Sad news recently of Charles Chambers’ passing at age fifty-six. (Here is 5 Magazine’s obit.) As DJ Funk he was one of the key mid-nineties Chicago house producers and DJs alike. As Joshua Glazer points out, Funk’s “Work That Body” and “Run,” back to back, provide a key moment in Jeff Mills’ Live at the Liquid Room, Tokyo (React CD; rec. October 1995), coming as they do right off of Mills’ own “The Bells” in its first-ever wide release. And Funk’s performances were superb. My personal DJ Funk go-to is the 1999 mixtape Bootyology (side A; side B—both via Mixtape Magic), about which I once typed: “Definitive. A plus,” an assessment I’ll stand by.
You can hear all five selections below on this SoundCloud playlist.
MarceauxMarceaux and Nita Aviance, The Carry Nation Show (The Lot Radio, February 6)
As we see on YouTube, Aviance gets the first ~53 minutes, Marceaux the next hour-plus. The first part—whooshing breakbeat house, post-jungle R&B, soul vocals and saxophone through the sampler’s wringer—is a rangy essay on the specific effect of Black musical styles on UK dance; of course I like it. The second part is more overtly celebratory in form and function—a club set, something you could play at peak hour with no problems. I like how the voices are all irradiated and digital.
Camille Rae b2b Ābnamā b2b 131 BPM, Whole Festival
DJ Saliva b2b Cem, Whole Festival (both Leipzig, August 2024; uploaded February 7)
You can see how the cover art grabbed me. It wasn’t for either of these, though—it was for another in a knot of recently upped sets from this festival, so I went with the law of averages—two or three minds at work means things are apt to shift more often and therefore maybe might stay interesting longer. Why yes, they did.
The three-DJ roundelay by Camilla Rae b2b Ābnamā b2b 131 BPM—if you thought techno sounded like code, that credit line, give or take some underscores, is somebody’s password somewhere—hits the ground running, the hi-hats and claps on the off-beats making things jack even when the kick drums are straight as a line (even when the producers who made them were not), which is usually. It’s tempting to think of this set as part of the hard-house-revivalist strain I’ve mentioned before (cf. BC078). But the selections are broader, deeper, bassier than that—bubbling speed garage as a change-up, and more persistently a heavy strain of ghetto house, including the best in show, “Sperm Donor,” a piece of delightful Chicagoan filth from 1999. Half an hour in, it sharpens the mix’s tone.
That one is two hours long, whereas DJ Saliva b2b Cem, without a third selector to kick in, show their stuff for four hours. They have a lot of stuff—a combo platter that’s weirder and artier and also more banging than most—and it transmits more silly fun than head-down, teeth-gritted partying-as-mandate, but transmits both with a glint in its collective eye.
Roman Flügel, Rinse FM (February 8)
Sometimes I feel bad that I don’t do more diligent following up of shows by the same DJs, but I’m happy to report that I did so with Flügel’s Rinse show from March, and duly follow up by noting that I snapped it off after twenty minutes. Not this one, though—in fact, I keep going back to it for pleasure. There’s no particular theme I can discern. Every track just hits from a different angle—wormy acid-land with fuzzy voice-overs, heavily filtered Chicago disco-house, minimalist sample-desaturation with texture and taste like halva. All of them activate the same pleasure centers while sounding very little alike—so much so that you want to experience it again in part just to remember how he did it.
DJ Heartstring, The Cover Mix (Mixmag, February 14)
I found this duo’s gushy-rushy vibe way foursquare rhythmically but also compellingly felt circa their Essential Mix (cf. BC054), and still do. I mentioned speed garage in the Camilla Rae b2b Ābnamā b2b 131 BPM set, a deliberate word choice—rampaging post-Armand Van Helden bass stomp, not champagne-bubbly hi-hat intricacy a la Tuff Jam—and it applies to some of what’s here, too, working similarly as a change-up to its surroundings. Here, the median line is high in fructose.