SASHA (airdrawndagger)
You know you’re massive when you’re breaking through your own backlash. Sasha, who first got hooked on house at the Hacienda in 1987, virtually created the genre of UK progressive house with partner-in-crime and global heavyweight John Digweed. But as their residency at New York’s Twilo ended with the club’s collapse in 2001, the electronic music cognoscenti have largely turned from the anodyne, metallic sheen of “prog.” But Sasha’s 2002 solo debut, “airdrawndagger,” reveals this seminal DJ/producer’s talent for reinvesting the word “progressive” with meaning. A critical darling but a commercial flop, in ten years’ time it’ll seem as important as Sasha & Digweed’s “Northern Exposure” series. Stealthy, melancholy, muscular and cunning, it voyages between extraterrestrial plains of ambience and intimate ghostly chimings, into confident rocking breakbeats and keeps getting more fascinating with each additional listen. This will be a night to dilate wide-eyed and breathe deeply not merely because of Sasha’s catchy hooks, but because of a musical intelligence which makes cool sounds live interesting lives.
SASHA (Involver)
Sasha is dead. Long live Sasha. Following his recent sweaty, banging, packed-to-the-rafters engagement at Vision, the pinup heavyweight of UK progressive house has chosen Sound-Bar as the premier North American venue to celebrate the release of his first mix CD in five years, “Involver.” And if this gig is anything like the album, be prepared for a remarkable experience of futuremusic. “Involver” is a risky gutting of most everything you’ve come to expect from progressive house. Taking its cues from 2002’s “airdrawndagger,” “Involver” morphs from otherworldly brooding into complex, often meditative conflations — semi-synthetic simulacra of Gregorian chants, polyphonic Renaissance melodies, harpsichord and electric piano accents, Flamenco guitar segues and classic Sasha breakbeats, while remixing everything from UNKLE to Felix da Housecat. Sometimes he’s so over-brimming with ideas that the results are confused, especially during extended, hazy vocal transitions. But his rethink of Spooky’s “Belong,” with its RomantiGoth harmonics and gutsy bass growl, is a dancefloor killer. And his closer, Ulrich Schnauss’s “On My Own,” is an unabashedly rocking Big Beat thriller, with a fused harmonica-voice rising in a call of plaintive triumph – exactly what you want after last call, when the lights have flicked on, the hands are in the air, and it’s time to go but you just…can’t…leave.
COMMON FACTOR
Nick Calingaert, aka Common Factor, produces some of the most sophisticated and clever dance music I’ve heard recently. But don’t call it techno. Even though he was signed to Carl Craig’s prestigious Planet-E label from 1997 to 2001, don’t call it techno. The music he makes is far more intricate than that name would suggest. When I caught him late last year at Smartbar, he was working a mixing deck the size of a bathtub, chucking down cold, stentorian electro beats. Bit by bit, layer by layer, loop by loop, he’d build and deconstruct rhythms into a polymorphously perverse structure of house, electro, techno, and full-on jackhammering rave with a quite uncommon sensitivity toward texture. In 2001, he split with Planet-E to form his own label, Tactile Records. The name’s appropriately chosen: this is music of tangible depth, a thrill for both body and brain as you’re throwing yourself around the dance floor.
DJ SNEAK
Chicago house music doesn’t come more jackin’ than DJ Sneak. One of the classic members of Chicago house’s “second wave,” along with Cajmere and Derrick Carter, Sneak made his name with a number of monster tracks, including the 1996 “filtered disco” classic “You Can’t Hide From Your Bud,” the 1997 rampaging diesel train known as “Special K,” and last year’s “Fix My Sink” with vocals by Bear Who? Arriving in Chicago from Puerto Rico in 1983, Sneak knew almost no English and concentrated on the instrumental qualities of house, rather than vocals. This is precisely what gives his sets such delectable distinctiveness. He does more between a four-on-the-floor beat than most DJs do all week — Hammond B3 organ spillouts, catchy looped electric-piano riffs, and funky jazz solos that you’ll be humming for three days straight. He’s also got an authentic, raw edge to him, a sweaty, vinyl-in-the-basement-at-4am dirtiness that should make this Metro/Smartbar event with Derrick Carter one to get all Old Skool to.
RICHIE HAWTIN
There are people who will tell you Richie Hawtin, aka Plastikman, is God. These people frighten me. But their adulation is understandable — the Windsor, Ont. native is one of the great pioneers of minimalist Detroit techno, and a true architect of sound. Has it really been ten years since “Spastik” made tribal house minions have virtual seizures on the dance floor? He employs the blunt, brutal beats of the 303 and 909 so effectively that a dropped beat, a left-field silence, becomes its own instrument. I’m not so fond of his latest release “Closer,” an ambient-techno exercise in alienation. He explains, “Instead of making a soundscape for people to lose themselves in, it’s more like being locked inside my own head.” Richie, Richie, get out of your gulliver and onto your own dance floor, because this rare event is an absolute must for techno-heads. He’s joined by DJ Magda, who also partnered with him on his 2001 “DE9 – Closer to the Edit” tour.
I:CUBE
Underground isn’t just an adjective tonight. While Squarepusher fuzzes the masses with dissonances of IDM upstairs at the Metro, one of Paris’s cleverest DJ/producers will be swirling Smartbar with tunes below the radar, but far above par. I:Cube, aka Nicolas Chaix, does the über-cool French house with one eyebrow wryly arched at all times. I was so impressed with his set at DEMF 2001 – a masterpiece of filtered disco-house splatted with Casio blips and Atari bleeps – that I borrowed a pen, wrote his name on my arm, and ran, not walked, straight to Virgin to buy his album “Adore.” It remains one of my all-time favorite discs, shimmying from Gitanes-smoking deep house beats and retro-disco handclaps to bizarre half-swallow gulp samples in “Gastro Funk,” and flanged dog barks in a triumph of techno anarchy called “The Basic Bastard.” This is a very rare spin through Chicago for I:Cube, so see him be cool and unusual tonight.
COSMIC TWINS
Call in dead on Friday. You’ll be out in space, communing with the bright twinkly things, after techno legend Derrick May and deep-house genius François K fuse to give you Cosmic Twins power activation. François K was probably turning knobs before you were born. As a producer, he’s only worked with The Smiths, The Cure, Cabaret Voltaire, U2, The Eurythmics, Ashford and Simpson, Mick Jagger, Diana Ross, Depeche Mode, and Kraftwerk, among others, from the late ‘70s onward – including a gold-record winning mix of Musique’s disco classic “Push Push in the Bush.” But it’s his latest that makes me want to dance down the street imitating an iPod ad: “Wavetec One: The Miles from Mars Mix,” is a brilliantly crafted, throbbing deep house epic cross-threaded with the best of Detroit techno rhythmic counterpoints. Add that to Derrick May’s nimble manipulation of the most complex techno beat structures with jawdropping speed and dexterity, and you have a supremely exciting event worthy of any time, any place, any where, but only available tonight.
House Arrest Summer Launch
Last autumn in this space we told you how criminal it would be to miss House Arrest Mondays with Derrick Carter, Diz, Hiroki and $4 drinks. Now Zentra breaks and enters into summer with an industry festival worthy of your highest crimes and misdemeanors. Zentra’s wonderful garden celebrates its springtime unshackling with a free barbeque from 10-midnight, along with exclusive House Arrest visuals, independent films and skater vids projected on a 15-foot screen outdoors. This is every Monday, people! But what makes tonight even sweeter is the guest DJ appearance of Cedric Combs, who used to run the club’s very successful SOS nights – fun for everyone in the Big House.
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