I saw Prosumer play Metro Area and Gemini in the opening set of a Finest Friday.
Listening to Amabie And Le Loyon Go To Croatia - House By The Beach, the dance music part of this trilogy of mixes, performs much the same trick, capturing as it does that unmistakably Prosumerish combination of desire, longing, joy and a hint of mischief - all gay, all queer - that continues to resonate to this day. The lyrics of DJ Duke’s ‘I’m In Need 4 U’, followed by the hopeful piano chords of the instrumental, sum this mood up perfectly:
In the midnight hour my broken heart is hurting
I’m in need for someone special, a loved one
Come on baby hold my hand, I hope you can understand
The time we suffered from lack of comfort
The time of pain, the time of love
The time of broken hearts, the time that pulled us apart
I’m in need for you
Of course it’s not just the lyrics but the music itself, played Prosumer’s way, that also gets the message across. So when he mixes ‘Feel The Rhythm’ into ‘I Hadn’t Known (I Only Heard)’ it’s the equivalent of one of his famed big friendly hugs.
The other two mixes in this package step off the dancefloor and, in the case of How Yuvanaswa Really Got Pregnant - A Night At The Gay Bar, into a back alley - both literally and figuratively. Achim must have spent several years collecting these highly camp and frequently filthy examples of queer rock n roll, as they reach far beyond the familiar territory of Marianne Faithfull’s ‘Why D’ya Do It’ and Dennis Parker’s ‘Like An Eagle’ into regions as out there as Smokey’s ‘Piss Slave’ (lyric: “Baby I’m a toilet/For your love!”) and Leather Nun’s ‘FFA’ (Fist Fuckers Associated; lyric: “Shit on my knuckles/Pain up the ass for you”).
(Incidentally, if this mix should come with any sort of trigger warning it wouldn’t be for any of those jewels, but rather for the long version of Sylvester and Patrick Cowley’s ‘Stars’, which even a fan like me starts to tire of before its 10+ minute runtime is through.)
Then there’s my favourite of the three sessions, Light Taking Form - Float And Flow. The Oz-referencing schmaltz of Rod McKuen sets the tone early, letting us know that we’ll be floating somewhere over the rainbow between real feels and melodrama. This is transmitted first through ambience and dream pop, soul and bossa nova, and later in mood pieces by Einstürzende Neubauten, Kate Bush and - new to me - Madonna and Massive Attack (with their orchestral cover of ‘I Want You’ by Marvin Gaye).
In the end this session feels just as gay as the night at the gay bar and, musically at least, is much more up my street. But these three mixes really work best taken together, communicating as they do the contradictions of the queer emotional experience: sociable, solitary, indignant, ecstatic, needy and joyful, and everything else, all at the same time.