For Seven Plays, each week one of our contributors will keep a personal music diary for seven days, then hands the feature over to another Truant at the end of the week. The idea is to keep sharing great music with our readers, but with a more individual touch than our more objective posts and reviews. Our third installment comes from TT heavyweight Tobias Shine; everything from lethal Jersey, South African dance music, Prince, and much, much more.
Saturday: Marcus Mixx – The Spell (Ron Hardy Club Mix)
“Hey yo, I’m Tobias and I’ll be carrying you through my week of listening pleasure! My brain is mush right now thanks to Kowton and Tessela laying rest to the club last night and I’m also kinda deaf in my left ear so what I write about this may be a little off. It’s amazing that this slice of pure bliss was only properly released to the world in 2006, despite its creation circa ’88. This one is just vibes on vibes on vibes and completely nails the scat melancholia brief. The flip (‘Without Make Up’) is beautiful as well. Just going to smoke about five ounces of weed and bathe in those claps.”
Sunday: DJ Lag – Ghosts on the Loos
“The dance music of South Africa has a history as long and dense as Chicago’s and I’ve only just started journeying down that path, but DJ Lag’s brutalist style feels so current. I could have picked any of the raw af trax on his kasimp3 page (which is a great resource for SA stuff) but this one sums it all up pretty well – dread atmospherics and that relentless, punishing drum sound. The way the tracks slowly build creates such high-pressure tension but never releases, the sounds just slowly suffocate the atmosphere around them. Kwaito is so dope because on the other side of super minimal stuff like Lag, DJ Lusiman and DJ Snaxxzo you have the more euphoric sounds of people like Big Nuz and DJ Spoko (who will put out an EP with Lit City Trax soon). Also highly recommend the interviews and mixes (here and here) Okzharp did for Blackdown’s blog after a trip to SA, whole lot of amazing music and information in there!”
Monday: Dexter Duckett – Pure Massacre
“Since Soraya shouted Air Max in her Seven Plays, I gotta show love to another Australian producer doing it big at the moment. Dexter is a kid from Adelaide with fire in his belly and a whole lot of cool ideas in his head. This one had me and my girlfriend ballroom dancing together, which is weird because this is track is super sinister and those twinkling bells makes the whole thing really chaotic and paranoid. Anyway, really feeling all the stuff Dexter is doing – stay tuned to TT to find out more about him.”
Tuesday: Beyonce – End of Time (DJ Big O + DJ Sliink Rmx)
“It’s no secret that Jersey is the best but it doesn’t get much better than Sliink and Big O going in on a Bey banger, those vocals fluttering so beautifully around the stereo field. Jersey has such incredible impact and momentum and is obviously lethal in the club. This is an oldie but there are so many people making sick trax at the moment: Irresistible, Problem, Kay Drizz, Yung Kidd, Albyy, Uniique, Tricks, K Deucez, King Tiger Z… the list goes on.”
Wednesday: Prince – Erotic City
“Ugh, I feel like this is such a missed opportunity. Like, yay, Prince – TIP! But whatever, I can’t deny that I’m obsessed with this today so it would be against the rules to leave it out. :~( On repeat, one after the other after the other. AFTER THE OTHER. Haven’t rinsed a track this hard since I rediscovered “Crush on You” the other day.”
Thursday: DJ Karfox – Fodencia Massacre
“The music coming out of Portugal at the moment is just so, so good. You would have heard of kuduro, the most visible producers being Marfox and Nigga Fox, but there is a whole school of kids working underneath them, taking up the fox name and heading to soundcloud who are making incredible stuff. There also seems to be more happening than just kuduro. Fodencia (translating, fittingly, to ‘fuckery’) is a super raw and stripped back style of tarraxo or tarraxinha, which people sometimes describe as a slowed down kuduro. (Tarraxo usually runs at around 90-100 bpm, kuduro at 130-140). I know, the genres can be confusing, their multiplicity compounded by a long history and development as well the music’s intercultural nature (being a mixing pot of, from my understanding, Angolan, Portuguese and French traditions). Fodencia is based around staggering triplet structures which make the whole thing sound really broken and wonky but also make it really, really fun to dance to. I also love the way these guys work with vocals, this one is a perfect example but how about this Nervoso and Onorato trak that uses a screaming girl as its hook!? SO sick. If you’d like to learn more about fodencia/tarraxo this article and this compilation, compiled by Marfox himself, are a great start.”
Friday: Iron Soul – Chinese Water
“Been rinsing Iron Soul, which is Kromestar’s earlier grime moniker, heavily recently. I haven’t heard many other producers in grime who work with soul samples and chipmunk vocals, except maybe Blackjack, but it just works so well. You can hear Mssingno’s happier days in there somewhere. Iron Soul was also capable of super cold, industrial stuff (see: Vulcan and Whistler off the South Side EP) and brings the Eastern vibe on this beauty. It’s just that classic starry-eyed melody that makes you feel all special and sad at the same time, like all the best ones. I actually wanted to choose ‘Art of Music’, which really tugs at the heart strings, but I couldn’t find proper audio anywhere. :(
That’s all from me, I hope you enjoyed my picks! Handing the feature over to my boy Matt for next time.”
Read our previous instalments of Seven Plays here and make sure to catch Matt Gibney on his Seven Plays flex next week.
