Thirteen of '12 - Instrumental / Dancefloor edition

Thirteen of '12 (Instrumental / Dancefloor) from kelcey on 8tracks Radio.

2012 was an example of the old theory that tough socio-economic times breed great underground clubbing. Props go out to all the promoters who have been grinding for the last few years. Their persistence looks to have paid off in one of the best dance party years in recent memory. Specifically Bunker, Turrbotax, Discovery, Verboten and Percussion Lab as well as newcomer to NYC from Chi-town Lit City.

Here are some of my favorite Instrumental / Dancefloor tracks of the last year. They appear in no particular order and this list is nowhere near complete.

1. Fatima Al Qadiri – Hydra
2. Girl Unit – Ensemble (club mix)
3. Falty DL – Straight & Arrow
4. Andrés - New For U
5. Four Tet – Lion (Jamie xx remix)
6. Breach & Midland – Somwhere
7. DJ Ali - Electra (Subb-an & Adam Shelton remix)
8. Julio Bashmore – Au Seve
9. Balistiq Beats – Concrete Jungle (Beneath 350 remix)
10. Rashad & Spinn – We Trippy Mane
11. Flosstradamus – Rollup (Baauer remix)
12. KW Griff – Bring in the Katz
13. TNGHT – Higher Ground

Fatima Al Qadiri – Hydra

Absolutely gorgeous mix of underground beats and middle eastern sound pallet. Ikonika's remix of last year's D-medley is amazing as well.

Girl Unit – Ensemble (club mix)

This track just got bigger and bigger as the year progressed, until it was played by pretty much everyone at BEMF.

Falty DL – Straight & Arrow

Falty DL coming on like a swung out Floating Points. I can't wait for the LP. Part 2 of afrobeat lacedMeans Streets on Swamp81 is big as well.

Andrés - New For U

Deep, soulful Detroit house from the man who dropped one of my favorite DJ sets of the summer.

Four Tet – Lion (Jamie xx remix)

How can you go wring with a Four Tet and Jamie xx team-up. Something about the stripped down soundsystem vibe of this remix reminds of classic Smith & Mighty / More Rockers and in my world that is very high praise. Also check out Four Tet's ratherreserved remix of Angels for the reverse perspective.  

Breach & Midland – Somewhere

Sprawling, widescreen tech house that also manages to very taut and subtle.

DJ Ali - Electra (Subb-an & Adam Shelton remix)

Sultry and so very saxy

Julio Bashmore – Au Seve

Not quite reaching the level of Battle of Middle You but still an absolute dancefloor filler and undisuted anthem of the summer

Balistiq Beats – Concrete Jungle (Beneath 350 remix)

Beneath let his junglist roots show on the remix

Rashad & Spinn – We Trippy Mane

Not that this track isn't brilliant but it appars here as a sort of place holder of all the amazing tracks I heard at Lit City over the last year that will probably never even get released.

Flosstradamus – Rollup (Baauer remix)

Run the Trap!!! 2013 looks to be the year young Baauer blows up. 

KW Griff – Bring in the Katz

“...you already know” Absolutely nothing subtle here just absolutely battering B-more Club. On a proper soundsystem this is guaranteed to ignite a riot on the drop every time. 

TNGHT – Higher Ground

The undisputed dancefloor destroyer of 2012. Resistance is futile this track will steamroll over you.

Bonus: Joy O - Big Room Tech House DJ Tool Tip! (BRTHDTT!)

Another year, another secret, ridiculously titled, Joy Orbison anthem. This one is slow burner and much preferred to the staid adult contemporary house of Ellipsis. Of course it won't get a proper release until all the life has been sucked from its veins.   

Thirteen of '12

thirteen of '12 from kelcey on 8tracks Radio.

A bakers' dozen of my favorite songs of 2012 – this is the home-listening / people singing and rhyming about shit version. If I can steal a few minutes before the year closes I will try to throw together an instrumental / dance-floor companion. The following are listed in no particular order and with no claims of completeness.  

1. Chromatics – Lady
2. Kendrick Lamar – Cartoons & Cereal
3. Darq E Freaker & Danny Brown – Blueberry (Pills & Cocaine)
4. Jessie Ware – 110%
5. Mykki Blanco – Wavvy
6. Jai Paul – Jasmine (demo)
7. Andy Stott – Luxury Problems
8. Frank Ocean – Pyramids
9. Stubborn Heart – Two Times a Maybe
10. Gonjasufi – Skin
11. Hitomi – Thrown Like Jacks X Venus in Furs
12. Zebra Katz feat Njena Reddd Foxxx– Ima Read
13. Le1f – Wut

Chromatics – Lady

The best Chromatics songs exist in a liminal space where unformed possibility and nostalgic yearning co-exist. Lady is born of that gauzy, lens-flare time of the night when, by definition, it can't get any later and the cruise control has just locked course for well after dawn.

Kendrick Lamar (feat Gunplay) – Cartoons & Cereal

Elementary hood shit. Sure Swimming Pools was bigger, Kill My Vibe was catchier, and Good Kid had that Roy Ayers sample but for sheer wtf?? factor this was Lamar's calling card. The unsettling juxtaposition of guntalk w/ Saturday morning nostalgia; the slung yet restless production, saturated in hiss and old tv samples threatening to collapse in on itself; Lamar's helium Quasimoto playing against Gunplay's gruff pre-crack DMX; in the end its a heady, keenly unique experience.  

Darq E Freaker & Danny Brown – Blueberry (Pills & Cocaine)

Crazy, Psycho, Deranged. What it says on the tin. Madman London grime producer teams up with madman Detroit MC and a dark, unstable carnival ride of a track is born. Appropriately, the video is guaranteed to give you the spins dead-sober in the afternoon.  

Jessie Ware – 110%

There are probably better Jessie Ware songs but I am a sucker for a dreamy summer jam. Julio Bashmore turns his swashbuckling skills to a straight up pop song custom built for Saturday afternoons spent lying on sun kissed grass sipping cool wine from the bottle. OG version with Big Pun sample intact is a must.

Mykki Blanco – Wavvy

The ultimate, getting-ready-to-go, pre-game Friday soundtrack. It also led to more than few late morning impromptu dance parties. Not to mention all the surprise live appearances at 285 Kent, Cameo and seemingly wherever they would give Mykki a mic. Get in now because he and his militia are primed to take over. Also one of my favorite videos of the year.

Jai Paul – Jasmine (demo)

“demo” in the sense that it is raw as fuck. If this ever gets “proper” shine and gloss mixdown a la the Weeknd I will weep.

Andy Stott – Luxury Problems

My personal hurricane soundtrack. Somehow it was the perfect vibe for confusing bus rides and freezing walks over the 59th street bridge, turned down low and kept on constant repeat for two weeks straight.

Frank Ocean – Pyramids

Frank Ocean goes big, 10 minutes and Egyptian history big, and some how pulls it off. Grammy please!

Stubborn Heart – Two Times a Maybe

Shout out to Kelly Hogan by way of Giles Peterson (it's a winner!). The full LP is great but nothing else on it manages to match the listing narcotic enchantment of this early single. Forgetting a chick's name (twice!) has never carried such existential weight.

Gonjasufi – Skin

Heartbreaking, stripped to the bone, lament from the sufi. Apparitions with GLK is amazing as well.

Hitomi – Thrown Like Jacks X Venus in Furs

Velvet Underground cover? meh. Classic rock mashup? what is this 2003? This should be at best an amusing throw away tune. Instead it is hypnotic, haunting and transcendent. Hitomi's vocals and subtle re-edit make this something completely other, both from its component parts and anything else out there.

Zebra Katz (feat Njena Reddd Foxxx)– Ima Read

Give me a brutal stripped-back bass drum, a little ballroom attitude and a heavy dose of disturbing over-enunciated lyrics and watch all the hair on my neck stand up. Throw in Ms. Njena complete with all her extra ds and xs as well as one truly disturbing game of double dutch and you have the weirdo hit of the year.

Le1f – Wut

Everything on Dark York is stellar. This track is a great example of up and coming hip hop guys pulling inspiration and production from the best of the underground dance/beat scene (in this case 5kinAndBone5) and doing whatever they please with it.

Bonus - Lambo Furnace

The most devastating bootleg remix of the most inescapable jeep/block/club track of the long hot summer. Turn it up real loud one last time and then let's all move on and never speak of it again.

Honorable mentions: The Don; AlbyDaniels; Purple Kisses; Low MF Key; F**K You All The Time (Shlohmomix); and House of Ladosha's waaay to fierce for you Rollin'

The Glimmer and The Gloss in Medulla Review

“This time, the fluid did not return to a restful state. Instead, the surface writhed and churned. Some great upheaval was being born out in the impossible space below the floorboards. Reptilian shapes breached the surface. A long slithering spine cut through the liquid only to disappear into the impossible depths.”

Ballroom dancing, Victorian etiquette and self replicating ultra-dimensional reptiles, these are the major components of my new short fiction, The Glimmer and The Gloss, in the current issue of the excellent Medulla Review.

The story took its initial inspiration from the work of visual artist Ray Caesar. I wanted to set a story inside one of Caesar’s surreal scenes, wanted to employ one of his unsettling precocious heroines as its protagonist, and then of course I wanted to fuck shit up. The end result is an irreverent piece that plays fast and loose with the boundaries between past and present, reality and dream-stuff. It inhabits a liminal space at the edges of classic lit, horror, and SF/F. A sense-bender of a story as the editors describe it.

Too Late To...

Aldo Chaparro

Red lit and smoke machine tainted club sounds. This is a bass heavy mix of dark UK house, chunky percussion and filthy electro. The mix features tracks by producers on the verge (South London Ordnance, Jook 10, My Nu Leng), underground heavyweights (Roska, Girl Unit, Boddika), and even a few old-school heroes (The Stickmen ('94 stylee!), Andrea Parker, Aux 88). It also features more instances of the words "bitch" and "pussy" than I have personally uttered in the entirety of my existence, so maybe not for banging at the office.

Too Late To Die Young by Kelcey on Mixcloud

1) Fatima Al Qadiri - Hip Hop Spa
2) South London Ordnance - Fjord
3) DVA - Flute Tune
4) Zebra Katz (feat. Njena Reddd Foxxx) - Ima Read
5) Roska - Bassface (Breach remix)
6) Addison Groove (feat. Spank Rock) - Bad Things
7) Girl Unit - Wut (Claude Vonstroke remix)
8) The Stickmen - The Drug
9) Boddika - Basement
10) Auntie Flo - Oh My Days (Pearson Sound remix)
11) The Pearl - Flesh Eaters (Distal remix)
12) Secret Frequency Crew - Miami Eyes (Andrea Parker remix)
13) Max Durante meets Aux 88 - Body Work (Max Durante lysergic remix)
14) West Norwood Cassette Library - Get Lifted
15) Spank Rock (feat. Big Feedia) - Nasty (Addison Groove remix)
16) Jook 10 - Peng
17) Headbirds - Dead Kingdom
18) My Nu Leng - Croatian
19) Fatima Al Qadiri - D-medley (Ikonika remix)

Download via Mixcrate

Poetry Is Dead / Arte Factum

(I meant to post this up here a few weeks ago but life had other ideas)

I have piece in the new issue of the mighty Poetry is Dead.  It is an honor to have my work appear in one of my absolute favorite publications.  This is their "resurrection" issue, just in time for the Spring thaw (though here in NYC nothing ever managed to freeze).  Personal favorites from the volume include bits by Amber Dawn, Sean Howard and Stephen Collis's To the Occupations.

My contribution is a Self Portrait, one in a series of experiments using found language to attempt to unlock the dynamic between the internal and the external.  This one pilfers from the I Ching and Bob Ross for a touch of hopeful melancholy. 

The folks at PiD are having a special poetry month sale, where can get a years subscription for a steal at 6 bucks.

Also, my chapbook Music for End Times is part of the gallery show Arte Factum, which is dedicated to the art of the chapbook.  It is up now at Project Space in Vancouver and curated by Poetry is Dead editor Daniel Zamparelli. It runs for a few more weeks, so if you find yourself in area stop in a check it out.

Twelve of 11

A list of my favorite tracks of 2011.  No specific order and no claims of completeness, just the tracks I loved over the last year for reasons various and mostly subjective.  

1. Ghostpoet – Survive It (Quest’s Guidance mix)
2. Clams Casino – Brainwash by London
3. Holy Other – Touch
4. Drake – Dreams Money Can buy
5. Dj Rum – Mountains, Parts 2 & 3
6. Floating Points – Myrtle Avenue
7. Falty DL – Mean Streets, Part 1
8. The Weeknd – Wicked Games.
9. Schlomo – Just Us
10. Rick Wilhite – Blame it on the Boogie (feat. Theo Parrish & Osunlade)
11. Julio Bashmore – Battle for Middle You
12. Jamie xx – Far Nearer

Ghostpoet – Survive It (Quest’s Guidance mix)

“I know, Times are hard, You're against the wall, and your head is down…”  The weary, yet determined, optimism of Ghostpoet’s lyrics perfectly captures the dire resilience that colored 2011.  And, Quest’s remix, haunted by both the dread weight of ’06 dubstep and the bittersweet swing of classic UKG amplifies that sense of struggle at the songs heart.

Clams Casino – Brainwash by London

Everything Clams Casino touched this year was gold.  However, this smoked-out sub-base work out was a personal favorite for soundtracking late night subway rides.  The shouty bit at 1:30 is a great reichian sing-along moment.

Holy Other – Touch

A long cold draft of liquid longing and desperation.  The comparison to Burial is unavoidable but here all that late night hum is devoid of skittering beats or nostalgia.  This is the best in a long list of excellent releases of dark electronics from Tri-Angle over the course of the year.

Drake – Dreams Money Can buy

The love/hate relationship with Drake continues.  Yeah, his constant whinging over the melancholy of cars, money, women and fame should be grating, insulting or by this point tired but somehow you find yourself relating to the emotions even if the specifics are absurd.  The touches of self-deprecation and the off-kilter, self-destructing beats certainly help.

Dj Rum – Mountains, Parts 2 & 3

Widescreen, moody, sub-laced atmospherics.  This track should be too noodley, overly melodramatic, disjointed.  Instead, it reclaims and repurposes the emphasis on bass and space that dubstep discarded on its way to mainstream dancefloors.

Floating Points – Myrtle Avenue

Brilliant in every way.   This track is in a constant state of subtle flux, slowly writhing and contorting, the beats growing and tightening until they peek intensity and then, when you expect a huge synth flourish or massive drop, Floating Points simply places you down in new aural surroundings, not entirely unfamiliar but fresh and airy.  Then the process begins again.  The fact that that gorgeous vocal flourish (Fatima?) doesn’t appear until over 7 minutes in, is testament alone to the masterful amount of restraint at work here.

Falty DL – Mean Streets, Part 1

A number of Falty DL tunes from the past year could have made the cut (Hip Love. Lucky Luciano, Here We Go Again remix…).  But this is perhaps the most unique and, pressed in a limited vinyl only run, the hardest to track down.  Lagos by way of Brooklyn and Croydon,  I do not understand how this wasn’t a huge anthem. 

The Weeknd – Wicked Games

No one had a bigger year than The Weeknd.  Doubling down on Drake’s emo-bling and taking the beats edgier and sparser, the result is an addictive brew of filthy late-night R&B from the edge of the abyss.   This track came with an amazing, supposedly unsolicited video (NSFW).

Schlomo – Just Us

I’m on a dawn plane, unslept and hungover, reality lurching and pitching around me like I am out at sea instead stuck on the LGA tarmac.  This song rises through a folder full of random odds and ends on my MP3 player, with no artist or track info, only the unhelpful cover art.  Its frayed, skittering beats and haunted underwater carnival synths are the perfect complement to my state of mind.   It takes more than a week before I track down the info.  

Rick Wilhite – Blame it on the Boogie (feat. Theo Parrish & Osunlade)

"slick rick was in the house, turning it out, the girls were all singing lad di da di, I guess we were having a party…" The official Den of Iniquities party jam.  More fun than a serious Detroit house track should be allowed to be.

Julio Bashmore – Battle for Middle You

The hands down dancefloor anthem of the year.  Classic house and garage (Doomsnight Revisted?) are encoded in its DNA, yet it sounds like nothing else out there.  The call to “stomp your feet and get down” is superfluous.  Like you have any choice.

Jamie xx – Far Nearer

Oh, the steel drums!!  I played this more times this year than all the other tracks on this list combined.  If you stepped in my house or anywhere I was allowed control of the selection you heard it.  In the winter it made you dream of beaches and sunshine.  In the Spring and Summer it compelled you to sip cocktails in the sun and dance under open skies.

Bonus: Azealia Banks - 212 

The most grin-inducing, joyously filthy thing I've heard in ages.  

Halloween Playlist

Contains 66% more heavy dub and surf guitar than standard Halloween playlists.

01)   Screaming Lord Sutch & The Savages – Jack the Ripper

02)   The Pandoras – Haunted Beach Party

03)   Lee Perry & Devon Irons – Vampire

04)   Los Johnny Jets – Dracula A Go Go

05)   Skatalites – Lon Chaney

06)   Hillbilly Hellcats – Dead Man’s Party

07)   Jeff Richmond & Tracy Morgan – Werewolf Bar Mitzvah

08)   Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet – Zombie Compromise

09)   King Horror – Dracula Prince of Darkness

10)   Kid Koala – Trick N’ Treats

11)   Minus 9 – In the Spirit of Vampiros Lesbos (DJ Cam remix)

12)   Geto Boys – My Mind is Playing Tricks on Me