If Young Marco's entry was my gateway into IDM, EBM, New Wave sounds then this one smashed the gate all the way down and bathed me to the icy coldness and industrial sounds that incubated and thrived in places like Düsseldorf during the early to mid-80s.

A relatively uncomfortable listen for me, this music veers from the typical rounded, warm and woody sounds I am accustomed to. Haunting and eerie as it is, it's still very danceable. Just not at dances I'm used to attending - I've heard many DJs do a very good job of presenting this, including acts like Ben UFO, Barbara Boeing. I’m also particularly attracted to the vinyl scene that generally surrounds this music.

A relative late addition to my collection, I picked this up in 2022 and have not spent as much time in venues with it as I have with others from this series, this release brings a particular flavour of underground music that is very hard to get away with unless you already live/DJ in an area where this style of music is the norm - outside of Bristol, I struggle to think of a home for this music anywhere else in the UK. Although it is worth mentioning that acts like Cabaret Voltaire, from Sheffield UK, formed in 1973 and were pioneering this music as early as 1979 with Mix-Up and 1980’s The Voice of America.

I have a note on my phone, created on 24 March 2022, titled ‘What is EBM?’ - EBM being Electronic Body Music. I’m still not sure. I don’t yet have the breadth available in my collection to speak on this confidently. But slowly over the years this fills up more and more. As said above, the music tends to be colder and metallic in feel - if you’re a history buff you can see cold war soviet era influence. That’s the general vibe I get from the period, people, and area this music tends to come from.

Enjoy the notes below - compiled by Marcel Dettman, the compilation is an excellent introduction to what came before Techno. Next week we focus on nineties hardcore continuum tackle with Selectors 004.

Marcel Dettmann might be one of the world's most celebrated techno artists, but even he had to start somewhere. Long before he ever held court at Berghain (or its predecessor, Ostgut), he was just' another young boy in Eastern Germany, one whose earliest, encounters with capitalism involved spending every penny he could scrape together at the local record shop. In those days, it, wasn't techno that got him excited, but new wave, post-punk, industrial and EBM acts like Front 242 and Depeche Mode.

"It's music from my childhood," says Dettmann." It's still relevant and still inspires me." That inspiration can be heard across this edition of the Selectors series, as Dettmann has put together what he describes as a "pre-techno compilation." Assembled with an eye toward sharing these sounds with younger generations who didn't catch these tracks the first time around, the compilation is more than a collection of vintage gems - it also represents a very personal journey into Dettmann's past.

"It was a great opportunity to dig deeper into my own musical outlook," he explains. "The tracks come from a time before Marcel Dettmann became a DJ. Back then, I had most of them on 7” just because they were cheaper." Now freshly remastered - and occasionally reworked or re-edited by Dettmann himself such as Cabaret Voltaire's "Low Cool" and A Thunder Orchestra's "Diabolical Gesture” - the songs here are some of the building, blocks upon which he's built an incredibly storied career. "In an effort to find out a bit more about his relationship with these tracks, we've asked Marcel to tell us a bit about his history with each one.

FRONT 242 "DON'T CRASH"

In the early 90s, shortly after the wall came down in Berlin, I started getting into music. Like a lot of people, I got into Depeche Mode, who had recently released their Violator LP. Shortly after that, I inevitably discovered the music of Fad Gadget, DAF, Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb. I must have been 13 or 14 years old at that time. I liked the kind of power this music came with. It was strong and heavy and arrived during a time that teenage boys had to adjust to a quickly changing world. I still remember how I almost became feverish as soon as I got paid for distributing flyers and adverts- I would pour almost all of my earnings into vinyl, which I bought from a small shop in my home town.

Front 242 - Don't Crash / Written by Bressanutti, Codenys, De Meyer, Jonchkeere / Produced by Front 242 / 1985, Pias

FORCE DIMENSION "ALGORYTHM (MANIPULATING MIX)"

This track to me is one of the connection points between EBM and what would later become known as techno. It was released when techno was still in its infancy, so I would describe this band as one of the genre's not-so-famous pioneers. Force Dimension's debut album was on the edge between experimental post-industrial and dancefloor-oriented Electronic Body Music, two styles that had a big impact on me. I love the way the synth and the drums work together - it's dancefloor dynamics meets subtle songwriting. This track also reminds me a bit of DAF, but in a softer way.

The Force Dimension - Algorythm (Manipulating Mix) / Written by T.A. de Groot, R.V. Dijck/ Produced by R.V. Dljck, T.A. de Groot, L. Vroemen / 1990, KK. Records

EXECUTIVE SLACKS "SO MOTE IT BE"

I spotted this record on my first trip to NYC in 2008 in a small secondhand record store. As it happens - and this happens to me quite often - it was the B2 track that put a spell on me. In my opinion, the B2 track on a record is usually the most interesting one because artists have already liberated themselves from everything they were "supposed" to do on the first three tracks. This track shakes up everything, which is the main reason why I'm still fascinated by it. To me, this is punk.

Executive Slacks - So Mote It Be / Written by Matt Marello & John Young / Produced by Executive Slacks / 1983, Red Music

MARTIN DUPONT "THE LIGHT GOES THROUGH MY MOUTH"

The first time I heard of Martin Dupont was in 2004, when my old friend Wincent Kunth came to visit me in Berlin. Martin Dupont was a French darkwave band and this particular track was previously only available on a CD version of their Sleep Is a Luxury album. So naturally, the song came to mind when I realized that I had a chance to release it on vinyl as well.

Martin Dupont - The Light Goes Through My Mouth / Written by Alain Seghir, Brigitte Balian / Produced by Martin Dupont / 2009. Infrastition

A THUNDER ORCHESTRA "DIABOLICAL GESTURE (MARCEL DETTMANN EDIT)"

It must have been in the mid '90s when I bought this record at a secondhand street market in Berlin, simply because I was stunned by the artwork, During this time, I remember that I bought lots of stuff just because I liked the artwork. But to be honest, I'm usually not a big fan of the 7" format. Maybe that's why I didn't rediscover the record until 2004, when I was moving to Berlin. That was also when I started producing edits of tracks that I liked, just so I could play them out. The original version of "Diabolical Gesture" is way slower, so l increased the tempo and edited it.

A Thunder Orchestra - Diabolical Gesture (Marcel Dettmann Edit) / Written & produced by DesaD / 2017, Dekmantel

TWICE A MAN "HAPPY LIFE"

This track, made by a Swedish synth-pop band, is coming out of the time in my life before I discovered more industrial-flavored electronic music. While listening, I can always remember those days - my first love, the freedom of being a teenager in the east of Germany... as you can imagine, this was an important time for me. Another one of my favorites from that time period is Wolfsheim's "The Sparrows And The Nightingales."

Twice A Man - Happy Life / Written & produced by Karl Gasleben, Dan Soederquist, Johnny Riberg / 1986/1993, Yellow Ltd..

CABARET VOLTAIRE "LOW COOL (MARCEL DETTMANN EDIT)"

I think this edit must have come to light around 2004. I used to play this record at Berghain in the morning, and it works perfectly on the dancefloor. It's similar to A Thunder Orchestra's "Diabolical Gesture", in the sense that the original version is slower than my edit.

Cabaret Voltaire - Low Cool (Marcel Dettmann Edit) / Written by Richard H. Kirk & Stephen Malinder / Produced by Cabaret Voltaire / 2017, Intone Communications Ltd.

KAA ANTILOPE "RISE UP HELICOPTER, LIKE A BIRD"

I discovered this track on a compilation called Coal Heart Forever. Buying compilations is sometimes a bit like buying a picture book - it's not about one particular track or picture, it's more about the overall style, the design and the appreciation of the selection and curation that went into it. But in this case, this track was a true find and still stands out. It feels like you' re actually sitting in a helicopter and flying around.

Kaa Antilope - Rise Up Helicopter, Like A Bird / Written by Walheer, Vranckx/ Produced by Kaa Antilope / 1988. Sub Rosa

CLAN OF XYMOX "A DAY"

In my mind, Clan of Xymox is one of the most outstanding darkwave groups ever. Their self-titled album was strange, nervous, mysterious and brillant, and with its bold colors and emotions, Day" is a track that shows the genre's full potential. This song has been tremendously inspiring to me.

Clan Of Xymox - A Day / Written by Ronny Moorings, Anka Wolbert, Pieter Nooten / 1985, 4AD Limited

MINISTRY "SAME OLD MADNESS"

Previously unreleased, this track comes from a time before Ministry started producing more metal stuff and subsequently became more and more famous as a result. Although the band is best known for its pioneering combination of industrial dance and thrash metal, this tune is more in a synth pop vein. Some people consider the early years of Ministry to be artistically shallow, but this track stands out. I love that great spirit synth and the live drumming. In my mind, this is an early '80s masterpiece.

Ministry - Same Old Madness / Written by Alan Jourgensen / 2007, Cleopatra Records Inc.

FAD GADGET "BACK TO NATURE"

This is one of my absolute favorite Fad Gadget tracks. When I was much younger, we only had a single cheap record player at home and I actually bought this on 7 because was mostly broke at the time. This song is so heavy that it keeps you down to earth, but it also makes you happy at the same time. I can't think of a better final track for this compilation.

Fad Gadget - Back To Nature / Written by F. Gadget / 1979, Mute Records Ltd

💬 - Shawn Reynaldo

📷 - Evelyn Bencicova via Conspirators Berlin

🎨 - Ofpheu de Jong

Volume 1: The UK’s Bass Catalyst

“So, what music do you play then Kyle?”

A perfectly reasonable question for the casual music fan. For the record collector or modest selector however, it is an absolute conversational trap. You open your mouth to answer, then scramble together a clumsy, slightly pretentious string of hyphenated words:

“Well, it’s kind of Leftfield-Tribal-Post-Dubstep-Bass-bit Techno-ey... but with an Afrobeat influence.”

By the time I finish my sentence, Rebecca Leap’s eyes have completely glazed over and I’ve lost her... Hellish for promoters too, trying to figure out where to place you on the line up - particularly if you like heavy club music, yet cut your teeth in the bar industry where straight laced House and Motown are kings. Similar questions include, “What’s the name of that song mate?”, “Track ID on that repeat body vibrator?” and “Is this Afro House?” or “What was the name of that crunchy as fuck sound system destroyer you closed out with?”

Since the 2010s, a massive stream of club and dance music has evaded the marketing ploy of standard genre definitions. There were a few 2010s club music revival pages on social media in recent years, and channels created by Derek Gee and DaMetalMessiah are excellent pages for new and current music discovery. But this music I’m on about lives perfectly in the cracks between worlds - pairing the mechanical low-end weight of Western electronic production with the complex, often syncopated, spiritual rhythms of traditional global folklore.

On digital marketplaces like Discogs, metadata reading like an identity crisis: Electronic, Experimental, Leftfield, Tribal. What are we trying to describe here? We all know what House is, what Disco is—none of those words are descriptive in their nature. So why are Discogs and other platforms telling me that your music is experimental? Or from that of the leftfield? Which specific field are you referring to, exactly? House and Disco work because they are a universally understood social agreement.

There is a social agreement in place for this music, often referred to as ‘UK Bass’ - a genre with no strict borders; more of an ethos. A declaration that as long as the track respected the low end sub-bass of the British sound system heritage, the top line rhythm was free to fracture into whatever shape it it pleased. Though, as I point out, these records are still listed on platforms like discogs without the UK Bass adaptation - UK Bass, though being a broad term, fares itself better against House and Disco compared to ‘Leftfield’.

It might not seem like a big deal - it’s just music, right? But I think this is a highly academic problem.

In order to understand why this strain of music is so incredibly hard to pin down today, humour me as I attempt to refine this concept and outline the creative bottlenecks created for someone like myself and my peers. Let’s take a look at the exact moment the traditional lineage of UK electronic music completely shattered. Here I’ll map out how the dark, meditative bass of late-2000s London mutated into the aggressive, technical “drum workouts” of modern techno, with specific examples picked from my record collection.

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The Hardcore Continuum Deficit: The Missing 2000s Chapter

By now we know that the rave phenomenon of the 90s and early 00s was something to behold. Before we had the assortment of documentaries doing the rounds, The Wire and Simon Reynolds, a renowned music journalist, managed to provide excellent commentary on the idea of the Hardcore Continuum - it namely being “a particular set of relations based around pirate radio, dubplates, raves and record shops” here in the UK. This lineage was intact for a very long time, and in my opinion you could go as far back as street soul or e-soul, as DJ idols like Luke Una or Charlie Dark have opined on so many times.

If we do go back as far as the early 80s, it’s a generational baton-pass of UK soundsystem culture (preceding Lovers Rock, Acid House, Bleep etc): Hardcore Rave (1992), Ambient Jungle (1994), The State of Drum and Bass (1995), Two-Step Garage (1999), and Grime (and a little Dubstep) (2005). Those terms are the name to Reynolds’ articles and they show that it was a straight line driven by pirate radio and community rave culture.

But by the late 2000s and early 2010s, the continuum hit a wall. It didn’t just evolve; it completely shattered. As the underground music forums of the era like 555-5555 fiercely debated, the linear, chronological highway of UK rave music had fractured into a decentralized root network thanks to the internet. Skream, Benga, and Artwork made it to the festival circuit - seeing them at Reading Festival in 2010, absolutely cooked, was an interesting experience. Kano was also appearing in music videos dressed like a member of One Direction while wearing the Kanye sunglasses made famous from the 2008 Graduation campaign. The British club underground was knee-deep in its identity crisis. Some would argue that BBC Radio 1Xtra’s radio roster of the time was the start of this decline; others would say this happened when Boiler Room arrived.

As the original dubstep scene in Croydon became formulaic and co-opted by the mainstream (eventually forming into Brostep), a group of young producers stopped following the linear path that came with big branding. Instead, they began cross-pollinating the heavy bass pressure of London with sweeping emotion; a bright two-chord organ progression from Hyph Mngo, among other sound additions that were not formally part of the prior musical formulas. Fusion cuisine.

Journalists, lacking the vocabulary to describe it, lazily slapped on the term “Post-Dubstep”. If we think of “Post-Dubstep” being the lazy corporate name for the Croydon scene deconstructing itself, then “UK Bass” was the living, breathing reality of what came next. It was the birth of labels like Hessle Audio, Livity Sound, Hemlock, and Swamp81. These labels capitalised on the structural freedom of the bass music umbrella and brought us some of the most exciting club music I’ve ever heard. UK Club music was now so broad that you could find it’s influence in niche areas of YouTube, blog culture took it’s fair share too and some producers even took a more classical approach to making electronic music during this era. Personally, I was more excited by the stripped back skeletal side of this; the drums. 3+ hours of music in a club should be about tension and release, and a proper drum tool, deployed at the right time, are hypnotic pallete cleansers crucial to course of the night. To trace this particular fracture, I’ve picked out two items from my collection - one is a classic, now very expensive 12” cut of cult status, and the other is a mix CD courtesy of the FabricLive CD mix series:

• Mala – Anti War Dub (2006): This represents the absolute peak spiritual weight of the original continuum. It is a dub-wise prayer designed for the meditative, sub-heavy church of the legendary DMZ club nights. It is deep, smoke-filled, half-step, and rooted heavily in Jamaican soundsystem tradition.

• Shackleton – Fabric 55 (2010): For me, hearing Shackleton’s work was like experiencing a séance for the first time - listening to this CD at max volume in my Mazda 3 was insane! He took that sub bass architecture of dubstep but completely stripped away the traditional, predictable half-step rhythm. In its place, he injected a manic, paranoid, dizzying percussion network. For me, this was the precise moment UK Bass music stopped feeling like Jamaica; there were no slick R&B-style vocals from the UKG heyday anymore; it sounded more like music I imagine being played at a hippy drumming circle, but the hippies themselves are robots. Shackleton is widely cited in musicology as the bridge between traditional UK bass weight and what Reynolds calls “Scorched-Earth Tribalism.”

Bringing the Arc to 2020: How Pandemic Claustrophobia Accelerated the Underground Tempo

As I mentioned above, I have a real soft spot for this period of club music and culture. Labels like Whities (now, AD27), Young Turks, Dekmantel, Version, Time Dance had all entered the ring. It really was like peak Attitude Era WWE, but in underground music form. I was galavanting up and down the country and Europe, lucky enough to go and learn from DJ’s and Selectors I’d know would play a good amount of this music. By 2015, this percussive mutation had fully evolved into what the underground began calling the “drum workout” - a niche, within a niche, the melody of these tunes are completely dead. Chord progressions, non-existent. The music relied entirely on pure, rhythmic tension. The ultimate turning point came with the release of Randomer’s Kids Play EP - specifically the B-side weapon, “Juju”.

Going back to my pallete cleanser comment, these tunes are the engine of a club night and any decent party. They aren’t “songs” in a traditional sense; often broken, heavy, raw and complex in rhythmic structure. A good example of this is the opening track of Tim Reaper b2b Sherelle’s London Bridge broadcast on the fabriclondon YouTube channel - literally titled ‘Percussive DJ Tool’, here it is utilised as an introduction to a fast paced mix running at 160bpm and upward. The broadcast aired in April 2021 but by this point there was already a steady strain of this faster paced club music, compared to the norms of the decade before - bass music didnt automatically end up where it is now. It was a gradual experimentation of a growing group of music producers. It was Munich’s Skee Mask who proved to me that these rhythmic experiments had a long-term, mature future. His landmark Compro LP from 2019 had garnered cult like status among listeners on radio stations like NTS - FlybyVFR being a tune I heard played so many times during my work from home mornings. An artist whose music is well-known for its inducing of the “where do I categorise this?” in the grand scheme of things, it was the ISS005 release in 2020 that perfectly mirrored this. Showing his philosophy of treating electronic sub-genres not as rigid rules, but as modular puzzle pieces.

Take the two standout tracks from that release:

• “IT Danza”: A gem of a track. The absolute pinnacle of modern mechanical tribalism. In a similar vein to Shackleton, Skee Mask breaks entirely away from standard electronic loops, utilising a fractured, kinetic drum programming structure that at times feels anxiety inducing. A frantic tap dance or avant-garde jazz workout. A similar feeling to the horns heard during one of Theo Parrish’s marathon DJ sets. Yet the distinct bass weight anchoring it all firmly in place by the rounded heavy kick drum.

• “Reefer Madness”: A masterclass in genre-blurring. The unmistakable fusion of the dark, room-shaking bass pressure of classic 2006 dubstep with a rapid, constantly shifting 1990s breakbeat rhythm.

Skee Mask (from Munich), releasing music that pulls from London dubstep, Bristol bass, and Detroit house, proves that the continuum is no longer a British highway. It is a digital code shared globally. Both tracks sitting comfortably at 140bpm, the frenetic pace of music production during this era - literally, and figuratively(!), saw a swathe of releases showcasing this club music within the 140-160bpm range, as touched on earlier. Producers from other continents also now weighing in on this smorgasbord of club music culture. Labels like Awesome Tapes From Africa, GQom Oh!, Nyege Nyege Tapes were bringing to the world stage their own take on electronic music mutation. Genres like Amapiano, Singeli and Kuduro all stamping their place in dancefloor ritual. Over in South America producers like Badsista, Dengue Dengue Dengue and Florentino’s tunes could all be heard regularly on radio stations like RinseFM.

One can see here then how the idea of the Hardcore Continuum, once a localized, linear progression of UK soundsystem culture, could now be challenged some 20 years since the last articles by Reynolds*. Today’s well connected global landscape renders the concept of a strictly localized, genre-bound evolution obsolete, transforming it into a borderless, worldwide dialogue driven by instant, universal access to sonic sub-genres. Kassian have been producing fast paced techno utilising log drum elements that makes Amapiano so distinct, as an example.

_{*While Reynolds’ original formulations focussed strictly on the linear, localised UK rave highway, his late 2019 commentary on the rise of “Conceptronica” tracks the rise of abstract, high-art studio fetishism. Skee Mask’s catalog sits right on the fault line of this shift. His landmark 2018 Compro LP was recently spotlighted by Anthony Fantano in his IDM/Leftield starter pack, cementing its status as modern classic.}

The “Boiler Room Effect” Distortion

Coincidentally, the rise of this stripped-back, mechanical tribalism perfectly aligned with a major technological shift in how we consumed club culture: the global dominance of Boiler Room. Launched in 2010, Boiler Room did something radical by turning the DJ booth inside out and putting the crowd’s physical reaction on a screen for millions of viewers at home. When it came to showcasing the raw power of these drum workouts, and the various flavours of club music in general, Boiler Room became the ultimate lens, transforming the music through three distinct cultural mechanics:

• The Zoom-In on Syncopation: Before Boiler Room, a track like Randomer’s “Juju“, or O’Flynn’s drum tool big at the time “Tyrion”, was experienced exclusively in pitch-black, smoke-filled clubs like Plastic People. Before the pretension that arose circa 2016 onwards, Boiler Room brought high-definition cameras directly over the decks and inches from dancers’ faces. Those early uploads were so raw in their capture that audiences at home could visually see the crowd physically struggle to find the downbeat in a complex, shifting drum pattern right before the heavy sub-bass dropped to anchor them. That’s if you were paying attention during the broadcast and didn’t just have it on during pre-drinks with your pals. It turned the evolution of escapism into a compelling spectacle.

• The Crowd Reaction Economy: There were tons of viral video footage on Facebook during this time showing a commodification of the “rewind” and the peak reaction moment—such as Tasker spinning back MCDE’s copy of Juicy Sushi, or the crowd’s general vibe on those early recordings from the coverage of Dekmantel festival, DJ EZ’s moment, etc. While the ideas of Boiler Room’s online lifestyle influence and drum workouts are separate, these usually unspoken rhythmic tools are built like weapons. When a DJ drops a track that strips away all melody and leaves nothing but a pounding 909 kick and a wooden percussive loop, the visible chaos in the crowd footage proved that this intense minimalism is actually some of the most high-energy music on earth.

• Shifting the DJ’s Role to Priest like Shaman: By placing the DJ directly in the centre of a dense, interactive circle rather than on a distant, elevated stage (as seen in the Disco days of Paradise Garage), the platform visually restored the DJ to the ancient role of a tribal leader or electronic shaman guiding a communal, physical ritual. I often think of those pentecostal church ceremonies with everyone running up and down the isle shaking and screaming. Reynolds spoke of this phenomenon in Energy Flash in 1998, linking how the “combination of repetitive, hypnotic loops and ecstatic communal energy mimics ancient pagan rituals”. A stark contrast to the late 70s and 80s where the DJ was typically screened off or hidden albeit performing the same act.

The Medium of Discovery Dictates the Category

The reason the ‘drum workout’ dominated the digital lens so vividly is purely down to the medium of the time. The 2010s was the peak of internet club culture capitalisation. A Boiler Room set thrives on high-energy, physical shifts in rhythm. A stark, modular drum loop shifting patterns at 130 BPM (DJ EZ, Yung Singh etc) creates an instant, visual (and audible) reaction in a crowded room. A five-minute ambient jazz chord progression doesn’t translate the same way on a screen. Today the overall music scene has taken things many steps further with the advent of channels like My Analogue Journal and it’s textured bohemian aesthetic; but more on that in part 3.

The virality of early Boiler Room tended to fetishise the heaviest, most aggressive ‘bangers’ because those were the tracks that made crowds lose their minds on camera; yet, all these one off edits and VIP’s completely discounts the beautiful, melodic, and deeply musical side of this exact same scene. Because this movement was inherently genre-less, it did not have a single rulebook. It naturally allowed artists like Floating Points and Joy Orbison to run a parallel path of heavy emotion and gorgeous harmony.

• The Co-Existence of Beautiful Melodies: Sam Shepherd (Floating Points) has been a staple of this scene since it’s inception, and still is, yet he was also releasing tracks like Elaenia in 2015 and Kuiper, a follow up in 2016. Both on his own imprint Pluto, these are lush ambient tunes, with jazz inflected chord progressions and the sweeping synth work on Kuiper is like something out of a film score. Alongside him, Peter O’Grady better known as Joy Orbison arguably kick started all this with Hyph Mngo and is one of the most notorious in the scene to this day. His tracks are well known for being functional club weapons turned into anthems - Ellipsis in 2014 or his visceral collaborations with Boddika mostly rely on soaring, soulful and melancholic vocal chops - a production style I’m really fond of this scene for. Tune’s like Hackney Parrot are the perfect example, albeit by a different producer. The drum workouts I spoke of earlier was still alive and thriving throughout all of this, but now you also had labels like Hessle Audio taking things even further with the release of deeply strange music like Ploy’s “Sala One Five” - an abstract techno bobbler; a tune like this has a similar impact during, say, the earlier hours of the club night; when things haven’t gone full tilt yet. These like minded labels and producers were essentially bringing a Selectors ethos to what had become a very young scene - essentially teaching new DJ’s, club goers and the like that there is a discipline that needs to be respected when programming music in this way. The sounds and technology were new, but you had to maintain elements of the lineage that played a part in mutating the sound, and culture, to where it is today.

• The Leap to YouTube: It was also on YouTube where the melodic fracture of this genre-less culture was thriving. Channels like Eton Messy and Majestic Casual had started emerging, uploading songs from relatively unknown artists relying heavily on aspirational, highly polished indie-pop, “messy but expensive” lifestyle in the imagery, eventually leading us to the viral DJ set by Alison Wonderland on Mixmag some 11 years ago. The two channels acted as major launchpads for the commercial UK house and future-bass boom of 2012–2015 (think Disclosure, Bondax, and FKJ). They curated music designed to transition seamlessly from a bedroom laptop to a mainstream festival mainstage. For me this was the first sign of music being sold as a ‘vibe’ or ‘atmosphere’ - the lo-fi house scene, hugely popular on the tumblr blogging circuit, had not existed yet. I had placed the production of artists like Floating Points and Burial also into this camp for during my music discovery of that period - the stories of these individuals weren’t as wide spread as they are today. The Majestic Casual and Eton Messy era acted as its own microcosm for what was happening in the wider electronic music scene - artists like Bondax whose early work could be found on platforms like Myspace, inadvertently gave birth to the ‘algorithm vs tastemaker’ paradigm - the underground had to flee this space because the “vibe” became corporate, diluted background music… eventually leading us to Spotify’s ‘Chill House’ playlist, but for at least two years this music was the mainstay of places like Tumblr and online forums.

• For The Heads: This exact aesthetic bottleneck birthed its own underground digital counter-curation. Helmed by tastemaker Ian DPM, platforms like Definite Party Material helped carve out a vital space on the fringes of the internet as a pure archive ‘for the heads’. Dodging the polished lifestyle setups of mainstream music vloggers, the channel relies on a less is more ethos to showcase specific, blistering club music on the fringes of boundary pushing. It treats the tracklist not as a well polished playlist, but as a ‘enter if you dare’ for brave selectors looking for exclusive track ID’s, providing a reliable platform for the underground. Boiler Room were well known for tracklist gatekeeping in the comment section - to this day you’ll see on the older broadcasts “Get the full tracklist at: https://blrrm.tv…” yet I’ve never once actually seen a tracklist on their website.

Platforms like YouTube, Tumblr and internet forums were vital during this period and, as evidenced above, often grouped things by visual aesthetic rather than strict tempo or geographic scene. It made total sense for 21 year old me to bundle the melancholic, rainy-day texture of Burial & Four Tet’s “Moth” into the same mental “vibe” folder as Majestic Casual - I had no idea how deep the history would run when I eventually started reading up on them more and more. Could we say then that the medium of music discovery dictates how we categorise this in the human brain? There was a lot going on around this time - it would be remiss of me not to mention Feel My Bicep’s blog in this mixture of club culture of the 2010’s too. An underground MP3 sharing space originally hosted on Blogspot, the flavour here was dusty 90s house chords and obscure Italo disco for the heads. This blog-house energy collided head-on with everything I mentioned above; it truly was a golden era for club music.

The Structural Matrix: Why Is It So Hard to Categorise?

Ok, let me get my white board out and break down the structural architecture of track layouts. Remember, Jake from Accounting asked me what music I play. When you compare UK Bass to mainstream genres, you quickly see that it purposefully sits right in the cracks of the grid:

┌───────────────────────────┐ │ [ MAINSTREAM TECH HOUSE ] │ └─────────────┬─────────────┘ ▼ • Standard 4/4 Kick • Static, Linear Loops • Predictable Energy ───────────────────────────── ┌───────────────────────────┐ │ [ TRADITIONAL JAZZ / GLOBAL POLYRHYTHMS ] │ └─────────────┬─────────────┘ ▼ • Organic Polyrhythms • Live Instrumentation • Cyclical, Shared Flow ═════════════════════════════ ┌───────────────────────────┐ │ [ UK BASS ]│ └─────────────┬─────────────┘ ▼ Fuses the mechanical loops of Techno with the complex, syncopated off-beat soul of Jamaican Dub, UKG, Grime, Dubstep, and Kuduro ad infinitum.

Mainstream Tech House - let’s take Maya Jane Coles’ remix of 4th Measure Men’s 4 You as an example;

The structure relies on a highly predictable, static loop with a rigid 4/4 kick drum and call and response vocal sample. It is linear, safe, and easily packaged by streaming algorithms or festival programmers for mass consumption.

Afrobeat, Traditional Global Rhythms and, most importantly, Jazz, are built on highly complex, layered polyrhythms, syncopation, and call-and- response dynamics.

It is cyclical and deeply participatory. Tony Allen, Fela Kuti, Ezra Collective.

The Genreless Matrix Means Total Variation. When you mix London sound-system bass, Detroit techno, Chicago house, and UK garage, you aren’t creating a new genre with strict borders. You’re creating a sandbox. Because of this, one producer might focus purely on the polyrhythms of UK Funky, resulting in a stark, tribal “drum workout” (think early Livity Sound or Untold, Seiji on the “Broken Beat” end of things). Another producer might take the exact same ingredients but focus on the soulful, chord-heavy legacy of Detroit techno and garage, resulting in something deeply melodic like Leon Vynehall’s Music for the Uninvited in 2014. Both belong to the same scene, play the same club nights, and buy each other’s records, but their music sounds completely different. The UK Bass “Drum Workout” strips away the predictable tech-house template but keeps the raw, mechanical electronic texture of techno. Then, it injects the dizzying, off-beat syncopation of traditional afro-rhythms or dancehall patterns. Because it lives perfectly in the tension between Western, grid-based studio techno and complex global syncopation, standard music terminology completely breaks down. It is too techno for the ‘World Music’ crowd, and too polyrhythmic for the standard tech-house clubber.

In Vol. 2 of “What Genre Is This, Actually?”, we are leaving the dark UK club rooms behind and traveling directly to the source. We will dig deep into the un-remixed folklore roots, exploring how labels like Sofrito, Kalita, and Awesome Tapes From Africa archive the sacred rhythms of church, community rejoice, and global heritage.

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No long introduction from me on this one, the liner notes are a 20 minute read and Dave (DJ Okapi) has done a sterling job of telling the story. I visited Afrosynth Records (formally in Maboneng, JHB) in 2017 and picked up a copy of the compilation then.

I met Dave the year before in Peckham at a Boiler Room event. He put me on the guest list after chatting on Soundcloud and I proceeded to call in sick at my corporate job 2 days in a row to attend. 2 days to make it seem believable.

We subsequently brought Dave down for a night at Camden Bar Westbourne - a night of dancing to all sorts of (mainly South) African sounds and one of the nights more anchored in my hazy memory.

I hope you enjoy the notes - I did. It tells a story of suvival for minorities during apartheid, escapism and technological defiance during the global cultural boycott of the time.

Oh, and the compilation is approaching it’s 10th anniversary.

S/o Cultures of Soul.

BOOGIE BREAKDOWN: SOUTH AFRICAN SYNTH-DISCO 1980-1984

"In 1984 the world would be at war," sings Neville Nash on'Breakdown'. The song's apocalyptic lyrics may not have been a conscious reference to South Africa's volatile political situation at the time (according to the artist) as much as a nod to the long-awaited arrival of that Orwellian year, but in reality the country at the southern tip of Africa was quickly going up in flames.

Opposition was mounting both locally and abroad to the system of apartheid that attempted to segregate by law and by force all aspects of life in South Africa according to race and ethnicity. Central to apartheid ideology and policy was the notion of separate development, which held that the interests of all groups were best served by keeping them separate along prescribed racial and linguistic lines. To implement this, the government attempted to exercise control over public life and culture.

As the popular struggle to defeat apartheid mounted, the mechanisms of state power grew increasingly brutal, fueled by religious conviction and Cold War paranoia. By the mid- 1980s, a popular uprising was underway. A state of emergency was declared on July 20, 1985, putting parts of the country under martial law. This was lifted in March of 1986, only to be reinstated throughout the whole country a few months later on June 12, 1986 - a decade nearly to the day after police opened fire on protesting Soweto schoolchildren on 16 June 1976, bringing the brutality of apartheid to the world's attention.

The militarization of the state during the '80s made it difficult for South African musicians to practice their craft. Laws restricted black musicians from moving freely in urban areas and prevented artists of different races playing together (and those of the same race playing to mixed audiences. At the same time, the government had long used music to promote apartheid by actively promoting certain music that was seen to encourage separate development and censoring music that did not. Its primary means of doing both was the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), particularly its network of radio stations, each aimed at specific language groups.

The combination of repressive laws and government interference in the South African music industry made it impossible for musicians to write, record and perform whatever and wherever they wanted. Besides a creative climate fraught with political and financial restrictions, intimidation at the hands of police was common, with touring around the country (let alone beyond its borders proving a risky endeavor.

"We were slaves in disguise!" musician 'Funky' Masike Mohapi told me in December of 2009. "Apartheid killed us, man, it killed us. I'm telling you, if it was not for apartheid, I'm sure most of us would have gone far, very far..."

Incongruously, the local recording industry was coming into its own in the '80s, with companies like Gallo, EMI and a growing number of successful independent labels churning out millions of LPs for listeners who were embracing local artists, including those who successfully fused American soul music with local influences. By 1983, with the release of Brenda & The Big Dudes' Weekend Special' (borrowing heavily from American funk acts BB&Q Band and Sharon Redd), the synth-fueled 'bubblegum' era had begun.

With the country's black political leaders and organizations having long been banned, exiled, imprisoned or murdered, musicians emerged during this time as central figures in the anti-apartheid struggle, effectively using their music to educate and socialize (as well as entertain) the people. Their effectiveness in doing so culminated in 1985 at the historic Concert In The Park at Ellis Park stadium in central Johannesburg, which drew a mixed audience of well over 100,000 to enjoy music by South Atrica's biggest black, white and mixed race musicians.

Internationally too, musicians played a central role in the fight against apartheid, with many writing anti-apartheid songs (such as the collaborative single 'Sun City' in the USA in 1985) or putting their weight behind anti-apartheid causes (such as the concerts at Wembley Stadium in London in 1988 and 1990).

The structure of the global music industry, with South Africa at its periphery, aided by the long-running cultural boycott (enforced by the United Nations and various anti-apartheid organizations around the world) prevented the vast majority of South African pop music of that era from ever being heard outside the country (with several notable exceptions). Today most of this music has never been digitized and risks being lost to future generations.

The songs selected for this compilation don't necessarily represent the biggest hits of the era (some were; others tanked). They are simply a small sample of South African pop music from the first half of the decade, by key artists in the often-overlooked story of South African music. From the electric soul of The Cannibals and Harari to Neville Nash's funked-up makeover and the rise of synths and drums machines with new stars like Benjamin Ball, Al Etto and Don Laka, these are songs that remain so fresh today that they demand to be heard - on vinyl.

These are also songs that would soon usher in a host of imitators. During this time the influence of American pop acts - most notably Michael Jackson and Kool & The Gang - on South African pop music is obvious. Lyrics were typically in English (to ensure radio play across the various 'ethnic' radio stations), basslines were funky, and producers strived to use the latest synth sounds of the day.

This would soon change in the second half of the decade, when local artists and producers managed to craft a more indigenous sound and local artists succeeded in outselling their American counterparts for the first time. These tracks, hand-picked from between 1980 and 1984, are where it all began.

HARARI - 'PARTY' AND 'GOOD VIBES' (1980)

Formed by schoolmates in the late '60s in Soweto, the Beaters changed their name to Harari after a three-month tour to Zimbabwe in the mid-70s and quickly established themselves as one of the hottest bands in South Africa, backing touring American stars like Percy Sledge, Brook Benton and Wilson Pickett. In 1978 Hugh Masekela invited the band to the USA, but on the eve of their departure leader Selby Ntuli died. The tour fell through and drummer Sipho 'Hotstix' Mabuse took charge, leading the band in a more commercial, flamboyant direction.

On vocals and guitar (replacing Ntuli and guitarist Selby ‘Saitana' Nzimande', who also died under mysterious circumstances), in stepped Masike Mohapi, a rock-obsessed axeman with super-charged vocal cords. In line with the band's penchant for groovy nicknames, Hotstix promptly dubbed him 'Funky' and the nickname stuck. "I used to play funk, you know. My guitar playing was funky when I joined Harari," he told me at his house in Pimville, Soweto in 2009.

Harari's biggest album, 1980's Heatwave, is a landmark Afro-rock release, polished enough to later be released in the USA, where Harari signed a two-album deal with A&M Records, which invited them to the country to remaster the album for American audiences. In 1982, two years after its release in South Africa, 'Party' hit number 45 on the American Disco Hot 100. Another track from the same album, 'Good Vibes,' shows off the band's organ-fueled sound and Mohapis inimitable vocals.

Harari's hugely popular live shows, complete with the band member's trademark space-cadet spandex, reflect the dizzy escapism the band offered audiences during a time that otherwise offered people very little to celebrate.

The band's 1981 follow-up Flying Out was a poorer effort, and they disbanded at the end of 1982, although new line-ups continued to release albums under Mabuse's leadership. The original members parted ways and launched their own successful careers, most notably Mabuse and bassist 'Om' Alec Khaoli (with Umoja), as well as 'Funky' Masike, who had some minor hits in the mid-'80s.

THE CANNIBALS - 'HEY TONIGHT’ AND 'WE KEEP ON KEEPING ON' (1981)

Founded in 1972 and led by Ray Phiri on guitar, the initially instrumental Cannibals in 1975 paired up with soul singer Jacob 'Mpharanyana' Radebe on producer West Nkosi's advice. As Radebe's backing band, they recorded a string of hits over the next four years. Radebe died at the peak of his fame. As with Harari, the frontman's death forced the remaining members to change course.

Released in 1981, Put Your Dancing Shoes On is eight tracks of rock-solid disco-funk, their second album since Radebe's death. It features long-forgotten classics like 'Hey Tonight,' 'We Got Them Dancing', 'Get Off My Way' and 'We Keep On Keeping On.' In the words of journalist Elliot Makhaya, who wrote the original sleeve notes, "Unless you have iron socks on, this item will get ya strutting across the dance-floor!"

"It's like a feast of cannibals. But not the feasting on their own kind. It's just a musical feast, dad! The Cannibals burn brightly and have proved inexhaustible. They deliver a soul-brew to warm ya aching soul."

Importantly, Put Your Dancing Shoes On marks the beginning of Phiri's career as a lead vocalist. Behind him was Ephraim Hlophe on keyboards, Richard Shongwe on bass and drummer Isaac Mtshali, with Mac Mathunjwa as a 'guest' string and synthesizer arranger. The album was produced by the late Marks Mankwane of Mahlathini & the Mahotella Queens.

The Phiri-led version of The Cannibals links the days of South Africa’s ‘Soul Explosion’ in the late 1970s to the funked-up early 80s. “We started hearing funk bands and things like that,” Phiri told me during an interview in his hometown of Nelspruit in 2010. “It was more based on the groove, so it was more interesting.”

Struggling without their famous frontman Mpharanyana, The Cannibals' fanbase dwindled. They released one more album, Total Rejection, that year. "I was thinking, people are so stupid," remembers Ray. "Why can't they see that the guy became a superstar through my songs that I was writing? The Cannibals were already there, he came and joined the Cannibals!"

The Cannibals soon broke up, merging with members of The Movers to become the mighty Stimela (after a short stint as Kumasi), a few years later playing a central role in Paul Simon's Grammy-winning Graceland album.

NEVILLE NASH - PERFECT LOVE' AND 'BREAKDOWN' (1984)

Neville Nash was one of the funkiest guys on the South African scene since the 1970s, years before the rise of bubblegum. After parting ways with his band The Miracles, he went solo and released a string of popular but relatively tame soul albums, like 1980's Kind Hearted Man, Wind Me Up and Neville Nash in 1981, and 1982's Diamonds & Pearls and Solid Gold. During this time some of his singles were released in Europe, with one, 'It's a Real Good Feeling', narrowly missing the charts in the Netherlands in March of 1981.

In 1983 Neville trimmed the 'fro, grew a'stache and cranked up the synths, releasing the single 'Love Me Now/Funky Feelin' ahead of arguably his finest album, 1984's Teaser. Tracks here include the terminally funky 'Perfect Love' and 'Breakdown,' as well as 'One of Those Nights,' a hit he famously performed live at the historic Concert in the Park in 1985.

One of the pioneers of multiracial 'crossover' music, Nash defied apartheid to work with a variety of black, white and mixed race musicians on the album. Players on Teaser include drummer Isaac Mtshali (The Cannibals) and his Stimela bandmates Lloyd Lelosa (synths) and Ntokozo Zungu (guitar), as well as Al Etto and Cecil Mitch on backing vox. Mac Mathunjwa on Fender Rhodes and synths, and Mike Faure on sax. Programming was by Adrian Strydom, who famously owned the only Fairlight in the country at the time.

"I wanted a little bit of a dancing, uptempo thing to break away from the slow stuff," Nash told me during a telephone interview shortly before the release of this compilation. "That was the time of disco and all that, so I wanted to come up with something new." Part of the success of Nash's makeover was his constant quest for the latest sounds. "At that time, most of the guys who were into new sounds, I would approach them and ask, 'What would the new sound be in the next few years? We would listen and choose. It's what I feel; you don't know if it's a Korg or Yamaha. My concentration was more on the vocal. The producer would normally come up with the sound, and I would say 'not this one, or that one.' It's what my ear tells me, what's inside. Sometimes I would make a sound with my mouth. When a song comes to me, I would hear maybe a Moog or a bass sound down there, and something on top. I hear it. I would explain it to the keyboard player, and he would find the sounds."

"Thank God I've got a good ear, it helps in the studio. I can listen to a song and hear immediately. If someone had to sing something, I can immediately hear if he or she needs teaching on breathing. Like a doctor would know exactly what to prescribe to you!"

Teaser was followed by the single What's Your Name? What's Your Number? (1985) and Why? (1986). Today Nash still regards himself as a soul man through and through. "There's been soul music from the '60s even up to now. Rock 'n roll was taking over in the 70s, but soul was still there. Even through the disco '80s, soul was there. I can't say I can label my music, but I just try to put in a lot of feeling. When I sing, I try to do it with everything I have, which people will call soul."

BENJAMIN BALL - FLASH A FLASHLIGHT AND I JUST KEEP DANCING'

Born Benjamin Msane in Durban, Benjamin Ball grew up in Cape Town and learned the guitar as a teenager before moving to Johannesburg to pursue his music career, initially doing shows on the mines alongside the popular mbaqanga group Abakwhenyana, under the guidance of producer Simon Ngwenya. He then joined the bubblegum hitmakers CJB. Inspired by the burgeoning reggae scene as well as the latest pop trends, together they recorded some long-lost tracks, one of which was banned by the SABC, a common occurrence at the time.

Jaded by the threat of obscurity and censorship, Ball went solo. In late 1983 he teamed up with two of the local industry's top producers of the time, Blondie Makhene and John Galanaks, to record a new track of reggae-tinged disco music, titled ‘Flash a Flashlight.’ The single came out a few months after Brenda & The Big Dudes' 'Weekend Special' and soon became the second anthem of the bubblegum era.

"Blondie had just done 'Weekend Special' and after that he wanted a new artist," Ball told me in 2015. "He came with me to John Galanakis. We programmed the music there, the whole drumbeat. Then everything just came together. I came and started singing the words, just like that, out of my heart - banging them, one way. After that, the song just went... It was not so long actually: it took one day. John is the main guy who gave it the groove. He hit that style and when I started singing, he was like 'wow!' It was Blondie and John and me, the three of us."

The song became a massive hit, rivaling 'Weekend Special’. "It was played by the SABC on all the stations. I was doing interviews all over the country; I went to all the radio stations. When I came to Pretoria, the album sold gold. One record bar sold 25,000 units of ‘Flash a Flashlight.' They gave me, a gold disc. Just in one record bar in Pretoria it made gold. That guy was selling it like cakes! Everybody wanted that song, it was going like mad." The song's popularity led to live performances all over the country. "When I came with 'Flash a Flashlight,' I couldn't get off the stage. People didn't want to me leave. They were throwing panties on the stage. They were going crazy! I had to do the song over and over because I didn't have another track. So I sat down to start working on a follow-up, and I came up with the album.

Ball employed the help of top soul group The Black Five, which included singer Nana 'Coyote' Motijoane (later of Stimela), to back him live and to help write new material. ‘Flashlight' was soon included in a full-length album, Paulina (1984), which unsurprisingly went gold, establishing Ball as one of the leading solo acts of the day.

Another song from the same album, 'I Just Keep Dancing,' is a similarly styled synth and drum machine-fueled track that also reveals Ball as one of South Africa's earliest rappers, well before the first traces of hip-hop later in the decade.

DON LAKA - I WANNA BE MYSELF AND 'LET'S MOVE THE NIGHT' (1984)

A classically trained multi-instrumentalist, Don Laka began his career in the '70s with The Flood before joining seminal jazz outfit Sakhile in the early '80s. Already an established musician by this time, Laka was at the forefront of exploring the latest synth sounds of the day. "I was one of the first people in this country to use electronics," he said when we met in Johannesburg in early 2016. "I was introduced to synthesizers by my friend from Harari, Alec Khaoli. That was my first experience. I came from a jazz band, Sakhile, where I was only playing Fender Rhodes, that was the closest... but I had a computer, a Commodore 64 that used for programming.”

"When I left Sakhile, I went and joined another band, played in a club in Swaziland I think. When I came back, Alec called me and said he wanted a keyboard player for Umoja. They'd just recorded an album in L.A. When he said I must come and play keyboards, my thinking of keyboards was only one thing: Fender Rhodes, nothing else. Then I get to his studio, I see an Oberheim, I see a vocoder, see a Juno, I see a Prophet 5... I said, "What are these things?" He said, "This is what they used in the US to make Umoja's music." He brought them here. I said, "I've never played these things and I'm not gonna play this stuff!" He said, "No, this is the sound!"

"I learnt about having my own studio - once you have your own production at home, you can do anything. I started learning to play the synths. I was amazed that they could emulate an orchestra - I've always loved orchestral music. I could program the stuff. I could make it sound like whatever I wanted it to. It was expensive, but we were making money then... A lot of guys were not programming, but I made sure that I get my own sounds by programming, so my synths will always stay fresh."

Constantly striving for the latest sounds, Laka's early explorations culminated in his debut solo album, I Wanna Be Myself. "I went and did an album, recorded tracks at Downtown Studios [in downtown Johannesburg). Most of the album, except for 'Let's Move the Night,' was done straight with a Fairlight at a different studio, of the guy that owned the Fairlight, Adrian Strydom. He was the only guy in the country who had a Fairlight, I think on the continent."

"This was the first commercial record made on a Fairlight in this country. I remember the other instrument used was Jupiter 8, which was a very expensive Roland synth, and I used a Juno-60. I would layer them. The only thing I programmed was the drums. You can hear the snare sound, I think it was a mix of some cracked bottles and something that we just mixed."

"When FM sound came, it took me away from the big analogue sounds of the Juno's and stuff. So I did this with a D7 and I programmed with my Yamaha - they had a computer that was dedicated to music. I programmed in there, and played my keyboards. The whole album was done on FM sounds... It had FM synthesis, so very hard sounds. We did the whole album with FM synthesis. That's how I got to understand FM synthesis and analogue synthesis."

Holed up in the studio, Laka remembers getting special input on I Wanna Be Myself from master bassist Bakithi Khumalo, who would also feature prominently on Graceland. "I remember I played all the instruments on it. I played bass, I played all. Bakithi walked into the studio and I said, 'You know, I'm not a bass player. Baks, do you wanna do it?' And he nailed it, in one take!"

As with the other tracks on this compilation, Laka's music from this era shied away from the political, a trend that would change drastically in subsequent years. "It was just a pop album," he confirms. "l would just keep my lyrics [non-political] because I'd been in trouble with government back then. In the '70s they banned two of my songs... I decided the only way for me to survive is either to hide the message, which in the late '70s I was doing a lot, but this was just straight disco.... It was played on radio all the time, both these tracks actually. It was on all the stations."

Following the success of I Wanna Be Myself, Laka went on to form a new group, Image (later Ymage), with members of Khaoli's defunked Umoja, which enjoyed success into the early '90s, at which time he established himself further as a producer and boss at seminal kwaito label Kalawa Jazmee. As a musician he has continued to release regular solo releases, returning to jazz and also venturing into classical. He remains a prolific composer and in 2016 played a central role in convincing the SABC to institute a policy that forces more local music to be played on the airwaves.

AL ETTO - YOU'VE GOT THE LOVE' AND HOLD ON TO LOVE' (1984)

Born Aldridge Aden Etto in 1953 in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, Al Etto was raised in Port Elizabeth and later settled in Cape Town. "I grew up with soul music, funky music - the Wilson Picketts, the Otis Reddings, the Jackson Five, that era," he told me in a telephone interview in September 2012. "The Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger - that was wicked stuff, loved that stuff."

A bankable solo artist, Etto had a string of hits in the late '70s and early '80s, including a European release of ‘This Ain't America'. He's also credited as the man who in 1978 discovered Brenda Fassie, who went on to become the countrys biggest pop star. "Brenda was a very funky musician herself," Etto recalled.

Amongst numerous 12" singles, Etto released a four-track album in 1984: Party Night. It included 'You've Got the Love" (also released as a single) and the downtempo "Hold On To Love', featuring a characteristically funky bottom end, searing synths and MJ-inspired vocals.

Etto was also highly regarded as a songwriter and a producer with an ear for innovation. He found some international success by writing child star Ricardo's 'I Love You Daddy,' released in Europe in 1986, leading to tours of Denmark and Japan. Etto also wrote 'Children of the World', a benefit song for UNICEF chosen as the theme song for the final World Popular Song Festival in Tokyo in 1989, where it was performed by Stevie Wonder and others. During his 40-year career Etto was also part of influential groups like The Invaders, The Rockets and Groove Station, and worked as a producer and songwriter for countless other artists.

Seldom one for outspoken political commentary, Etto's music was all about putting a smile on your dial. "You listen to all the tracks l've written in my life as a musician, I'm more on the positive side of doing things," he explained. "I would write beautiful love songs, I'd write a gospel song... I'm there to do positive music, not negative music. I'm not there to diss whoever there is to diss." At one point during the interview Etto was moved to tears as the memories flooded back.

Al Etto passed away in September 2013. This album is dedicated to his memory, as well as to 'Funky' Masike Mohapi (who died in September 2014) and the countless other musicians who left an indelible mark on South Africa's cultural landscape during the turbulent early 1980s and are no longer with us today. Let the funk live on!

Dave Durbach / DJ Okapi

Johannesburg, June 2016

www.afrosynth.blogspot.com

Last week we kicked off taking a closer look into the Dekmantel Selectors series. Liner notes diving into Danilo Plessow’s soulful inaugral release, and also briefly touching on the YouTube mini-series. For part two we shift from the warm tones of Germany and move towrad the mechanical new wave pulse of Amsterdam.

Selectors 002, compiled by Young Marco, was released in February 2017. I picked it up fresh off a trip to South Africa, diving head first into what was already an exciting chapter of my own DJ journey. While my bags were packed with synth disco records from Johannesburg - a story I’ll share as a brief detour next week - my head was immediately turned by the cold, concrete energy of this compilation.

It quickly became a staple in my radio shows and soundtracking late night cocktail bars across London and Europe. It never quite worked in Bournemouth; this music belonging to a moody, hazy atmosphere. It evokes graffiti laden spots in Hackney Wick or the fog of smoking areas outside venues like Amsterdam’s Radio Radio in the dead of winter. It’s rustic, artsy, and electronic to it’s core.

For me, this compilation was an entry point into New Wave and proto-techno discovery, with the first half of releases leaning heavily into the 80’s in terms of original release date. At the time, Dekmantel was heavily shaping the local sound with releases from the likes of Palms Trax, Juju & Jordash, Tom Trago and Awanto 3. While many of my own records from these artists lean more toward house, they all shared a distinct, brooding Amsterdam vibe - one that perforates the entire tracklist of this comp, managing to unite a global cast of underground and anonymous artists under a single cohesive identity. The mark of a true selector.

To truly understand the DNA of this mix, let’s dive into the liner notes to look at the eccentric digger behind it. The notes reveal a curator who has spent a lifetime operating on the fringes of the dancefloor;

Chapter 2: The Leftfield Oddity — Young Marco (Selectors 002)

Young Marco (a.k.a. Marco Sterk) certainly doesnt come from a standard DJ background. Growing up, he was a skate rate who loved American post-hardcore and ‘90s hip-hop as much as early Warp Records. Although he’s been affiliated over the years with Amsterdam institutions such as Rush House and Red Light Records, there’s no question he’s always followed his own path, even when playing his favorite records meant that he was occasionally clearing dancefloors. Things are different these days, of course, as Sterk now regularly plays around the globe and has been widely hailed for his diffing prowess and uncanny ability to pluck jams out of genres to pluck jams out of genres, eras and geographies that even veteran DJs will often ignore. Still, his entry in the Selectors series isn’t meant to be a collection of pricey rarities. “Where’s the fun in that?” he explains. “Anybody with an internet connection can check what flavor-of-the-month records are in demand.” Instead, he’s put together a collection of tracks that represent not only how he plays music, but also how he makes music himself. The songs here are melodic, electronic and bound together by a refreshing sense of naiveté. Nothing sounds overly calculated; the tunes here span several decades and include dollar-bin records, avant-garde records, club records and yes, a few things that collector types have likely been looking to get their hands on. It’s not meant to be a grand statement, as Marco would rather provide an honest snapshot of his musical tastes and share a few of his favorite tracks and artists in the process. With an eye toward finding out how these tunes landed in his record bag, we asked him to explain why each song means something to him and how they all contribute to his craft.

DANNY BOY – “DISKOMIX (DISKO VERSION)” A true Dutch unclassic. Not a lot of people seem to know that Danny Boy was one of the pioneers of Dutch hip-hop. After making a slightly novelty 7” when he was a kid, he dropped this, produced by his dad Han Grevelt and Paul Natte. In contrast to his first record, this is a piece of pure, bad-ass electronic funk. The track never really got the recognition it deserved, but this record still sounds timeless to me. I always switched between playing the vocal and instrumental, but this is a special unreleased version merging both cuts. Plus it has samples of cats meowing! What else do you want??

Danny Boy - Diskomix (Disko Version) / Written & Produced by Paul Natte & Han Grevelt / 1984, Klaver Vier (Boni Records).

GERRIT HOEKEMA – “TELEVISIEWERELD” As “proto house” as it comes. This record originally came out on a compilation by short-lived Dutch foundation Pop Eye / Stichting Muziek Nieuws. Gerrit Hoekema never released many records; he only appeared on a few comps, so this was a pretty hard one to trace. Gerrit Hoekema is a pretty common Dutch name! I sent everyone by that name I could source a message, but I got no replies. Finally, through the help of some friends, we got in touch with the guy who put this out through the foundation. I love the pure naive sound of this track, the floating melodies and the little, hard-working 606 doing what it does best.

Gerrit Hoekema - Televisiewereld / Written by Gerrit Hoekema / Produced by Nico Selen & Gerrit Hoekema / 1988, Pop Eye / Stichting Muziek Nieuws.

THE FORCE DIMENSION – “200 FA (EXTENDED MIX)” Some Dutch voodoo EBM action from a quite prolific group. I don’t think I have ever played this without someone coming up to me and frantically asking what it was. I love the brutish percussion, but it also has a trippy, introspective side to it and that killer DX bass just cuts through everything. I always wanted to make an extended version of this, and I was lucky that they gave me permission to do it for this compilation. Dankjewel!

The Force Dimension - 200 FA (Extended Mix) / Written & produced by R. van Dick & T. de Groot / 1989, KK-Records.

FRANK YOUNGWERTH – “WHIRR (ORIGINAL MIX)” A perfect balance between percussive drive, chunks of emotion and weird freakout synths. This one has been in the bag for a long time. I bought it in one of those shops where you can’t listen to anything; I didn’t know anything about it, but the weird, hand-drawn label just looked perfect. I love taking a gamble based purely on the artwork, including questionable artwork. The joy of getting home and finding out something is awesome is way more exciting than going through a big stack of curated records in some boring boutique record shop.

Frank Youngwerth - Whirr (Original Mix) / Written & produced by Frank Youngwerth / 1992, Viola Da Gamba.

GHOSTWRITERS – “SWIZZLE” A remnant of the legendary Haarlemmerstraat listening sessions, where a select group of friends who would later start Red Light Radio, Red Light Records, Music from Memory and more all came together for the first time. We would listen to the weirdest stuff in varying states of consciousness. I remember hearing this for the first time and being completely blown away. I may or may not have blurted out, “GUYS, this is the SOURCE.” This is just a total trip. It was all recorded at Don Buchla’s house, which is also pretty cool.

Ghostwriters - Swizzle / Written & produced by Charles Cohen & Jeff Cain / 1981, Red Music (an imprint of Fundamental Records).

GREEN BAIZE – “SPICK AND SPAN” Early Italian house is a big inspiration for me. There was magic little era in the early ‘90s when all the stars, gear and ideas aligned, resulting in a sound that was inspired by Chicago and Detroit, but still distinctly Italian. But even within this niche, this track is in a category all its own. I’ve had some emotional end-of-the-night moments with this one. Yeah, it has a synthy flute solo, but man, what a flute solo.

Green Baize - Spick and Span / Written by A. Neri & M. Baroni, produced, arranged and mixed by: A. Lee, M. Baroni, A. Dodici, P. Pierette / 1992, Oversky Records.

LARRY HEARD – “DOLPHIN DREAM” A track from my favorite Larry Heard album. Obviously, he is one of the best that’s ever done it, not to mention a huge inspiration, so I had to have a Larry track on here. I found this one in a random CD shop in Crete many years ago. They had a few records on the wall, basically four random trance records and this one, which was unpriced—I think it was more decor than stock. Two of the trance records were apparently worth quite a bit, so I told the shop owner, “A couple of these records go for a quite a bit of money. If I show you how to sell them, will you sell me the Larry album?” He agreed, I helped him set up a Discogs account and he gave me both the record and a hug. I came back a few days later and he had already sold one of the trance ones for a decent amount.

Larry Heard - Dolphin Dream / Written & produced by Larry Heard / 1994, Alleviated Records.

RAY TRACING – “MARIOPAINT” Irdial Discs is one of my favorite labels, not just because of what they put out, but also because of the way they put it out. Cryptic communication and a huge oddball catalog, with no regard for genre. This nutty digi-dub track was made using nothing but a Super Nintendo and a delay. I love records that were made with the most minimal means; you really don’t need any fancy gear to make a great piece of music. Plus, the ending is really nuts and suddenly drops down the tempo, so it forces you to switch things up.

Ray Tracing - Mariopaint / Written & produced by Akin Fernandez / 1995, Irdial-Discs.

WOLF MÜLLER – “PFAD DES WINDES” The Düsseldorf scene has always had a strong connection with Amsterdam. The incredible nights I had at the Salon des Amateurs rewired me as a person and DJ—all of a sudden, anything was possible. They were also responsible for some of the worst hangovers of my life, as the DJ booth is pretty much behind the bar and you get force fed shots all night... and they are long nights. Jan Schulte is a resident there, and besides being a dear friend, he’s one of the most talented guys I know. We’re both closet anime fanboys, so when I heard this track I begged him to let me put it on the comp.

Wolf Müller - Pfad Des Windes / Written & produced by Jan Schulte / 2016, Dekmantel.

PERSONAL FX – “OBJECTS IN MIRRORS” I got this off a gypsy selling old stereos and used underwear in Waterloo Square. I initially spotted a copy of Weekend at Bernie’s on VHS, but then saw this dusty DAT tape. After doing some digging, I found out Personal FX was a one-off Friesian formation from the mid ‘90s that never put out much and eventually sold all of their gear to start some sort of UFO yoga cult in Bavaria. The group mysteriously disbanded or disappeared without a trace, so this might be the only thing that remains of their legacy.

Personal FX - Objects In Mirrors / Written by Wopke T. & Douwe Dibbema, additional production by Krest Comar / 1996.

💬 - Shawn Reynaldo

📷 - Gioia de Bruijn

🎨 - Ofpheu de Jong

What makes a record collector a selector? Or, rather, “what exactly is a selector” as the opening line of the liner notes for MCDE’s Selectors 001 goes.

In 2016, Amsterdam-based powerhouse Dekmantel Records sought to ground the word back into its original lineage. They launched Selectors: a curated compilation framework designed to give the world's most singular diggers an unedited canvas to present their personal musical blueprints. Alongside it they launched an intimate beachside festival, taking place every August in Tisno, Croatia.

For me, this wasn’t just a new label launch; it was the same year I started collecting records. It’s a concept that completely dictated my life.

Back in 2016, I was living down in Canford Cliffs with my buddy Miche, and we began making yearly vinyl pilgrimages over to Amsterdam, spending the day time maxing credit cards in record stores and the nights tracking the deep musical journeys of selectors like Theo Parrish, Four Tet, Floating Points, and Detroit Swindle. There was very little sleep, it was beyond obsessive. Dedicated?

Standing in those crowded clubs and basements, it became clear that despite their wildly different sounds, these figures all shared an unspoken rhythmic outlook when it came to music. Dense West African percussion templates colliding with late-night Detroit jazz chords; ecstatic, raw gospel choirs recorded in tiny New Zealand studios; unquantized regional disco-funk anomalies alongside banging techno, and, of course, the elusive overlooked b-sides and album cuts you never thought you’d hear in the dance.

Selectors 001 was one of the first batch of records I picked up - pretty certain my copy comes from Love Vinyl, purchased on 23 September 2016. Don't ask how I know that.

To fully map out the structural parameters of this musical sandbox, we have to look past our own record bags and examine how the community archives itself. Over the last decade, a core group of generational tastemakers has explicitly documented this philosophy through film, vinyl pressings, and physical text.

Below are resources I’ve used over the years to guide and inform my own personal taste and music collection. I find these DJ’s so inspiring and forever grateful to labels like Dekmantel for putting this work out there. Also included are the liner notes copied from the items from my collection:

The Short Film Archive:

Here are the key figures featured on the Dekmantel YouTube Channel series

• Call Super: The documentary takes a cinematic look into Joe Seaton’s Berlin studio and his family home. It explores his deeply conceptual avant-garde approach to sound design, painting him as an artist who builds completely unique, textured sonic environments rather than standard club loops. [1]

• Mr. Scruff: A look into Andy Carthy’s legendary, massive Manchester record basement. Scruff represents the ultimate encyclopaedic selector—someone who seamlessly bridges rare jazz, raw soul, reggae, and classic hip-hop, demonstrating that a true selector can control a dancefloor for six hours using nothing but eclecticism and flawless pacing. [1]

• Ben UFO: As one of the few top-tier global DJs to rise strictly from the art of track selection without relying on a production catalog, Ben UFO is the ultimate embodiment of the Selectors ethos. His feature highlights a monastic dedication to the UK soundsystem continuum—finding the hidden threads that stitch early jungle dubplates to modern experimental techno. [1]

• Andy Votel (Finders Keepers): Featured in the Boiler Room Collections sub-series, Votel is a pure musical anthropologist. His segment shows him digging through hyper-niche, forgotten subcultural histories: Anatolian rock rarities, Pakistani psych music, and obscure Welsh folk records. [1]

• Jan Schulte (Orpheu The Wizard / Tako / Red Light Records): The series heavily profiles the tight-knit Amsterdam digging community anchored by Red Light Radio. Schulte’s Collections video shows the obsession with oddball percussive tools, harmonic leftfield jams, and electronic drum workouts that completely bypass standard commercial templates. [1]

Chapter 1: The Soulful Gateway — Motor City Drum Ensemble (Selectors 001)

_{What, exactly, is a selector?}

_{Dekmantel has long been determined to find out, but even with the launch of the Selectors festival and compilation series, we'll be the first to admit that drawing a sharp line between "selectors" and mere DJs is all but impossible—it's essentially a "you know it when you see it" proposition.}

_{Despite this difficulty, it's hard to argue that Motor City Drum Ensemble (a.k.a. Danilo Plessow) doesn't tick all of the required boxes. He's been digging for records since his teenage years, and his Djing has become the stuff of legend, thanks in no small part to his head-turning sets at the last few Dekmantel festivals.}

_{Plessow's relationship with Dekmantel dates back to the earliest days of the Motor City Drum Ensemble project, making him a natural candidate to head up the inaugural Selectors compilation. Although some artists might be reluctant to share a few of their secret weapons with a wider audience, Plessow had no such reservations. "I wanted to get some of the stuff that is really, really hard to get, and make it available for younger people," he explains. "I used to be in the same situation. Back when I was 18, I would listen to a Rainer Truby mix and he would only play these $400 Brazilian records. I was like, 'Fuck, how am I ever going to be able to afford these?' I was glad when there was a reissue, and it's a bit the same with the compilation now."}

_{Selecting a tracklist from his collection of 15,000 records - was no easy task, and getting the songs-some of which are incredibly rare-licensed was an even bigger challenge. In short, a lot of time and effort went into curating this first Selectors compilation, and given Motor City Drum Ensemble's penchant for detail, it's no surprise that every track here was chosen for a reason. As such, we asked Plessow to tell us a bit about why each song was selected and shed some light on what makes these tunes such essential parts of his DJ arsenal.}

_{DJ SLYM FAS "LUV MUSIC"}

_{I started out back in 1996 as a young guy trying to make hip-hop, and I've always loved the raw sound of that genre's "Golden Era"-think Pete Rock, A Tribe Called Quest, etc. There is a parallel to classic house music in a certain way, mostly because the studio set-ups seemed to be more or less the same (with MPCs or SP-1200s as the main units), and because a lot of the "Golden Era" house tracks from Detroit, Chicago, or New York were also based on samples of jazz, soul, and disco records. This particular record sounds even more hip-hop to me than most of its contemporaries--think Kenny Dope's powerful drum programming on the SP-1200 paired with the Detroit sound of later years; the music of Andrés in particular comes to mind. A big favorite of mine for many years, this track has always been one of the tougher finds on Terrence Parker's Intangible label and for me, it's still the most unique thing he ever released.}

_{DJ Slym Fas - Luv Music / Written & produced by Tony Oliviera/ (1997, Intangible Records) ® Seven Grand Publishing/BMI}

_{HOUSE OF JAZZ "HOLD YOUR HEAD UP"}

_{Back when I started buying records to play out, I was still in my teens and the only cash I had was the little money I made from playing bar gigs, being a paperboy on the weekend, and the occasional gift from my parents, so my funds were really limited. Plus, I was living in a small town that only had one store selling used records—mostly rock and punk-so I had to find ways to get new records other than buying imports from the UK, which back then was very expensive. In the early days of eBay, a certain guy was selling "surprise packs" of house records, and they were dirt cheap, like 20 records for 15 Deutsche Mark (about 8 euros). I ended up taking a gamble and along with a lot of very average stuff, there was this record. To this day, "Hold Your Head Up" is a very special song for me, and it was a pretty under-the-radar thing for a long time. The only other guy I've met that had heard of it was Ben UFO, and apparently Moodymann played it on a radio show back in '95. Regardless, like all good music, it hasn't aged a bit since then and | hope it will get some well-deserved exposure now.}

_{House Of Jazz- Hold Your Head Up / Written & produced by Chauncey Alexander, Wayne Bell, Sherman Burks & Joseph Lang (1995, Urgent Music Works)}

_{Alexbaby/ASCAP, Bigger Than One/ASCAP, Groove Line/ASCAP, SLB Music/ASCAP (Admin by LEO SONG)}

_{20 BELOW "A LIL TRIBUTE TO THE MOODY BLACK KEYS"}

_{Getting this song was one hell of a ride, I can tell you that! I'm friends with Irfan, the main guy behind Rainy City Music, and I've always wanted to reissue this record, as it basically sets floors on fire wherever it's dropped. The thing is, I wasn't the only one-there were a couple dozen other people wanting to do the same thing. So it took a lot of convincing and a lot of negotiating, as Irfan Rainy-very much like meis a perfectionist and wanted it to be re-released in the right way. But here we are, and possibly the best New York house record to ever come out of Manchester is finally in print again. Here's what Irfan had to say about the song's genesis: "Me and Rex Leon recorded this track in 1995 when Masters At Work were the kings of house music, but there was also another killer NY duo: Mood Il Swing. A Guy Called Gerald had brought back the MPC60 to Manchester from America and told us that we needed to use this groove machine and so we did. I named the song using the publishing name Mood I! Swing used. It was our little tribute to their '90s swinging, deep, moody sound."}

_{20 Below - A Lil'Tribute To The Moody Black Keys/ Written & produced by Irfan Rainy & Rex Leon / (1996, Rainy City Music)}

_{© Copyright Control}

_{RISQUE III "ESSENCE"}

_{This is probably the most "obvious" track on the compilation, but it had never been properly reissued (at least not sounding as good as it should have) and seeing how it features in almost all of my sets, had to have it on here. K-Alexi is a genius of the highest order, and his early records still sound years ahead of their time. Sadly enough, the original record didn't move the same quantities as its contemporaries on Trax and DJ International, so it remains a collector's item to this day and copies in perfect condition are scarce as hell.}

_{Risqué III - Essence of A Dream / Written & produced by K'Alexi Shelby/Risqué III / (1986, Stride Right Records) @Alexi-K Ascap}

_{LICKY "AFRICAN ROCK"}

_{For me, Patrick Adams and Peter Brown's take on disco music is a bit like Sun Ra's relationship with jazz or Theo Parrish's with house. The records they released on their multiple obscure labels (among them Queen Constance, P&P, and Land of Hits) are musically sophisticated, completely out there, incredibly well arranged, and just thrillingly unique. With a back catalog full of gems that are still mostly out of print, I decided to pick two of my favorite titles from that era. "African Rock" sounds a bit like some of the Nigerian stuff that's incredibly en vogue at the moment-think Kiki Gyan or records on Afrodisia-but at the same time, it still captures the aesthetic of the New York underground, with driving percussion and call-and-response vocals dominating the track. I can only imagine what this song did to dancefloors back in the day, although given that it was so rare, it's possible that it barely ever made it onto one.}

_{Licky - African Rock (Club 12" mix) / Written & produced by Peter Brown/ (1979, Phase One Network Inc.)}

_{• Phase One Network Inc/Demon Music Group Ltd.}

_{RAPHAEL GREEN "DON'T MESS WITH THE DEVIL"}

_{Sometime during the last couple of years, I started buying a lot of gospel music, and the album that contains "Don't Mess with the Devil" remains one of my personal highlights. Mr. Green has a very distinct voice and I was surprised to see that this was his only recording, a private press record released in tiny quantities out of Oklahoma City. Nowadays, he is the head of the Metro Christian Worship Center in St. Louis and according to his assistant, who I had a very charming conversation with about licensing this particular song, he is still performing in the church as well. hope that through this compilation, his wish to reach a new generation of listeners will become a reality.}

_{Raphael Green - Don't Mess With The Devil / Written & produced by Raphael Green / (1979, Self Released/ Raphael Green)}

_{© Raphael Green}

_{AHZZ "NEW YORK'S MOVING (INSTRUMENTAL)"}

_{Another Peter Brown release here-legend has it that Larry Levan drove people nuts with this one. The raw production on this is the epitome of New York's underground disco sound during that era—a true counterpart to the polished, orchestral, and diva-esque sounds that were ruling the mainstream at the time. Here, you have nothing but the bare essence: rough drums, claps and guitar that sound like they were recorded in a cavern, and almost proto-Detroit-sounding synthesizer strings. To my ears, it sounds like one of the first possible true inspirations for house music. Regardless, "New York's Moving" is a cult classic that still sounds fresh, not to mention a track that top Dis like Danny Krivit continue to play out.}

_{Ahzz - New York's Movin (Instrumental) / Written & produced by Osborne Hunter & Steve Boston / (1981, Phase One Network Inc.)}

_{® Phase One Network Inc/Demon Music Group Ltd.)}

_{BILL DEAL & THE RHONDELS "FREAK N FREEZE"}

_{The mystery surrounding this song is strong—a white rock and roll band from Virginia releasing this fast-paced, monstrous disco banger? Adding to the mystery is the fact that the record is virtually unknown, impossible to find, and not even seasoned disco collectors seem to know about it. When I got this 7" from a Belgian friend of mine who specializes in 45s (and who, no disrespect intended, to this day believes this record is some sort of cover-up where another band recorded the song and somehow it ended up being released on here, I wasn't exactly prepared for the reactions I got when i played it out. On the first listen, this may sound like your typical disco-funk thing, but trust me, it absolutely slays dancefloors. It just sounds unbelievable on the right system. Throughout my career, this is probably the record I've received the most Facebook messages about, the one that gets the most people running to the booth, etc. So for all the people I have kept this secret from over the years, here it finally is. Freak n Freeze!}

_{Bill Deal & The Rhondels - Freak 'N' Freeze / Written & produced by Freddy Owens & Alan Porter / (1979, Gig/Way)}

_{® Clay Music Corp. BMI}

The Original: The Beginning of the End – "Funky Nassau" (1971) - Traditional Bahamian Junkanoo beat collided with raw American funk. Reaching #15 on the Billboard Hot 100, the root breakbeat went on to be sampled endlessly in the 90's

The Cover version: Muchos Plus – "Nassau's Discos" (1979) - a holy grail reissue by Kalita Records of a rare cover version titled "Nassau's Discos". Led by Jamaican-born musician Rudy Mills, Muchos Plus was a New Orleans-based outfit made up of Panamanian, Honduran, and local musicians.

A1 + B1 Nassau's Discos (Long & Short Version) - a heavy, unquantized tropical disco cover originally pressed in a microscopic run on his own private U-Solo Records label, selling for a peak £500 on discogs!

B2 Love Misunderstood - a perfect, late night antidote. The second half contains a lush horn-laced funk breakdown.

Further below is an excerpt from the cover art.

This is just one thread of a borderless soundsystem dialogue. In 2 weeks, Vol. 1 of 'What Genre Is This, Actually?' drops on Substack, tearing apart standard genre definitions. Hit the link in my bio to join the inner circle

Shout out to Chris & also Zaf (Love Vinyl) for the excellent pressing and getting this music out there!

_{Kalita are proud to offer here officially for the first time since 1979, one of the most sought-after Afro-Caribbean disco singles in existence, Muchos Plus's 'Nassau's Discos'. Featuring the band's own disco take on The Beginning of the End's 1971 smash hit Funky Nassau', plus their own composition 'Love Misunderstood", the record has long been the envy of collectors, DJs and dance music connoisseurs. With original copies fetching eye-watering prices, the time is right to tell Muchos Plus and band leader Rudy Mills story and to share this great record with the world once more.}

_{Born to Jamaican parents on 2 December 1942 in the town of Tela, on the northern Caribbean cost of Honduras, Rudy Mills grew up devoid of much musical surroundings. Neither his family, nor many of his close friends were musically-minded, however it was clear to him at an early age that he was different. As he recalls, was always singing as long as ! can remember, however the nearby town of Progresso where he was raised boasted only four local bands and he struggled to find a group that he could play with. He instead was occasionally permitted to perform at weekend gatherings, singing local corridos and rancheras (traditional Mexican songs, similar to American country and Cajun music).}

_{In 1958 at the age of fifteen, Rudy moved with his brother to New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA), to rejoin his mother who had travelled there in search of a job and an improved quality of life for the family. Once in America, the bustling local funk and soul scenes of the sixties cultivated Rudy's love for music, and at the age of twenty he bought his own piano, which he taught to play himself.}

_{At the turn of 1970, Rudy formed Muchos Plus (Muchos' being his nickname, and "Plus' referring to the other band members in the group). He invited local New Orleans-based musicians to join, including the Belizean rhythm guitarist Lionel Diggs (known to his friends as "Johnny), a Panamanian percussionist by the name of Herman Nunez, a fellow Honduran Julian Castro on drums, and Americans Vernon Picou on bass, Uganda Roberts on congas, Don Wright on saxophone and Michael Boccage on horns. The band rehearsed religiously, and soon began to perform at local venues and nightclubs across the area such as Tipitina's, Jed's and Dream Palace, as well as at the world famous NOLA Jazz Festival, the French Quarter Festival and the Gretna Heritage Festival.}

_{They soon decided to record their own tracks in order to increase their chances of standing out in such a crowded musical scene as New Orleans. Rudy therefore set up U-Solo Records, named after his third son Johnny's nickname 'Solo', and with Rudy writing the songs, the group released the singles Tribes Call, and 'Funky Sheriff, which they distributed themselves to local record stores and clubs. However, at this time disco had become so prevalent that the band quickly realised that the best way to boost their profile was to release their own disco version of a classic and well-known track. As Rudy recalls, 'like most frustrated artists of the pre-disco era, we were looking for songs to make that transition to the disco dominated evolution'. However, they still wanted to remain faithful to the NOLA funk and blues scenes propounded notably by musicians such as Earl King and Art Neville of The Metres and The Neville Brothers. As Rudy explains, I just felt I needed to promote the origins of our funky culture. Art Neville was the shining light in connecting the Afro-Caribbean-Latino influences in funk, especially in the early sixties when I heard his Mardi Gras Mambo' record over the radio and I saw and realised the syncopated effects of crossing over musical traditions. Muchos Plus therefore chose to release their own modern disco take on Funky Nassau", a Caribbean funk song penned by Ray Munnings and Tyrone Fitzgerald and released by the Bahamian group The Beginning of the End in 1971 and later by Ray himself in 1979. This song Rudy saw as ripe for re-imagining for the contemporary disco market.}

_{"Nassau's Discos' took roughly four months to record at the nearby Rosemont Studios, mixed-down by local engineer Al Taylor. Rudy fondly recalls that whilst recording, he found his main musical influence to be a traditional banjo player that he remembered listening to as a young boy whilst in Honduras, 'scratching that instrument with so much grit and passion. I had recognised that effect on Art Neville's keyboards and Leo Nocentelli's guitar too, and that inspired me whilst recording here as well'.}

_{They initially manufactured one-thousand copies of the twelve inch single, and also pressed up a shorter seven inch version in a small run for nearby radio stations. Upon release, the record received some local success, and was initially popular on stations such as WBOK, WYLB, WEL and KGLA. They also scored gigs at nearby clubs such as Tipitina's off of the back of the record's release. New Orleans-based record stores such as the infamous Eddie 3 Way and Johnny's Records also sold copies on consignment, with Rudy recalling that they sold 'modestly well, and the demand was strong enough for them to press another thousand copies. Unfortunately however, their lack of funding, 'very little wider promotion' and the absence of a distribution network limited their success to just the regional area. As Rudy explains, 'at that time, without the money of the larger labels, it was impossible to get anywhere with self-released music. I was looking for a Grammy man!'}

_{Disheartened, Rudy decided not long after to take a hiatus from recording music, and throughout the 80's worked various occupations including as a salesman for TV rentals as well as selling shoes, jobs which he knew were more likely to provide a steady income than music. However in the mid-90's, Rudy felt a calling to return to music, and he has since recorded numerous singles, such as 'Gasolina", his best hit to date, which resulted in his nickname changing from Muchos to Senor Gasolina. He also recorded a series of songs for local New Orleans football teams, and in addition has established a new group, Rudy's Caribbean Funk Band. He now performs various styles, including funk, rock, country, reggae and bolero, both for commercial works but also as an activist helping to keep the NOLA musical scene alive.}

_{Rudy and Chris, January 2021}