BEATS & PIECES
DANCE AID TRUST, the disco biz supported charity fund raisers, organised another national Dance Aid Week back in October during which just £300 was the largest amount to be raised by a DJ from any single event, a sum that should be easy enough to top before New Year’s Eve, when the 1989 charity drive ends – and, as a bit of encouragement, the DJ raising the largest amount by then will win a trip to the New Music Seminar in New York next July (money already raised will qualify if sent by January 9 to Dance Aid Trust, c/o Stage 3 Promotions, Hook Norton, Banbury, Oxfordshire OX15 5NT, where you can contact the Trust’s secretary Tony Hickman if interested in organising an event) … Eternal is now confirmed as the official name of the new Warner Bros partnered label set up by Pete Edge, who has working with him here Cynthia Cherry, previously of New York’s Jump Street Records – whose act The Basement Boys she thus brought to the attention of WEA in their current role as producers of Ultra Naté … Lena Williams is expanding and updating the DJ mailing list for JetStar and distributed labels, like Sure Delight and WA, amongst many: send full work details to her at JetStar, 155 Acton Lane, Park Royal, London NW10 7NJ (although they specialise in ‘street soul’ and other funky stuff these days, the business was built on reggae, so it’s worth specifying if you truthfully can promote that at your gigs) … De La Soul’s commercial 12-inch turns out to include, in place of the T.Ski Valley ‘Catch The Beat!’ bass-ed ‘Buddy’ instrumental, the similarly jolting Bob James ‘Take Me To The Mardi Gras’ bass-ed 105⅝bpm ‘Ghetto Thang (Ghetto Ximer Mix)’ (sic!) … Queen Latifah & Monie Love’s ‘Ladies First’ remix, billed on white label as ‘US Version’, on finished pressings is instead confusingly now called ‘Extended ’45 King’ Mix’ – not much to differentiate it from the original 12-inch version’s ’45 King Mix’ … Raze featuring Lady J & The Secretary of Ent. ‘All For Love’ (Champion CHAMP 12-228) came storming into The Club Chart last week purely on mailing list promo response, not even pre-releases being due in the shops until January of this rapping overlaid 119⅞bpm ‘Break 4 Love 1990’ revamp (as its subtitle reads) … Ruby Turner’s brilliant ‘It’s Gonna Be Alright’ is gonna be out commercially at last in January, but has already been preceded by another promo pressing with a couple of Blacksmith remixes … ‘What U Waiting 4’, rather than the already established import hit ‘Beyond This World’, will be the Jungle Brothers’ UK 12-inch towards the end of January … PWL associated Lisson Records don’t release Sybil’s ‘Walk On By’ here until January 8, and her album until January 29 … Frankie ‘Bones’ proved so popular a draw that the venue wasn’t big enough for the guest list when he DJed in London last week at a reception to launch de/Construction Records’ album compilation of previous import singles produced by him and Tommy Musto, ‘Dance Madness And The Brooklyn Groove’, from with a four-track 12-inch promo sampler features Stacey Parris’s plaintive Latin hip hop-ish 120-0bpm ‘Feel It In My Heart (UK House Mix)’, The Break Boys’ episodic funky beats jiggled 121¾-0bpm ‘Listen To The Rhythm Flow (Notice The 808 Bass Mix)’, Eden Paradise’s only recently reviewed girl whispered juddery rumbling 119¾bpm ‘This Is The Dance (The Paradise Mix)’, and Frankie ‘Bones’’ own old oddly Belgian new beat-like (despite the title) 119¾-0bpm ‘Call It Techno (Technocolour Dub)’ … Glasgow’s £1½ million refurbished Tin Pan Alley this Saturday (16) starts a new ‘Unlimited Freak Out’ night on both floors with music to match by upfront DJs Lars, Orde, Harry, and (from the Hacienda in Manchester) Jon DaSilva, the latter filled in for once a month by Stuart McMillan from this concept’s forerunner, Slam … Jazzy Jason & The Dynamic Guv’nors are putting on a mini stage show this Saturday (17) for house spinning Doug Hughes at Welling Station (situated guess where!) … Gary Oldis and Ian Wright, not exactly lagging behind in what they play themselves, actually need an even more upfront jock to join them at Sunderland’s Chambers – contact club manager John Banwell on 091-565 1900 … University Of Sussex student Sev Burden, following in recent graduate DJ StreetsAhead’s footsteps, jocks three nights a week at the on-campus The Crypt (where Jackie Becker is after guest DJs on 0273-727681/604136) and has also ventured into Brighton itself to present Basshead Tuesdays at the Underground Club, mixing reggae, P’funk, deep soul with a smattering of bass-heavy house and hip hop – you can tell he’s into the heartbeat ryddim of the bass and drum! … Rob Faria, a keen bedroom mixer, recently arrived at Brighton’s Polytechnic to find he’d landed digs in a house full of dance fans – and already they’ve started promoting their own ‘Armageddon’ parties with guest DJs around the town’s clubs … Leon Roberts, jocking with Cineman at Manchester Poly’s Black Rhythms Wednesdays, is desperate to find someone who can sell him the Dancin’ Danny D remixed Cooltempo promo of Kid ‘N Play ‘2 Hype’ containing its House Instrumental (not on the phone, he’s at 10 Booth Avenue, Fallowfield, M14 6RB) … Hereward Radio Sunday afternoon dance jock Steve Jason, still packing Peterborough’s Gables pub on Tuesdays, amongst other gigs, has returned on Thursdays to the Jenyns Arms near Downham Market at picturesque sounding Denver Sluice (named after a feature of the Fenland drainage system!) … ‘Woody’ Woodruffe’s funky gigs include (as somehow only seems right!) the Woodpecker in Mansfield every Wednesday now … Edzy has got in early to point out that Unique 3’s next Sunday Soundyard nites at Bradford’s Club Rio just happen to be Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, 9.30pm-2.30am – good timing, guys, know what I mean?! … Joe Field is starting a new Sunday Arena night, with relaxed dress and what he hopes will be a “real” club atmosphere, next month at The Point in Milton Keynes, where he currently jocks downstairs Thurs/Saturdays (and at Watford’s Mirrabeau Mon/Fridays) … KISS-fm main man, Gordon Mac presents otherwise all female guest DJs at his Foot Loose Thursdays at Soho’s Gulliver’s, drawing on a roster that includes Mother Popcorn, Heddi, Mags, Sez, Chanelle and DJ Lizzy … Mark One, something of an ornithological expert who even calls himself ‘The Bird Man’ (he also gigs at Belfast’s Robinsons Thurs/Saturdays), has kindly and at last cleared up just what that pesky bird is that warbles all over the likes of ‘Sueno Latino’ and ‘Pacific State’ – he reckons it’s an American whippoorwill, or just possibly a slowed down sample of a loon (an American diving bird too, honest!) … IT’S SUCH A GOOD VIBRATION!
HOT VINYL
MANTRONIX (featuring Wondress) ‘Got To Have Your Love’ (US Capitol V-15521)
At last something fresh (and instantly huge!) from Curtis Mantronik, featuring his new lisping rapper Bryce Luvah but mainly cooed by wailing Wondress (a girl), this funky drummer chugged tugging jiggler is in Soul II Soul-ish street soul/new jack swing rather than hip hop style, with chunkily percussive 106bpm Club With Bonus Beats, Hard To Get Rap and 106⅛bpm Luv Dub, or the flip’s more smoothly homogenised 106⅝bpm Club Edit, Instrumental and Radio Edit mixes. Due soon after Christmas, the already promoed UK pressing (Capitol 12CL 559) contains just the three A-side versions (Luv Dub somehow here becoming 105¾bpm).
808 STATE ‘90’ (ZTT ZTT2, via WEA)
Also continuously flowing, more or less, and largely instrumental, but far more creative than the Adamski set that might be seen as its rival, this destined to be massive Manchester album has the ‘Hustle’ flavoured fiercely throbbing and thrashing Terry Riley-ish synth sizzled 120¼bpm ‘Cobra Bora’, remorselessly driven twittery gurgling and thumping 0-116⅝-0bpm ‘808080808’, “L-O-V-E, love” spelling juddery dated electro hip hop-type scratching 107bpm ‘Anaconda’ (beware the false finish then abrupt segue), glum girl muttered tinkling twittery burbling 120¼-0bpm ‘Magical Dream’, frantically skittering 135⅔-0bpm ‘Donkey Doctor’, already familiar fast though still atmospheric ‘new age house’ (0-)128¼-0bpm ‘Pacific 202’, and gradually unfurled atmospheric loping tinkly 0-115¼-0bpm ‘Sunrise’ (a sort of second class ‘Pacific State’).
ADAMSKI ‘LIVEANDIRECT’ (MCA Records MCL 1900)
The full album by this acid house instrumentalist, who has built a reputation playing live and alone at orbital and warehouse type parties, keeps the spirit of 1988 alive in a supposedly live acieed session that flows continuously through the twittery spurting and thumping 0-120¼bpm ‘N-R-G (Parts 1 & 2)’, tuneful piano pumped 122¼bpm ‘I Dream Of You’, less good frantic hollow 126bpm ‘Tenko Krishna’, keyboards piped and jangled throbbing frisky 124bpm ‘The Bassline Changed My Life’, briskly chugging electro 126bpm ‘In Your Face’, disjointed 124-124¼-0bpm ‘Magic Piano’, synth swirled and piano pounded 126⅓bpm ‘You, Me, House’, twittery lurching 123¼bpm ‘A Brand New World’, piano and squidgy bass driven good teasingly titled 121⅓bpm ‘M25’, techno-ish sparse percussive 0-124¼bpm ‘I Love Teknology (Part 1)’, piano plonked twirling 120⅓bpm ‘Rap You In Sound’, Mike Oldfield goes acieed-ish tinkly chugging 124⅓bpm ‘Into Orbit’, and the somehow style encapsulating, frantically speeding up at the end, final 123⅓-0bpm ‘Love And Life’. Continue reading “December 16, 1989: Mantronix (featuring Wondress), 808 State, Adamski, Lil Louis & The World, D Mob”
James Hamilton's Disco Page 