Thursdaze House

House-heads and other fellow travelers in Montreal, if you have the chance, check out DeepInsideMTL's new party this Thursday.  Ewan Pearson-approved Flowers & Sea Creatures will be headlining alongside the Deutschsonik duo Vosper and Jealous Lovers.  A stacked bill at the Royal Phoenix.

BIG DUMB HOUSE & Brandy

Saeed Younan Call You (Loko Remix)

Brandy & Monica The Boy Is Mine (Architechs Remix)

Re: Call You I'm never for big, dumb house music unless it has an accompanying big dumb chorus or hook to go with it, but there's something about the rolling beat, masterful samples and darker undertones to this track that gets me... Or it could be all the Neo-Citron.

For more such things, check out Blue Dog this Thursday in Montreal where I'll be playing along with Nicky Raisinz and Michael DI. No cover, and plenty of sangria.

Jay Watts III "Mirror Presence" Mix

Mirror Presence Mix by Jay Watts III

Don't You Want My Love?

Moodyman Don't You Want My Love?

The Caribou DJ night was great, thanks to everyone who came out, Dubinsky (natch) and Frontrunners. Lots more stuff coming up for the rest of the summer and into the fall.

Who is the Modern Wang Chung?

Sundowners photographed by incomparable mid-century WASP Slim Aarons

Les Sins Lina

Les Sins is a high energy, rolling piano house from the genius mind of one South Carolinian Chaz Bundick, now known far and wide as being behind the kodochromatic blissed out funk pop Toro y Moi. Just like another Chaz (Jenkel), he's got a firm understanding of the dynamics of rhythmic funk (listen to that guitar!), as well as a flair for the more addictive elements of French Touch house (listen to that sample!). If 2010 is not going to disappoint me, there's got to be a studio date between this guy and Philippe Zdar at some point. Maybe they can score a remake of William Freidkin's To Live & Die in LA.

The Trouble with Men & Babies...

The Last Days of Disco & The Expanding Universe
Hollis Brown Thornton, 2009

CZR Chicago Southside (Rick's Chicago Boogie Remix)
Trouble Men Get This Party Rockin'
Pnau Baby (Breakbot Remix)
Pnau Baby
Pnau Baby (Acapella)

Today's post goes out to Mr. David Lindquist, another British Columbian expatriate* who now makes his daily bread as a stunningly talented web designer, is the head of the musical group Lagoons, and is also a long-standing and skilled DJ to boot (C.R.I.M.E.S). And one of those nice guys who you know had all of the Roulé releases starting from day one, but is still not going laugh and point at a bungled beat-match from a lesser DJ every now and then. (I know!)

Mr. Lindquist's pick, from Cesar Hernandez (CZR) way back in 1999, Chicago Southside. Unfortunately, I don't have a decent rip of the original, so you'll have to deal with the remix. Troublemen's Get This Party Rockin' proves that even in 2000, years before Justice (that era widely regarded by most brimmers as a dark and deadly place known as only an appropriate place to semi-ironically scoop Brooklyn rap acapellas), that the dance music phenomenon of pinching kids' choruses for kicks was still a sure-fire crowd pleaser.

Those kids bring us to our next track, a remix of Pnau's Baby by rising etoile Breakbot, which appeared on the Australian duo's limited edition tour CD a while back. Breakbot's remix is clearly superior than the original, squeezing and teasing the Sesame Street stylings of the original with some classic French touches (har har), and a kiddy-approved piano outro. I've included the acapella track so you can try your hand at mash-up wizardry, or at least imagine yourself hectoring and haranguing a group of underfed Australian children to express the romantic feelings of studio overlords.

En-route: Breakbot's Thibaut Berland deserves a whole post of his own, which he will get...
* The phrase BC Expat is almost as Montreal as depanneur.

Re-Ups: Crydajam, Plaza Musique, 45:33 Remixes, and Angie Dickinson in Opera Gloves.

It's Burt Bacharach's ex-wife, Angie Dickinson, and she's wearing opera gloves!

Crydajam Playground

Plaza Musique Magazine
LCD Soundsystem 45:33 (Theo Parrish Remix)

As many of you are probably aware, (those of you that aren't visiting to look at photos of Etta James or photos of Angie Dickinson in opera gloves), I've been using Yousendit to host mp3 files - with only 100 downloads available and traffic increasing to this blog (now that I'm actually updating it), it tends to run out before the 7 day period. I'll find a solution to that, but in the meantime, I'll start re-uploading some of the more popular and requested songs from the past couple of months.

Here are a trio to get us started. First, Crydajam's well-crafted bumping brass and organ-riffing house jam Playground was, for obvious reasons, gone in a second. Original Crydajam post here... Montreal's reigning rulers in the realm of sophisticated space-pop Plaza Musique have been getting a bit of attention (well-deserved, I have to say) from Anglo sources and beyond now that they're going to be opening for Os Mutantes this weekend at Pop Montreal. Original Plaza Musique post here... And finally, of course everyone's been looking to download LCD Soundsystem's 45:33 Remixes, with special attention to Theo Parrish's remix. Truthfully, I found the rest of the remixes snooze-worthy: Pilooski's remix of 45:33 was like being stuck in a k-hole of boring house. Zzzzz...

Crydajam "Playground"

Crydajam Playground
(MP3 REUPLOADED & AVAILABLE HERE)

Eric Chedeville, Guillaume Emmanuel de Homem-Christo and Mederic Nebinger under the Crydajam moniker, the b-side of 2002's If You Give Me The Love I Want, the 18th release on their Crydamoure label. Needless to say, it's wonderful.

To Be Making the Party [sic], To Be Playing the Vinyls [sic]

Angels, harpsichords, house music: the usual.

1977 Chocolatt
Clyde Alexander & Sanction Got To Get Your Love
Rico The Wizard Spell of Love

I don't know anything about 1977, and the 61 website where it was posted isn't very helpful, but it's a great sample-based house track - I love the percussive element (smaller bells, the guitar) in certain songs that immediately conjures up the sounds of an over-packed party somewhere. (Hey, I know how lame that is - about as lame as my obsession with music that makes me think about the ocean or even (God) sounds like the ocean. Real 6 year old territory here...) Roxy Music's Love is the Drug, for example, or Clyde Alexander's Got to Get Your Love, re-posted above, which must be the prototype for the years of soulful house (some good, a lot not) that followed.

Axel Le Baron and Julien Kourbatoff's Darling Records' second release is Rico The Wizard, part of the label's grand scheme to bring us back to the glory days of French Touch. Nice.

Summer's over, so the only physical fitness solution for the easily-chilled nightclub-frequenting denizens of Montreal is a dancefloor workout. Thankfully it's not going to be difficult to dust off the dancing shoes & find a place to dip & sweat in the next couple of weeks, with visits by The Juan Maclean this Thursday and Italian DJ Bottin on September 26th. Bottin is going to be joined by a stellar line-up of Montreal's finest, including Andrew Ward & Matt Bain from Love! Disco Style and the Loose Joints guys. Exceptional, and a great opportunity to, in the patois of my French-Canadian countrymen, make the party (FB event ici).

House Music! Passé Partouse & Tanuki: Racoon Dog

Kyla Do You Mind? (Crazy Cousinz Remix) Zshare
Wildlife Nature
*NEW* Enur Calabria 2007 (Club Mix feat. Natasja) *NEW*

There's a Pan-Atlantic nomenclature meltdown when it comes to funky house - in my mind, I thought funky house (about as awful a genre name as one could imagine) house based around disco samples (at its most basic - Torontonian Nick Holder's Dance Dance Dance, built on a Chic song of the same name & not much else) - French Touch without the filter sweeps, while in the UK it's an off-shoot of garage music and the flipside to the dark & brooding dude kingdom of dubstep. Last year's break-out hit (uh, okay) being the above song, a Crazy Cousinz remix of Kyla's Do You Mind? This isn't the most intellectually astute stuff around, I know: note the words "funky" & "crazy", and pluralizing a noun by adding a z. Ouch. But it's a good enough pop song for me, with a Soca-beat, piano stabs & cute vocals. Recommended if you nodded along to Enur's Calabria 2007 but are programming music for your teenage cousin. *I added Calabria 2007 just 'cause it was so great.

The stellar blog Beat Electric put out a mega-post last week of American house tracks from the 80s, y'know, Adonis and Marshall Jefferson & what not, and rather than having an epiphany that, yes, this is the music I must love, I'm more dismayed that the classic house sounds like a music store clerk giving me a demo of every single feature a drum-machine has in 1987. There are notable exceptions, but D Train was more of an R&B group than a house group. Ah well, many props to everyone at Beat Electric for taking the time to put it up, & I think I'll just have to keep on digging.

Wildlife are from Brooklyn, and judging from their Myspace friend list have some tenuous connection to the Hollerboard. They also have a song called Wildlife, which makes me think that this might be the members' first band, as that's just the sort of classic first band move. Much the same in rap, where one has to follow the State Your Name, State Your Intention rule:

"My name is Jay, & I'm here to say..."
"We're here to rock the party"

If Geiger's Cocain-e appeals to you on more than a narcotic level, you'll appreciate Wildlife's mannered sound, with its not to classic 80's R&B, electro, disco and house. I'm eager to hear some remixes of Nature, maybe by Classixx or Treasure Fingers? Their first release is the International Girl EP. Scant info available on Wildlife's Myspace page.

Japophiles Take Note! Tanuki is a shape-shifting Hengu. Tanuki is the Japanese God of restaurateurs, has giant testicles, carries sake around him, is found beckoning people to enter bars or restaurants, and, as is often the case in the land of the Rising Sun, often found entering sexual congress with humans. We've got a lot in common.