BC127 - Five Mixes: Old School, 1992-96 (uploaded Feb.-May 2025)
Music that seems less played than flung, like a slingshot
Tony Vaughn
I do try not to focus too much on one source unless I’m spotlighting it, but Manny’z Tapez delivers. Even after I solidified this grouping, a newer item from him slipped into my plays and startled me, yet again—an item you’ll assuredly see here soon.
You can hear all five sets on this SoundCloud playlist.
Julian Jumpin’ Perez, B96 Chicago, February 1992 (Manny’z Tapez, rec. Feb. 8, 1992; uploaded February 8)
Radio sets can be illuminating for the way they display “underground” dance and “mainstream” pop as being basically kin, and this is a good example. A lot of this set, as the page notes, is freestyle or its cousin(s) in their later stages, alongside hip-house (!) and more straightforwardly housey records, even some technoey ones. If you are of a certain age, you can damn near carbon-date it to its month. So many avenues for a DJ to explore, and Perez explores them about equally in amount but also with equal enthusiasm—he intersperses them to keep the groove popping, and succeeds.
DJ Trace, Don FM 105.7 [Early 1993] (Hardscore, uploaded March 6)
The “early” here and “late” below do a lot of work to situate each respective set—seriously, dance music was moving at warp speed in this period. But I’m particularly thankful for it in this case, because the pileup appeal here is at times really strong. What’s “pileup appeal”? The sensation of three or more records going at once but also rather independently of one another, even if they are in sync (and sometimes if they are not)—not because it actually is three records, but because the two tracks going at once each sound like two records going at once. It’s particularly native to UK pirate radio in 1993. That aspect of it intensifies the overall hurtling-into-the-future effect of rapidly developing sound of drum & bass. So much of this set feels like the music is somehow less being played than being flung, like a slingshot.
Micky Finn, Hyperactive Studio Mix—Late 1994 (Deep Inside the Old Skool, uploaded May 5)
Let’s call it a year and a half, more or less, between Trace above and this delightfully playful set. There’s a world of difference—the brutal minimalism and playful bass dives of this tape are clearly derived from what came before, but they’d have been near-unthinkable in purely sonic terms. But letting the rim shots ricochet into the inky dark of silence, and letting the vocal overlays echo into same, proved just how deadly effective they could be, and the lack of clutter would eventually make more room for MCs on the pirates and also entice other kinds of minimalists. But there’s so much to entice the ear that you don’t need to be a minimalist at all to fall in.
Tony Vaughn, Live on The Vibe 107.5 FM WBLS, NYC 11-12-94 (Manny’z Tapez, uploaded May 4)
Sometimes I go on here about the sinuous line or w/e that some DJ has made out of a bunch of records that sound rather alike. That’s not a small thing—it’s not something you can just do, even with automation—but it’s also not the only thing that can make a powerful set. For example, you can go all over the damn place, like this—a 56-minute tape of mid-nineties house music played on R&B radio that dials into the sound by zooming outward over the horizon. Here, “Let Me Be Your Fantasy” at house tempo, per its DJ Professor’s X Club remix; there, a freakin’ Ace of Base dub. (Incidentally, my search for the right “LMBYF” mix led me to this wondrously cliché-ridden artifact from the era; I was laughing out loud from the first note.) To quote Robert Christgau, “There are no rules, only results.”
DJ Disciple, Live 91.5 FM WNYE, NYC, 1-11-96 (Manny’z Tapez, uploaded March 4)
A little under two hours, but veritably wall to wall—Disciple had just returned from a European trip, laden down with hot new tracks, plus all the stuff that had piled up at home while he was gone. The house-music 12-inch calendar of the nineties ran hot and cold like any other, but it tended to be a year-round business, and a lot of what’s here has a keyed-up energy (and bright synth lines to match) that goes beyond even the house norm of the time. That also applies to the soulful vocals lead the path. The shout-outs are a real time capsule as well.