Monday's Long Songs: Guest Post

Another very welcome guest post from Dr. Rob, live and direct from Ban Ban Ton Ton/ Japan. 

Colin Angus, of The Shamen, charted Ron Trent`s Altered States in one of the U.K.`s rock music weeklies, around the time of the landmark 12`s initial release in 1990.* Angus said it was a tune that he`d heard played at the infamous, illegal RIP parties, held on London’s Clink Street.** A darker, definitely non-Balearic, but equally as important contemporary of the more widely celebrated acid house incubator / shrine, Shoom.

 Altered States

I immediately added the tune to my “wants” list, but it wasn’t until Dutch label, Djax-Up-Beats reissued the record in 1992, that I managed to find a copy. It was probably a Kris Needs review, in his Needs Must, Black Echoes, column, that alerted me to its recirculation. The hunt for it took me from Flying Records, in Kensington Market - where it was “Great track, but sorry, no mate” - to Fat Cat in Covent Garden, just off Seven Dials, which fast became my new favourite shop. 

Ron Trent produced Altered States when he was just 14.*** His father was a percussionist (who sat in with jazz legend, Max Roach), a DJ, and co-founder of one of Chicago`s first record pools. Ron had grown up surrounded by rhythm, often playing along with his dad, on congas and traps, to the latest releases at home. Boy, does that upbringing show. 

Created on a friend’s set up of TR-909, D50, and SB01, the track is all about the drums. A huge kick counters a super simple key refrain. Tiny snippets of snares tease. Hand-claps crash and crack like thunder. Start, stop, and then start and stop again. There’s a synth-line that’s surely inspired by Master C&J`s Dub Love, but it`s the genius mixing, and editing****, of these basic, bad ass, percussive elements that bash your body - the breakdowns more like beatdowns - and hypnotize your head. The irregular programmed patterns made to alternately march, and totally wig-out. Everything coming together and colliding with a crazy intensity, especially when showers of jazz cymbals join in. Somehow, subliminally, continually climbing, this dynamic constantly changing for the whole of the track`s 13-minute duration. Driving its timeless status, and laying the stripped-back raw, jacking, foundation for Cajmere`s Relief Records imprint, which revitalized house and techno in the mid-1990s - and the Green Velvet one`s own classic, Conniption Fit.

 Dub Love

Conniption Fit

Green Velvet's 1994 single Preacher Man is the definition of simple but effective and set techno floors on fire in the mid- 90s (and ever since). 

Preacher Man

Notes

*Probably Melody Maker, probably while talking to Push.

**Where The Shamen`s vocalist, Richard “Mr. C(helsea)” West, DJed. 

***The whole Afterlife E.P. is great. 

****Edits by the one an only Armando. 

What Do The Stars Say To You

The new album by Chicago house and techno legend Ron Trent, What Do The Stars Say To You, is causing a bit of a stir and rightly so- it's a repeat play, engaging, innovative and enchanting record, one that already feels timeless. Across the album's ten tracks (fifteen on CD) Ron Trent uses the studio, electronics and a range of live instruments with a slew of guests and collaborators. Every track is stunning- the production is sumptuous, the synths, instruments and drums perfectly mixed. Taken together, it's a fluid, grown up, richly musical album that has space to breathe and a general sense of wellbeing, that when it's playing, things are ok. 

On an album where every track could be a favourite here's a handful of highlights. Admira, recorded with ambient/ Balearic artist Gigi Masin, starts out slow with drums and cymbals and is suddenly interrupted by discordant synths and a noodly leadline. Gradually it builds, layers of sounds gliding in silkily, hand drums pattering away, toplines picking out melodies from somewhere. By the five minute mark it's weightless, floating off and away. 

On Sphere, created with French violinist Jean- Luc Ponty, the sheer warmth of the production and the dazzling melody lines (violin and synth) hark back to the 80s but also make something that feels very now. It's got jazz and house in its grooves but also something of a smoothed out version of early 80s New York avant noise. 

It's followed by WARM, a sultry, softly padding piece of music with keyboards and guitars going off at different points and an undulating bassline. Nothing stays the same for long and it's all so fresh and lively, endlessly finding new ways to repeat itself. 

The album is full of contributions from others. As well as Ponty and Gigi Masin, there are tracks with Venecia, Brazilian duo Azymuth, Lars Bartkuhn and recent Glastonbury smash hits Khruangbin, and a host of 70s and 80s influences- Tangerine Dream, Herb Alpert, Jan Hammer, Grace Jones, Vangelis, Prince, early Kraftwerk and Dinosaur L all get mentioned by Trent. On Flos Potentia (Sugar, Cotton, Tobacco) Trent and Khruangbin kick up an Afrobeat storm, propulsive grooves and euphoric chords. 

Back in 1990 Ron released Altered States, a definitive piece of US techno, thirteen and a half minutes of kick drums, synth strings, basslines, hi hats and raw but gliding, futuristic techno. He has recorded and released hundreds of records since, a back catalogue deep and wide, but Altered States remains untouchable. 

Altered States

Night Dubbin

I missed this at the end of last year and have become somewhat addicted to it over the last few days. Nightmares On Wax have released 8 albums and various singles since 1989 (mostly on Warp). In A Space Outta Sound from 2006 was the last one I got, an album of laid back, downtempo reggae inspired grooves but somehow still seeming to be in a straight line from the bleep 'n' bass releases in 1989. There's a new one called Shape The Future out now. Back in December this came out as part of a remix 12" of the track Citizen Kane. The original is gospel-hip hop-soul. For this 10 minute excursion Ron Trent sets the vocal (by Mozez) to a skippy, propulsive Chicago house beat and allows the groove to whisk us away to a future where the machines have made gospel their own.