Track-By-Track: Ghostcast #05
This is an entry in the Track-By-Track series for my mix for The Ghost - see the index.
Track-By-Track is a series that looks back at records you will have heard in my mixes, one by one in the order they were played. Who made them, and when? How did I come across them? And what do they make me feel?
Today’s post features a guest contribution from Øyvind Morken: fantastic, DJ (listen to this or this), erstwhile Wednesday-night resident at Jaeger club in Oslo, label owner of Moonlighting, and producer of this cover of ‘New Age Of Faith’ by the late Lamont Booker aka Elbee Bad aka The Prince Of Dance Music.
After that, a digression from me on questioning the social and historical conditions that affect my musical ‘taste’ and habits.
Guest contribution
Øyvind tells the story behind his version of ‘New Age Of Faith’:
As I have said before, I made the track just after my father passed away, but it was not intentional to make a cover song. I was just playing around on my keyboard with melodies and recording it at the same time when I understood that I had just played the main melody from ‘New Age Of Faith’. The original working title was ‘New Age Of Smoking’, because I was always a fan of the David Holmes remix of Sabres Of Paradise’s ‘Smokebelch II’ when DJing. I must say that I was also a fan of L.B Bad's original and the Beatless version from S.O.P.
I had heard some rumours that Lamont Booker, who wrote the original, and sadly just passed away, was not a fan of the S.O.P. version, and that there was some tension regarding it, so I did not really know what to do with my version. But my buddy Young Marco put me in contact with him, as he knew him from working on the Elbee Bad, The Prince Of Dance Music – The True Story Of House Music when he was working for Rush Hour.
I told Lamont the story behind my version, and he was super supportive and gave me the thumbs up. Prins Thomas then proceeded to release it on Full Pupp.
Thanks Øyvind for sharing with us. The interaction with Booker reminded me of the charming anecdote Lerosa had about him in our recent Q&A.
What I like best about Øyvind’s take on ‘New Age Of Faith’ is how it sounds far more digital and programmatic than the either the original or the S.O.P. version, but remains dreamy because of that beautiful melody. It turns the track into something more everyday - and thus more playable - without, I think, sapping it of its essence.
Øyvind Morken - New Age Of Faith (Full Pupp, 2016)
Joe’s digression
As Øyvind refers to, his was of course not the first cover of ‘New Age Of Faith’. The Sabres Of Paradise’s much-admired debut EP Smokebelch II, released in 1993 after a string of remixes for other artists, was a Romantic take on the theme that established the trio as an original force of their own.
Although Booker was credited on the initial EP, on the subsequent LP and other compilations that included the track his name was absent, and he maintained he was not consulted or paid correctly for the use of his music. Anecdotes and hearsay on youtube, discogs and blogs hardly help to clear things up. Shortly before he died this year, Booker was publishing videos about it on his own youtube channel.
It’s a shame to think that the dispute cast a shadow over his career - but the truth is that this individual case illustrates the broader way in which prevailing narratives of the history of dance music have been constructed by a largely white industry, press, academy and public at the expense of Black artists. And it’s within these narratives that people’s - my - individual taste, creativity and habits of consumption have developed.
Last year I read a fascinating interview on this subject with Alexander Weheliye, here, which poses many challenging questions. For example, analysing a flippant comment made by a white techno DJ from the early 90s about them being ‘white brothers with no soul’, to contrast with their Black contemporaries playing house and disco:
AW: Tanith has semi-publicly argued that this comment has been taken of context. To me, though flippant and perhaps ironic, it also encapsulates a lot of the problems I see in the historiography and celebration of Berlin Techno. Tanith says, that there was house music – which was much more clearly Black because it was funky and had more soulful vocals – but that he and other white Berlin DJs wanted to go a harder route – one that didn't have anything to do with Blackness and Black music. It is clear that is what happened in the course of a few years, despite the fact that what would later become techno was initially brought to West Berlin within the context of clubs and radio shows that played Black music.
Originally there wasn't this separation between the “white brothers with no soul” and the “Black brothers and sisters with soul”. My argument is, that in order for Berlin Techno to be imagined as something specific to Berlin and to Germany, it had to separate itself from Blackness, whether imagined or real. German public and academic discourse denies the existence of race. The moment that people of colour bring up the question of race, they are put in the position of being too sensitive or of being racist themselves. So what I found significant about that clip is that Tanith's statement really puts the racial dimension of Berlin Techno out there in a way that is not common in Germany.
If I think about my own musical tastes, there has always been a lot more to the question “Should I play this vocal track?” than a straightforward like or dislike of vocals. There’s a ton of identity stuff loaded on top, to do with being gay and feeling empowered to express that through music, or actively avoiding it through fear or contempt (something I touched on in my Truants interview). Because it affects me personally, the sexual identity dimension of playing music with vocals at any given clubnight is easy for me to grasp and work with.
By contrast, until reading the Weheliye piece I hadn’t considered the racial dimension of my relationship to ‘soulful house music’ (for example), which is a genre I’ve tended to look down on or casually disparage. Is my dislike of saxophones, jazzy chords, soulful vocals only that - a simple matter of personal taste? Doubtful. There must be something about my choice, conscious and unconscious, to party in a predominantly white milieu (the European nightclubs playing a conspicuously vocal-free brand of house and techno) that has reinforced this personal tendency. There is a racial dimension to it.
I’m not sure what this reflection leads to, though it feels important to try and become aware of and work with the effects of this kind of social conditioning, not just in music but in all areas of life. Making more of a conscious effort to step out of the bubble is a modest start. Perhaps I can finish with a concrete request: anyone reading this who has links to more reading or watching along the lines of the Weheliye interview, please do share them with me.