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Video of the day:

Roxette - "It Must Have Been Love" 1990 Pop-Rock / Soft Rock / Pop

I've always had a soft spot for the sound of Swedish pop duo Roxette and this ballad of theirs particularly. Although they were ensconced within a commercial scene and era of pop and rock that was often bland and devoid of any soul, they were able to take some of the worst excesses of the day and somehow make things a whole lot more pleasurably palatable. "It Must Have Been Love" was originally released in 1987 with Christmas lyrics, but in 1990 it was reworked into something for all seasons and appeared on the soundtrack to Pretty Woman, netting itself top-ten chart placements all across the world. Paired here with a very impressive figure skating routine from the 2010s.

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Today's compilation:

CBS-FM Oldies 93: History of Rock Volume 2 1993 Pop / R&B / Doo Wop / Soul / Rock & Roll / Garage Rock / Pop-Rock / Bubblegum Pop

Unfortunately, this is a pretty unremarkable cheat code comp here. There's plenty of great classics on it, but there's nothing that distinguishes it from any other dime-a-dozen 50s and 60s oldies comps. The most intriguing thing about it is that there's so little trace of it on the internet, but that's probably because it was likely only released in the Los Angeles area. LA's KCBS station is now Jack FM, which is a pretty low-rent operation where they seem to just put their sizeable library on shuffle without any on-air DJs, but back in the early 90s, it was solely dedicated to the oldies, just like its New York counterpart, WCBS-FM, still is (although as time advances, that 'oldies' word gets more and more elastic, and older music is continually phased out too). Funnily enough, there was a period in the 2000s when WCBS also changed to the Jack FM format, but people despised it so much that it eventually finished last in the ratings, and after a couple years, it returned back to its oldies format with DJs. That switch to Jack has gone down as one of the biggest blunders in the history of the New York radio business too, as WCBS was and now still is one of the region's most listened-to stations.

Perhaps this album is purely reflective of what you'd hear if you'd tuned into KCBS on some random day in 1993, and was used in order to promote that fact, but it doesn't seem like there's anything that makes this particularly LA-centric. You could call this WCBS-FM Oldies 101.1 and no one would know the difference. And that's something that I've noticed that CBS and the Collectables label that releases their comps do—release the same album in different markets, but use different station logos that align with the respective local CBS affiliate; like so:

Kinda strange that I can't find anything about Volume 1 or any potential subsequent volumes that might've been released from this series thereafter either. There are probably copies laying around in some LA closets or attics somewhere, but no one seems to have cataloged them to the internet yet, at least via a Google search. Kinda indicative of how much work there's still yet to be done in encoding a record of all these things. All we have is this second volume that can be found on AllMusic.

Also weird to label an album like this as the History of Rock and then include a whole bunch of tunes that clearly aren't rock on it🤷. Subtitle your series as something more accurate, please!

All in all, this is a good oldies comp because there's good and classic songs on it, but it's definitely not breaking any molds. Recommended if you have little to no familiarity with the 50s and 60s pop landscape and want some bare-bones education; otherwise this isn't really worth anyone's time and was a waste to press up and sell in the first place.

And if you are actually looking for that authentic LA oldies experience, look no further than the guy who invented the entire concept of the V/A compilation itself, Art LaBoe, who was also a beloved local DJ in LA, and who I've written about plenty of times before too.

Highlights:

The Isley Brothers - "Twist and Shout" Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs - "Stay" The Soul Survivors - "Expressway to Your Heart" Percy Sledge - "When a Man Loves a Woman" The Castaways - "Liar Liar" Aaron Neville - "Tell It Like It Is" The Del Vikings - "Come Go With Me" The Shirelles - "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" The Shangri-Las - "Leader of the Pack" The Turtles - "Happy Together" Brenton Wood - "Gimme Little Sign" The Troggs - "Wild Thing" Gene Chandler - "Duke of Earl" Fontella Bass - "Rescue Me" The Turtles - "She'd Rather Be With Me" Barbara Lewis - "Hello Stranger" The Box Tops - "Cry Like a Baby"

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Track of the day:

ManMachineMan - "Funk Corner (Ambient Mix)" Living Some Dreams Volume One 1997 Downtempo / Dub

Germans really have to be recognized for more than just their contributions to techno and trance when it comes to electronic music, because after you're done raving, you definitely need something more relaxational to recuperate with, and the duo of ManMachineMan totally got that. As Lexicon, they're known for making house, techno, and tech-house type stuff, but even they were known to get tired of those high-BPM four-on-the-floor beats and needed a different outlet to channel other wings of their creativity; and thus, in 1997, they donned the name ManMachineMan and started making downtempo, trip hop, and future jazz too, on Berlin-based chillout label Mole Listening Pearls.

Originally appearing as the final track on their CD-maxi single release of "Electricity Babies," the "Ambient Mix" of "Funk Corner" is ten minutes of hypnotic, dub-rooted tribal bliss. And it certainly takes some time to progressively unfold itself, but once MMM bring in a cosmic, Namlookian set of string pads at the 5:20 mark—Pete Namlook was Germany's ambient king—the whole thing acquires a whole new level of pupil-dilating depth and transcends into a different realm. And then with a whistly synth melody to top things off too, what we end up having is a pretty breathtaking and exquisitely layered piece of timelessly gorgeous chillout music 😌.

So, light stereotypes may prevent you from realizing it, but Germany has really produced an extensive catalogue of elite chillout tunes over the years, and this is just one such example. Pair this with another space-tribal-stringy beaut like German dance music maven Oliver Lieb's "Casablanca" from '94 and you're trippin' for the better part of 20 minutes!

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Video of the day:

Nalin & Kane - "Beachball" 1997 House / Balearic House / Trance / Balearic Trance

Exquisite late 90s blissful groover made for the Ibiza set, courtesy of German duo Nalin & Kane. Comes with chirping birds, crashing waves, a keyboard melody made up of warm stabs, some tribal drums, and some string pads too. There were multiple videos that were released for this song and this one here channels a certain mystical, southeastern fourth-world vibe while including some parrots. And the track itself definitely still goes as well 😌.

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Today's compilation:

The British Invasion: The History of British Rock, Vol. 9 1991 Psychedelic Rock / Blues-Rock / Hard Rock / Soft Rock / Pop / Pop-Rock / Psychedelic Pop / Gospel / Bubblegum Pop

Alright, folks, I know I've been posting *a lot* about oldies comps over the past few years, but as far as these large series go, I'm pretty sure that Rhino's The British Invasion: The History of British Rock is the greatest one that I've ever come across. Roughly 20 years after the Invasion itself had ended, no label had managed to deliver something that covered this era as comprehensively, and the fact that neither The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, nor The Who were willing to make their catalogues available probably went a long way in dissuading other labels from undertaking such a project too, but Rhino really knocked it out of the park with this, despite what's clearly missing from it; at the end of the day, what really makes compilations like these great are not the big, timeless hits that everyone else is familiar with and that you'll find on plenty of other comps anyway; it's the lesser-known bangers that accompany those hits instead—the ones you've never heard, barely heard, or just completely forgot.

For example, let's bring this concept into something that's a little bit more my own wheelhouse: late 90s female R&B. If I'm going to construct a DJ set or make a playlist of that stuff, I'm obviously gonna include "The Boy Is Mine," "No Scrubs," and at least a couple hits by Aaliyah and Destiny's Child too. But you know what's gonna really make that shit hum? A song like 702's "Where My Girls At?"—something that was fuckin' poppin' when it dropped, but has faded far more from peoples' memories than those other previously mentioned touchstones. That's the one that has the potential to make people go, "OH SHIT! I HAVEN'T THOUGHT ABOUT THIS SONG IN SO FUCKING LONG! OH MY GOD!" more than anything else. And that's key 🔑.

And that's also really what this series excelled at all throughout its nine separate volumes. It didn't just plunk you incessantly with obscurities, but it mixed them in exceptionally well, providing a full spectrum of super popular, moderately popular, and not popular at all. And it may have strayed a little bit from what its own title implied that it contained—not everything is actually totally British, not everything 'invaded' American shores, and not everything is rock���but despite its inaccuracies, it's still a spectacularly holistic and thorough view of such an important era of popular music.

And it wasn't fully chronological either, but from point A to point B, this series managed to roughly and slowly take us from the early 60s up until this final volume that deals with the late 60s and early 70s. Psychedelia had become a major deal by this time, but it also appears that the piano was becoming a lot more of a standard fixture for rock bands too. Maybe the widespread use of organ in psychedelia made bands want to implement more piano as well? All I really know is that I feel like no other volume's treatment of pop and rock in this series features the piano so prominently. Thunderclap Newman's "Something in the Air" bridges out into a full-on rag; Nirvana—no, obviously not that Nirvana—uses it to partially anchor their full-flanging landmark, "Rainbow Chaser," which doesn't even have its own Wikipedia article; Donovan's beautiful let's-all-put-our-arms-around-each-others'-shoulders-and-stand-in-a-circle-and-sing-this-set-finale-hippie-anthem-on-the-side-of-a-hill, "Atlantis," has a whole bunch of it, especially after its long, spoken-word monologue that eventually leads into something levitationally mantric and hymnal and akin to the "Hey Jude" coda; Argent's "Dance in the Smoke"—another one without a Wiki article—features it too; and Rod Stewart and Faces' "(I Know) I'm Losing You" has its rich keys serving as a super thick and high-post bed for the rest of its setup to gloriously lay upon. Feels like a trend had been unfolding—one that was being capitalized on further by the likes of David Bowie, Billy Joel, and Elton John too.

And speaking of Sir Elton—just follow me here—who better to close out this final installment of this series with than those lovely and dynamic Hollies, who've been featured as a constant throughline from the start to very finish of this entire collection itself? Here they deliver a baroque and gospelly rendition of "He's Not Heavy, He's My Brother" to take us out, which features not only occasional ecstatic surges of their own rich vocal harmonies, but also Elton John on piano! Well thought out selection to bring this whole series full-circle.

So that's it, folks. Another one of these big series is now in the books. Not sure exactly what's on tap next yet, but this set was a real pleaser that I'm extremely glad I sifted all the way through. Also planning to purchase it for someone very special in my life for this upcoming Mother's Day 😁.

Highlights:

The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - "Fire" Cream - "White Room" The Marmalade - "Reflections of My Life" Thunderclap Newman - "Something in the Air" Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich - "Zabadak" The Herd - "I Don't Want Our Loving to Die" Nirvana - "Rainbow Chaser" Donovan - "Atlantis" The Hollies - "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress" Deep Purple - "Hush" Joe Cocker - "With a Little Help From My Friends" Argent - "Dance in the Smoke" Rod Stewart with Faces - "(I Know) I'm Losing You" The Foundations - "Build Me Up Buttercup" The Hollies - "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother"

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Track of the day:

Das Klown - "U-Robot" Long Beach Blvd. Song released in 1998. Compilation released in 1999. Hardcore Punk / Punk Rock

As longtime staples of L.A.'s enormous punk scene, Das Klown have been putting it down since the late 80s from Long Beach as practitioners of a distinctly discontented and thrashy style that flourished within the early half of the same decade that they had first formed. Originally appearing on their 1998 album, Antidote, "U-Robot" is a fast and heavy, motormouthed and slaloming hardcore throwback that evokes the sound of some of their own home city's pioneering forebears. Imagine it being fronted by a guy wearing clown makeup and a red nose and you'll have an idea of how strangely surreal it might be to see something like this performed live.

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Video of the day:

Underworld - "Born Slippy" (Live at Rainbow 2000 Mt.Fuji Festival, Suyama, Susono, Shizuoka, Japan) 1996 Techno

Coming to you live from the base of Mt. Fuji in an amusement park, here's Underworld performing their enormous and enigmatic techno smash hit, "Born Slippy," as their encore at Japan's first ever large outdoor rave in the summer of '96. Filmed for a concert documentary, the performance gets interspersed with plenty of psychedelic visuals and clips of various ravers having an excellent time too. This inaugural Rainbow 2000 festival reportedly attracted around 18,000 attendees, proving that rave and dance music of different stripes definitely had staying power in Japan, and while they invited dance acts from elsewhere, it was also a massive celebration and showcase of the country's own developing dance scenes, as people like Takkyu Ishino and Ken Ishii played at it too.

Here's a written dispatch from Underworld's set, which is somehow still actually intact on Sony Music Japan's own website!

Here's the full documentary on YouTube, broken down into separate parts in a playlist.

And here's the same documentary as one video on Facebook too.

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Today's compilation:

The British Invasion: The History of British Rock, Vol. 8 1991 Psychedelic Rock / Psychedelic Pop / Baroque Pop / Pop / Hard Rock / Folk-Rock / R&B

I think the chief highlight of this eighth volume in Rhino's terrifically extensive British Invasion retrospective series is the serially underappreciated "My White Bicycle" by a band from London called Tomorrow. Although it was recorded at Abbey Road Studios during the same time that The Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper's—which caused John Lennon to praise it in the pages of Melody Maker as a 'psychedelic anthem'—it never gained enough commercial traction in order to chart in any capacity and was relegated to the underground instead. But this is nevertheless a highly innovative tune that's well worth being acquainted with. The hi-hats rattly chug at a pretty uniquely frenetic pace to represent the titular bicycle's rotating wheels and, more importantly, it's one of the first songs to ever implement backwards guitar phasing too, making it sound unlike pretty much anything else that was recorded and released in 1967. There's really nothing quite like hearing a recorded chord played in reverse, and they all sound especially cool on this tune that would've already sounded pretty unparalleled anyway 😎.

And once again, speaking of The Beatles, did you know that way before The Bee Gees would become primarily known for their disco exploits, they were being promoted in coy ways by their label that convinced people that they were actually The Fab Four operating under an alias? "New York Mining Disaster 1941 (Have You Seen My Wife, Mr. Jones)" served as the group's international debut single, and while it actually sounds very much like a folk-rock blueprint for what would become David Bowie's "Space Oddity," many radio DJs fell for a gimmick in which they were plied with a blank record that they were told was by a group from England that started with a B. Adding to the intrigue was the fact that some official US pressings of the single listed Nemperor Records as its publisher, which was founded by Beatles manager Brian Epstein. DJs spun this one repeatedly, thinking that they'd been given a new and cryptic Beatles promo, and the thing then went on to sell a million records globally. Pretty brilliant marketing trick to introduce the world to the Brothers Gibb!

So, as we near the end of this roughly chronological series, we're now in the years when the sound du jour across UK-born rock and pop was psychedelia. As such, the purer strains of traditional and orchestral pop that betrayed this series' core mission of documenting the history of British rock were excised—although most of them were great tunes anyway!—but all in all, this is probably the least interesting volume thus far. In the prior seven volumes, Rhino had done a masterful job of balancing the era-defining, well-known classics with the obscure gems, but the formula here is just not working as well; some of these obscurities seem to have been obscure for good reason, and established acts like the psychedelically transformed Eric Burdon & The Animals—who get two songs—do not sound nearly as cohesive as they once did in their more blues-centric days 😔. The big hits are really what seem to anchor this one more than the other volumes, save for a couple tunes, and while the disc is still a quality listen, it's less characteristic of the series as a whole.

Planning on capping off this whole collection tomorrow!

Highlights:

The Spencer Davis Group - "I'm a Man" Cream - "Sunshine of Your Love" The Hollies - "Dear Eloise" Donovan - "Hurdy Gurdy Man" Procol Harum - "A Whiter Shade of Pale" Tomorrow - "My White Bicycle" Procol Harum - "Conquistador" The Move - "Flowers in the Rain" The Bee Gees - "New York Mining Disaster (Have You Seen My Wife, Mr. Jones)" Status Quo - "Pictures of Matchstick Men" The Moles - "We Are the Moles" Peter & Gordon - "Knight in Rusty Armour" The Moody Blues - "Nights in White Satin"

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Track of the day:

Fallout - "The Morning After (Sunrise Mix)" Warp 10+1 Influences Song released in 1987. Compilation released in 1998. House / Deep House

This tune was my orgasm when House music started. It's an unreal record which sounded so different that it stood out for years. It's about 120 BPM and the bassline and strings are very basic, but it's really deep and bouncy and his playing and arrangements still sound fresh today. Nobody else has ever made anything like this, it's timeless. - LTJ Bukem in Muzik Magazine, 1995

Imagine DJing for hours on end on the 23rd floor of a building in New York City in 1987 from midnight well into the following afternoon and you'll have the backdrop for what ultimately inspired this sublimely classic house cut to be made in the first place. Crafted by the Big Apple duo of Tommy Musto and Lenny Dee, "The Morning After (Sunrise Mix)" is a joint that blends hard and soft together extremely well. A standard, pounding four-on-the-floor kick drum, an open hat, and some rhythmic snare taps form the backbeat, as a prominently thick and fuzzy bass melody continually bounces around playfully along with it too. All of it gets immersed in beautifully layered strings that end up lending the song a whole bunch of emotional depth, and with pepperings-in of some stabbing house organ chords and flute that accentuate things further, this is a tune that simply has the capacity to transport its dancer into another realm.

Championed hard over in the UK by drum n bass legends LTJ Bukem, Fabio, and Grooverider, electronic label Warp rightfully included "The Morning After (Sunrise Mix)" on their 10+1 Influences comp in 1998. And then in 2004, it also appeared on the soundtrack for GTA: San Andreas as part of its house music station too. A bona fide transatlantic house classic.

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Video of the day:

Underworld - "Born Slippy" 1996 Techno

The most commercially successful techno tune of all time set to a montage of clips from the film that helped take it all the way up to #2 on the UK singles chart back in '96 in the first place, Danny Boyle's Trainspotting. Wish this were a bit longer so we could get back to those heavenly synth chords from the intro, but it's still good stuff that'll make you wanna watch the flick anyway.

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Today's compilation:

The British Invasion: The History of British Rock, Vol. 7 1991 Pop / Psychedelic Rock / Psychedelic Pop / Pop-Rock

Plenty to say about a whole bunch of the British Invasion songs that were included on this comp, so let's cut to the chase and start with its most provocative group of all: John's Children, a very short-lived band, who, like the Sex Pistols roughly a decade later, seemed to employ an attention-seeking blend of controversy, spectacle, and outrage, but backed it up with music that, at least in retrospect, was certainly worth hearing. But that's really only because their manager, who also managed The Yardbirds, was quite cognizant of the fact that John's Children were, musically, a horrendous band, and slyly continued the charade by enlisting session musicians to play on their records rather than the band members themselves. As such, their 1965 debut single, "Smashed! Blocked!," seems to reflect the surreal madness of what their stage show was like, as a whirling, manic episode of pop hysteria that kind of feels like a mashed-together medley of completely disjointed ideas. Somehow, this song is both wildly psychedelic and also a soft doo wop ballad, and while it's definitely something that's self-aware and campily fantastic, it only sounds good because the people who played on it weren't actually in John's Children at all 😂. And then they briefly added future glam rock hero Marc Bolan of T. Rex fame to their ranks afterwards too.

And again, we have The Hollies, who I think have appeared on every volume of this series thus far, except for one. When I last posted about them on Friday, I mentioned what a perfect piece of upbeat power pop "Look Through Any Window" is, but today I'm gonna talk about how impressively chameleonic The Hollies had a capacity to be too. They manage to sound like a cross between The Four Seasons and The Beach Boys with their rich vocal harmonies on their opening of "Carrie-Anne," and then in the early 70s, they'd sound deliberately like CCR on "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress," with that Louisiana swamp rock sound that was actually from...Berkeley, California. And The Hollies were not particularly known for being either Four Seasons- or Beach Boys- or CCR-esque—they were better comped to The Beatles—but clearly, they could sound like either of those very distinctly different groups if they wanted to too, which I think is a testament to how great they really were.

Next, The Walker Bros.' "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore)": speaking of imitating sounds, co-producers Johnny Franz and Ivor Raymonde spun themselves a real baroque breathtaker with this cover of Frankie Valli by figuring out how to re-create Phil Spector's own revolutionary 'Wall of Sound' technique. The Walkers themselves weren't British, but Franz and Raymonde were, and with a song like this, it was like their country now had their own answer to America's Righteous Brothers, as the Walker sibs succeeded far better in the UK than they did in the States. The Righteous Bros.' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," which had represented Spector's first song with them, was released in November of '64, and then this Walker Bros. one followed in February of '65. And as a pair of similarly epically soaring tunes by singing men who weren't brothers but called themselves so, both songs ended up topping the singles chart in the UK.

And then for some actual brothers, it's pretty remarkable to find a group like The Bee Gees unassumingly nestled within a comp like this that's dedicated to documenting the British 60s writ large. Typically, we first associate The Bee Gees and their magical falsettos with the peak of glitzy, hairy-chested disco in the late 70s and Saturday Night Fever, but a decade and more before that, they were also around with a completely different sound, and "To Love Somebody" is a pretty terrific and string-laden example of the blue-eyed pop-soul that they were making back then.

So another total banger of a comp here from Rhino. Feels like they're kind of continuing to lose the plot with each successive volume of this series, as not everything's rock, not everything succeeded in the States, and not everything's totally British either, but many of the songs that they selected are excellent nonetheless, and I guess that probably matters more than anything else.

Highlights:

The Easybeats - "Friday On My Mind" Los Bravos - "Black Is Black" Donovan - "Mellow Yellow" John's Children - "Smashed! Blocked!" Dusty Springfield - "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" Jonathan King - "Everyone's Gone to the Moon" The Smoke - "My Friend Jack" Small Faces - "All or Nothing" Eric Burdon & The Animals - "See See Rider" The Walker Bros. - "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore)" The Hollies - "Carrie-Anne" Wild Uncertainty - "A Man With Money" The Bee Gees - "To Love Somebody" The Tremeloes - "Silence Is Golden" The Merseys - "Sorrow"

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Time to get to work on that courtyard and shrine 🛠️ 😤

Today I learned that Chubby Checker once took out a full-page ad in an issue of Rolling Stone in 2001 that requested, should he ever be elected to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, that a statue of the silhouette logo for his own brand of beef jerky (???) be erected and then placed on a 30-foot pedestal in the Hall's own courtyard. And I don't think the Hall even has a courtyard, so I guess they'd have to build one of those just for him too.

He's on the Hall of Fame ballot this year though, so let's hope they give him what he wants if he does get inducted, because who wouldn't want to pay a visit to see something as goofy as a Chubby Checker shrine? Sounds like an amazing idea if you ask me 😎.

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Track of the day:

Salomé de Bahia - "Outro Lugar" Bossa Mundo Song released in 1999. Compilation released in 2000. Latin House

As a Brazilian living in France, veteran vocalist Salomé de Bahia teamed up with Paris' Bob Sinclar to release this song in '99, a house adaptation of Stevie Wonder's mesmerizing Latin disco jam, "Another Star," off of Songs in the Key of Life. Originally released on Bob Sinclar's own label Yellow Productions, "Outro Lugar" is a bit punchier than Stevie Wonder's version of the song, but it definitely still maintains an old school disco-bossa-lounge kinda vibe, with de Bahia singing in her native language of Portuguese.

Classy house music.

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Video of the day:

Groove Armada - "At the River" 1997 Downtempo

Groove Armada's "At the River" is a song that fundamentally altered me the first time that I had ever heard it. I had been eating, living, and breathing a steady diet of hip hop for years, but this thing was just so jaw-droppingly chillout-beautiful that it proceeded to open up all the floodgates that eventually led me down a path to starting this blog, wherein my tastes have expanded exponentially into worlds I'd never thought possible. I left this thing on repeat for at least a week straight before I could tire of it, and when I wasn't able to listen to it, it was blasting in my head anyway. The string pads, the sampled strings that sound like they're emanating out of old-timey radio speakers, the slowly bouncy and warm acid squelches, the snail's-paced trip hop beat, the super lush and melty and graceful trombone, and the simple sampled soothing "if you're fond of sand dunes" lyric from Patti Page all combined to yield something that, at this current moment, is probably the most important song that I've ever heard in my life. If I'm ever stranded on a desert island, I need this tune with me, and if I should ever have a funeral, I want it played there too.

Now, this video here isn't the official video. It's actually part of a music video for a different song: "Viðrar vel til loftárása" by iconic Icelandic band Sigur Rós. But whoever decided to align these two things together did an extraordinary job of it, because it really feels like the video was shot for "At the River" specifically—a touching tale of young romance between two boys on the same soccer team in 1950s Iceland, who are surrounded by people who seem to neither understand nor approve of their affection for one another.

And if this is the first time you're ever hearing this song, then you're quite welcome.

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1998 London Playlist

OK, so I went through a fresh batch of comps and mixes recently from my collection and found playlists to route some more of my favorite selections to. This week, we're going back to the city of London in 1998 with a singular tune by a very prolific guy named DMX Krew. Named after an iconic drum machine that was introduced in 1980—the Oberheim DMX—this is a guy who loves his 80s music so much that just about everything he's ever released is clearly inspired by that very decade. As a longtime staple of Aphex Twin's own Rephlex label, DMX Krew found himself on the forefront of a nu electro/electroclash movement in the 90s, and with 1998's "End of the Night," he's particularly revisiting that blissful nexus that once existed between electro, pop, and freestyle, with layered synthesizer melodies that thickly chime and stab, and monotone vocals sung through a vocoder. And as one of the lesser appreciated songs off of his third LP, Nu Romantix, it's currently sitting at over 35.1K plays on Spotify.

DMX Krew - "End of the Night"

Then for the YouTube version of this playlist, we've got that one, but also another one that can't be found on Spotify too, with a piece of dubby deep house called "Dis Poem" by Jamaican poet Mutabaruka. Originally released in 1986 without any backing music whatsoever, "Dis Poem" received the remix treatment 12 years later by a London duo called Reel Houze—Rob Mello and Dominic Dawson—which brought out a combo of a vintage 90s snare-heavy house backbeat, electronic-chimey synth melody, and a roving, ribbed-for-pleasure bassline. This dub version of the song kind of decontextualizes the poetry itself, rendering the message essentially nonsensical, but the music's still dope as hell. It was originally released on a white label test pressing 12-inch called Dis Poem '99 on what was then Chicago's premier deep house label, Guidance Recordings, and currently has near 10.3K plays.

Mutabaruka - "Dis Poem (Reel Houze Mix)"

And this playlist is also on YouTube Music.

So with this update, our Spotify playlist is now at 12 songs that clock in at 76 minutes, but over on YouTube, we're now double that, with 24 songs that clock in at 162 minutes. If you want a more eclectic electronic experience of London in 1998 that includes more trip hop, drum n bass, and IDM, check out the YouTube one! 🙏

And here's some more 90s London playlists too:

1992: YouTube / YouTube Music 1995: YouTube / YouTube Music 1996: Spotify / YouTube / YouTube Music 1997: Spotify / YouTube / YouTube Music 1999: YouTube / YouTube Music

More from London next week!

Enjoy!

More to come, eventually. Stay tuned!

Like what you hear? Follow me on Spotify and YouTube for more cool playlists and uploads!  

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Track of the day:

Mr. Oizo - "M-Seq" Letsallmakemistakes by Matthew Herbert Song released in 1998. Mix released in 2000. Electro House / Microhouse

Mr. Oizo is probably the goofiest motherfucker from France to ever make electronic music. Best known for a big late 90s dance hit called "Flat Beat," which was used in a Levi's ad campaign that starred a puppet named Flat Eric who was also used for the music video too, Oizo is one of those guys who dragged a sense of 80s lo-fi rawness and analogue minimality into dance music's new millennium, lending to it a pretty silly edge. Oizo loves himself some hissy and squelchy and dubby low-end sounds to concoct his unique and bass-heavy creations, and that's what he used on "Flat Beat" and here on 1998's "M-Seq" too. Dig the use of the dusty drum break towards the end on this one, as DJ Matthew Herbert mixes in the subsequent track in his Letsallmakemistakes set, a ghetto house tune by DJ Deeon called "Shake It (Remix)," which marks the high point of this track's use on this specific mix.

Very self-aware dance music that makes sure to never, ever take itself too seriously. Really can't help but love something like this, given how stuffy and pretentious some "artistic" dance and electronic music can get to feeling.

Oh, and if you're familiar with a very stupid movie from 2010 called Rubber that's about a killer tire, guess what? He wrote and directed that, and has also made a bunch of other movies too. Guy's a multi-talent.

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Anyone else having trouble uploading audio at this hour or is this just a "me" issue?