Octo Octa &c

OK, time for her to get her own thread. New album dropping this year and the stuff that's come out from it so far is straight fire - here's the latest.

https://soundcloud.com/t4tluvnrg/can-you-see-me

I love love love how uplifting and positive her stuff is.

Fun little clip of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLwn33iDHWQ at the end of that!

"I need you" is one of my favourite tunes of the year

mine too xp

highly highly highly anticipating her new album

https://soundcloud.com/t4tluvnrg/can-you-see-me

she's also the best dj

i just relate to her music soooo fucking much, like i've heard dance music before but the shit she does connects with me, she's out there doing pure fucking gender euphoria and i love it to the point that i feel like a cliche, except that i've never actually heard any other trans people express enthusiasm about her. and i don't know what that means to me, i'm still awkward and dyspraxic as fuck and can't imagine dancing, anyway she is a total goddamn hero to me

that's awesome, i've always loved her music too, i think she's making really beautiful and uninhibited music with a lot of depth.

she's just so banging when she djs, her whole vibe is like "being a banjee girl saved my life and now it will save yours"

might as well put this four-hour set from last year here, it's everything

https://soundcloud.com/discwoman/discwoman-40-x-octo-octa-polyglamorous-year-3

y’all otm

her music is exhilarating

and I really love all the 90s euphoric house & rave stuff her music recalls, that music was really special to me as a teenager and has been since

Violet is also about to release her own album on Dark Entries. Violet's label Naive has released excellent OO and Eris tracks.

https://soundcloud.com/lagasta/violet-half-crazy-dark-entries

http://www.darkentriesrecords.com/store/vinyl/violet-bed-of-roses/

immense love for Naive's logo and for the designer that came up with that.

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0937258302_10.jpg

things that just have to be mid 90s tshirt designs

echoing everyone who says what a great DJ she is. rescued an otherwise miserable freezing club night in January of this year. new album is mint too

I love how much she plays speed garage live, especially her fondness for Boris Dlugosch’s “Hold Your Head Up High (Julian Jonah’s Bad Boy Mix)” aka my favourite speed garage track.

As wonderful as house music is, it's never quite as full-on amazing as the *idea* of house music that you had in your head if you were ten years old in 1989.

This mix actually is: https://mixmag.net/feature/the-cover-mix-octo-octa

She’s a great crate digger. That’s a brilliant selection of non-obvious classics. Haven’t heard that Stealth Sonic Soul Apollo 440 mix since about 1994

Loving “I need You” so much. Brings me back to when I first got into partying around 2000.

Can You See Me? is
exactly what I needed
thanks rushomancy

out now on bandcamp!

https://octoocta.bandcamp.com/album/resonant-body

lol you beat me to it eric

looking forward to seeing this live in a few weeks!

thanks for the tip - other digi outlets weren't selling it until next week.

out tomorrow on beatport (though beatport sucks tbh).

DJing at an elementary school pot luck tonight and definitely dropping something off this WHEW

haha have fun

this sure is 1000 percent wonderful

Hmm this sounds sick as fuck

ecstatic beat is blowing my mind

“Can you see me?” 🥂

this is what I need

house music

I love how this album is so much more energetic and ravey than the last album and yet still holds into that eerie, haunting, bittersweet quality.

“Can You See Me” is A++++++++

this is an extremely enjoyable record.

ecstatic beat mindblow here too.

Spin Girl, Let's Activate! is a fun ride.

I love this record but now I'm self-judging about how much I relate to this right now and whether it's all gender euphoria or whether I just want to get super high

i know exactly how you feel

whether it's all gender euphoria or whether I just want to get super high

― sock fingering, baby (rushomancy), Thursday, September 5, 2019 5:27 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the answer is: yes

i'm perfectly sober and affect-free and this is a nice record

First track is amazing also 🌅

really liking this so far

"I Need You" from the For Lovers EP is still my favorite track of the year though

this is so much fun

the slowing down then speeding up of "spin girl" is like v gradually being put through a blender

"spin girl" -> "ecstatic beat" -> "can you see me" oh my GOD

this is really really good

yes!

Indeed so.

I am 2:30 into the first track and super angry that I wasted all of that time listening to a Lana Del Rey album I knew I wouldn't like instead of this

wow this album is something.

I fux w/this

TURN IT OVER.

LET IT SPIN.

I can't wait to drop one of these at a party. Pretty damn hard retro action on all of them.

i have no insight to add except YES ALL OF THIS

I KNOW EXACTLY HOW YOU FEEL

sad i missed the vinyl, i hope they make more.

this record is such a gift

it's ridic

ahhhh i found one :)

I KNOW EXACTLY HOW YOU FEEL

― prorogue mahone (||||||||), Tuesday, September 10, 2019 7:10 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

Ok I finally got around to listening to this, and it's great. I was a little wary of too many '90s retro-isms, but yeah it works and everything's in balance, great record.

big fan, new album is fucking great.

Love everything about this, especially that it samples Ya Kid K singing her Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle track

oooo do tell which sample that is

Turn it over, let it spin

https://youtu.be/xP_Z7EJ10RM

do I love it ? oh yeah
do I want it ? hell yeah
do really need it? yes indeed
I smoke the mic like weed
for real, legit, you feel it
I'm talking ‘bout the real deal
I'mma make you feel
yo DJ, spin that wheel

<3

the more I play this album. the more I love it

something about listening to this album reminded me of a time I tagged along with a friend to a college radio dj gathering in the park when I was still in school. everyone was having an amazingly chill time, laughing and dancing around as the sun was setting. it took me almost twenty minutes to realize “groove is in the heart” had been playing on repeat the entire time I’d been there

this album keeps working

so great

if you have the opportunity to see an Octo Octa/Eris Drew b2b dj set, do it!

I probably could have done so in Chicago at some point instead of traveling partway around the world, nonetheless...

I hate to be churlish but my vinyl doesn't seem to be..... mastered well? It's exhausting to listen to. I don't have this problem listening to the digital versions on headphones. I'm not usually sensitive to this stuff so I feel like it must be pretty bad if I'm noticing! Then again i could be just a wee bit deranged. This stuff can be subjective.

Someone mentioned Eris Drew

https://www.residentadvisor.net/reviews/24835

This new EP is great

hell yeah, thanks for the heads up!

I've been playing it a few days now, IMO the title feels a bit too disjointed in a way where you can the seams between elements. "Transcendental Access Points", OTOH, flows beautifully, it reminds me of "Waterfalls" by Atlantic Ocean.

"the title track"

Love the new Eris Drew single so much

I saw her w/ Eris Drew DJing last night, and I have to say, I was not expecting so many cishet people to be in the crowd, and that kinda soured the night for me especially since the event was marketed as an inclusive event for all marginalized folk

you'd prefer that people who enjoyed her didn't attend? Did you feel unsafe or marginalized in any way?

Well, I got the sense that a good amount of those people hadn’t vibed with them before; perhaps they were checking it out because it seemed like a hot event. This happens quite a bit in San Francisco, and that’s fine — of course they have every right to check it out — but as a queer person going out to see queer DJs, you can imagine that I would expect differently. I felt marginalized in the sense that I had a bunch of people disregard my presence as they walked through my path, and you could say that it makes sense that something like that would happen (more so if people are inebriated to some degree), but that never happens to me in queer-specific spaces (which this event wasn’t housed in).

that's fair, obviously; it was your experience not mine and i have zero understanding of the san francisco club scene. I've certainly been to plenty of shows where the audience bummed me out on artists that i loved. but you can likely imagine that - as a cishet person who also likes to see DJs of all varieties if they're good - I might be a little put off at the suggestion that I'm either not welcome or don't belong simply because of being who i am. If I'm being a dick in that space, that is of course a different story.

I hear you, and I certainly uphold the idea that all identities can exist joyfully in one space, but there has to be recognition of the fact that not all identities have the same inherent sense of safety, access, community etc. — in this case amongst queer and cishet folk — and if there’s queer talent playing an event put together by queer organizers, then I’m gonna have certain expectations (that doesn’t involve the total exclusion of cishet folk)

it's less about the politics for me or about who is or isn't welcome then about my general discomfort, sense of isolation, sense of "otherness", in most spaces, and the hope i feel that an event marketed as an inclusive space might provide an alternative to that, and the disappointment i feel if it doesn't. also, for me, it's not even necessarily about cishet people - i've been in places where most of the people were queer, but most of them were also very masc gay men, and that had the same sort of effect on me.

My thoughts exactly, Kate! I experience a similar thing with masc gay men as well. What I’m describing is just specific to the experience I took in last night, and perhaps ascribing my feelings towards a specific profile is unfair of me.

xp josh: i hear you with that and I'm not arguing that the problems of integrating core communities with mainstream crowds as artists find broader audiences aren't real. I would say that I think the greatest responsibility there is incumbent on promoters/curators/venue owners - moreso than audiences or even artists - to communicate the expectations of an event so that your experience of feeling minimized in a space where you expected to be comfortable isn't the norm. Sounds like the people who put together than party didn't prioritize that enough; they sure didn't for you.

which is to say i'm agreeing with kate here. and i think we're all agreeing with each other!

I hate when I go out to dance events and they are full of masc bros, jumping and fistpumping instead of actually dancing

I imagine this is going to be good:

https://soundcloud.com/dkmntl/dekmantel-podcast-270-eris-drew

dropping the intro to "the number one song in heaven" right from the start is a good way to get in my good books :)

Hey yo

Tomorrow, Saturday, March 28th, @octo_octa and I will b2b outside of @T4TLUVNRG HQ, which is our home in the forests of New Hampshire. We get started at 2pm EST (6pm GMT). I will post a link for the stream on Saturday a few hours before the event. pic.twitter.com/xQetyOmduk

— 🍄 Eris Drew 🍄 (@ErisDrew) March 27, 2020

bump here when that goes live plz?

On in an hour and a half from now:

The @T4TLUVNRG at home forest throwdown with @octo_octa & I begins today at 2PM EST (Sat) https://t.co/umQtMbSC3w pic.twitter.com/csRb8JyStu

— 🍄 Eris Drew 🍄 (@ErisDrew) March 28, 2020

Bumpity bump my forks

Thanks!

Think the squirrels must've chewed thru the cable

Updated link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRPrutWH5vg

Updated link for our live stream!https://t.co/6cqijjre1z

— 🌻Octo Octa🌻 (@octo_octa) March 28, 2020

also thanks NickB for alerting us to this!

Nice one thank u!

This is very wholesome and also very cuet

how is it that none of the trans people i know on discord listen to house music

idgi

i don't have access to the good drugs so i have decided to handle this event by getting drunk and crying

i make the best life decisions

eris drew knocking back the melted down yankee candle there

hugs 2 u kate

sorry Kate, hope you're doing ok

any denizens of borad 59 may like to note that (according to someone in the chat) that's an Aeon Flux backprint on OO's jacket

(apologies if I have Octo Octa and Eris Drew the wrong way round)

no your id's are bang on! like to think that eris is quaffing a jar of mead there but it's hard to tell

oh hey, I have a small bottle of mead somewhere. lockdown bad ideas!

the craft beer bar round the corner for a while had a cardboard box on the bar with runes written on it in day-glo felt-tip pen. one day I asked what it was, and it was some local/homebrew mead, in a foil bag container like a cheap winebox

tbh the mead itself wasn't as exciting as its incongruous packaging

er, back to the stream: I like the toadstool on the deck

sounds like you got yrself some proper hobbit mead there!

needless to say eris and octo seem to be having more fun in this three hours than i have managed in two whole weeks of lockdown, been a joy to witness

yeah we watched for an hour over dinner. great fun

this was great!

Video unavailable
This video contains content from WMG, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.

par for the course i guess

if anybody has a decent rip of the stream lmk, i don't really have any stream ripping software so i tried to catch some of it in audacity but it wasn't exactly an ideal solution, lots of dropouts and crashes

not that i'm really convinced that i'm emotionally equipped to repeat the experience rn

missed it entirely as i went down an animal crossing hole; would welcome a stream rip

The Resident Advisor review of them in Glasgow a few weeks back suggested that they played big and cheesy with "Freed From Desire" and "Out Of Space", which is fun but if they're really meant to be the next big thing in dance music then the world should be watching out for me and any other 30-something with a Wi-Fi connection to Youtube and an aux cable

lots of fun, positive vibes, feel of a party I'd like to go to

Freed From Desire did indeed happen on the stream, at which point I turned it off for a while, so maybe I missed Out of Space, which I am still fine with ftr

(I acknowledge that being OK with one and not the other merely underlines that I am from the very end of that 30-something aux cable bracket)

anyway it was fun & good vibes, as mh said

I mean I absolutely don't have a problem with pop-house bangers, just confused by the seeming narrative constructed around them of being singular visionaries etc if that's what they do when you can go any high street club and expect to hear similar.

I mean rather that than Raving Disco Breaks mix which I didn't get at all, the slowdown in tempo just killed any sense of kinetic energy it had for me

where is this singular visionaries thing coming from?

seeing a lot of praise for them across the board here and in all the usual places - RA, FACT, etc

it's not that I think this stuff is bad - some of Resonant Body is decent but it really trails off for me and it's not massively memorable, and yet the way they're talked about feels reminiscent of Villalobos in the noughties or whatever

should probably have posted in the music-you-don't-get-thread I guess!

i love villalobos too tbh!

oh I love Villalobos too - I mean more the *way* they're being written about, the measure of enthusiasm seems much higher and broader than dance acts usually get

praising form and content vs. praising form and context imo

or rather, for the octo octa stuff, maybe content and context without broad innovations in form

thought better of my parallelism there

of course, context is vital part of understanding the content of this: queer struggles and dancefloor utopia are a huge part of dance music culture, I just wish the music itself was stronger

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"raving disco breaks" was the shit tho

in general i agree that the hype is outpacing the music in this case

but that's always already the case with whatever is currently
popular w the dance music press

(shrug) idk, i don't actually know shit about dance music, maybe there are tens of thousands of other djs who play good music, maybe i'm primarily interested in their music because i am directly and explicitly their target audience. when they dj, it's the best dance music i've heard, it speaks to trans experience like no other music i've never heard, it's intense and powerful and affecting like nothing else i've ever heard. if that makes me street team, fine.

they're really good

like, i'm not usually personally invested in the music i listen to the way for instance imago gets. if you want to talk shit about robert wyatt and be, like, "well i don't know what makes what he does any better than richard sinclair", no skin off my nose

but for me, the way i feel about octo octa's music is inextricable from my lived experience as a transgender woman. you don't get it? fine. just, you know, maybe use a little more sensitivity in how you express that, because it's really easy for me to read a lot of things into that expression that are dismissive of that lived experience, which i'm certain you're not intending to do.

I don't mean my criticisms to come off as dismissive of trans experience and I feel terrible that you would interpret it as such, apologies rush

thank you!

I don't come to this music for the reason I come to, like, Objekt or something but I sure saw both Objekt and OO/ED at the same festival!

I hoped that a full rip would surface - I missed the first 30 mins or so and didn't think it had worked at all, but in fact I got the last 3 hours. It's a bit big for me to upload uncompressed (2.8gb) but if anyone wants the video and has a preferred reasonable bitrate I'm happy to convert when I get some time.

In the meantime I made a V0 mp3, send me your email through ilx webmail if you want a link.

The YouTube video is working again, the first minute has been muted to resolve the copyright issue

Also, new Octo Octa mixtape on Bandcamp

https://octoocta.bandcamp.com/album/love-hypnosis-vol-1-2

oh rock on, i'm glad they got it working!

also glad i could actually buy this physical... i suspect it'll sell out quick...

have spent some more time thinking about this thread. i feel a lot of guilt whenever i pull out the "lived experience" card, not that i wasn't honest about it because i was, but i try not to do it lightly and i try to adequately explain it whenever i to. and i'm not sure i did.

i feel like i have this issue relating critically to a lot of creative work. i experience it in a context that is fundamentally different from how other people experience it. the temptation is to say that one context is more important than the other, but i don't think that's true. it's just hard to reach that state of irreconcilability.

i've quit watching doctor who completely because of the way the people on the doctor who thread approach the show. i don't think that's what any of the posters there want. i also don't think any of the posters there are wrong in their fundamental approach! chris chibnall is a hack writer who writes stories that work on a superficial level and still have lots of plot holes and incongruities. what was frustrating to me though is that i saw something _else_ in the show, something that was more important to me than his shit writing, something that rendered his shit writing completely irrelevant to me. and i couldn't explain to anybody else on the thread what it was i saw, why it was watching the show invigorated me so much, and every time i watched the show i wanted to talk about how much i loved it, and everybody else was talking about how shit it was, and it was so demoralizing i gave up.

anyway, i don't _know_ if octo octa and eris drew are anything better than mediocre as house music djs. i think they're pretty damn good myself, but i don't know any of the songs they're playing, have never heard them before, don't know how any of the other people do it. i know a little bit about house music, but i don't know nearly as much about it as i do about, say, prog rock, or about doctor who.

or about being trans. i can't talk about their music without talking about being trans, because they're both extremely clear about what it is they're trying to do and why they're trying to do it. and i can't speak for anybody else, trans or otherwise, but i can say, with reasonable certainty, that i understand pretty well what they're trying to do, and that they are exceptionally good at it.

i get annoyed at hyperbolic praise myself. we've all had a good laugh at the garden state "the shins will change your life" bullshit, i mean seriously the fucking _shins_? on the other hand, fuck it, the shins probably did change someone's life, right? probably made as much difference to theirs as octo octa and eris drew have made to mine. someone, somewhere, saw a shins concert and just cried for three days straight and came to some hard understandings about their life that they didn't have the words to explain. and it doesn't make the shins not a mediocre indie band, and it doesn't invalidate their lived experience for me to think of the shins as a mediocre indie band.

Thank you for writing that wonderful post.

Thanks Kate, and I’m glad you managed to get a copy of the tape!

lol the shins

Aww, thank you y'all.

this mix is fucking excellent

btw Kate (and everyone else) this art of the DJ on RA with Eris is really great:

https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3352

this is incredible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ef_mtKA12g

Awesome

She's on The Residency now btw

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nw0m

Quazar! <3

https://www.thefader.com/2020/11/18/octo-octa-river-premiere?utm_source=tftw

On streaming services now too.

I will honestly say that I didn't "get" the most recent album until a month or so ago, when one of the tracks came on while I was driving and I straight up had an excellent dance party in my car. Went home and listened and danced to the whole thing, love OO now!

Oh shiiiiiiiiit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLGG4fYpdBo

this is a banger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ef_mtKA12g

posted by map a week ago!

tim f alerted me to it ftr

I will honestly say that I didn't "get" the most recent album until a month or so ago, when one of the tracks came on while I was driving and I straight up had an excellent dance party in my car. Went home and listened and danced to the whole thing, love OO now!

― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Friday, November 20, 2020 12:22 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

awright! that album is evergreen, probably in my top ten of the decade. she is just so fucking great i can hardly believe it.

River is also dope. i'm looking forward to an end of year release hopefully? Anybody know anything?

"River" is from their Fabric mix out this Friday

coolio, thanks!

so unsurprisingly this Fabric mix is pretty banging

listening now, coincidentally, and yes! the first section is fairly high octane house with the occasional break thrown in, I think it will get more ravey...

Interesting how specifically London the opening section feels, and parts of the final third as well, but with this very soft gooey melodic centre. I'm sure that's intentional, but it's absolutely not the version of London that's especially fashionable right now, there's a real Basement Jaxx vibe to some of it (by which I mean the late 90s Brixton club night).

Absolutely riotous and joyous throughout obviously.

🤘

Got a new project with @octo_octa called @Alchem_Sisters. Our first remix is out today of the amazing New Orleans-based punk band Special Interest. The song is called "Disco III" and the remix is punk, acid, breaks, big beat, & psychedelic chaos. https://t.co/SYviPNfqOi

— 🍄 Eris Drew 🍄 (@ErisDrew) January 8, 2021

well that's pretty good

New track from upcoming EP

https://soundcloud.com/t4tluvnrg/octo-octa-find-your-way-home-from-shes-calling-ep-t4t004

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/djs-and-label-heads-eris-drew-and-octo-octa-on-finding-magic-in-the-everyday

octo octa remixes dj q, party starts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTynM5QAmy0

also new EP out yesterday: https://octoocta.bandcamp.com/album/shes-calling-ep

this might be the best thing she's ever done? that bass is >>>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqiZIe-Z7TU

excellent

was this posted? I really liked this, they are such cool and inspiring people <3

https://www.papermag.com/b2b-octo-octa-eris-drew-pride-2646183481.html

thanks for posting that, it's a treat

yesssss https://ra.co/podcast/769

man this is such a fun vibe

was just coming to post that!

just a passing note that the "let's do it" sample in "Find Your Way Home" is buried deep in Cathy Dennis's "Touch Me (All Night Long)"

did not know that cathy dennis co-wrote kylie's "can't get you out of my head". this thread is about cathy dennis now, sorry

she's the best

wait till you find out about Rob Davis

Just Announced: June 26 // NY Pride weekend closes out with @octo_octa and @ErisDrew taking over the Ruins. The T4T LUV NRG founders bring an electrifying sense of urgency and joy to the decks, weaving between classic house & rare rave gems.

Tickets ➤ https://t.co/h1RZGFiYTL pic.twitter.com/Pns64nCTJX

— KNOCKDOWN CENTER (@knockdowncenter) May 4, 2022

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017khg

Interesting to hear Eris bring up the egg crack analogy in a context that's not explicitly transfeminine. There are these implications to the idea of egg cracking that are kind of similar to what "woke" used to mean before it got weaponized as a term of abuse. I guess the idea of "egg cracking" is different in that it typically has observable, concrete, and specific results.

octo octa is still so good you guys. eris is finally landing with me too. different styles for sure but i can imagine how their energy is related.

yeah eris took a while to click with me, less immediate, but her stuff is starting to click.

honestly while listening to that interview i entirely forgot how rare positive trans representation is in uk media, which was really nice.

this is an incredible eris jam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2QqStJQzeI

Finally saw Eris Drew DJ at Freerotation on the weekend and holy shit she is one incredible DJ - total vibes, great tunes and massive energy all underpinned by incredible technical ability. My friends and I have all since got tickets for the next Corsica Studios residency on August 5th.

yes, mad skills!

New Eris Drew / Octo Octa split single is funnnnnnnnn

Octo’s “Stars and Water” either doesn’t remember that humanity decided to leave the “let’s slow the track down and then speed it back up again” trick (per “French Kiss”, “Belfast” and “The Rockefeller Skank”) in the nineties, or doesn’t fucking care.

it's fun for me because i have like zero knowledge of any of this stuff, it's all new to me, and no space in my brain to be even remotely knowledgeable about it the way i was about rock music.

maybe this is just me projecting my own shit onto her work but for me transness is _iterative_, it's just doing the same shit countless other people have done before you, and it doesn't matter if everybody else has already done it because _you've_ never done it before

to me it feels like the lack of centralized/agreed-upon assumptions w/in discourse as far as which histories are 'overrepresented' and which ones are 'underrepresented,' whats 'trendy' and what's 'normie,' it makes it hard for maneuvers to sound as easily 'played out' as they once did ... ie nardo wick doing 'tom's diner' melody, which was so oversaturated and played out, and now feels like as fair a maneuver as any other, partly bc im just getting old, and partly bc the multitude of choices, the unfettered access, makes knowing something democratized, and having truly secret information a rarity...idk.

the trade off is that certain discursive maneuvers are definitely overexposed and tiresome, but art itself manages to survive attempts to stamp it out

another way I think abt it is the increasing alienation of a very online life makes ppl miss 'common ground'

it's just doing the same shit countless other people have done before you, and it doesn't matter if everybody else has already done it because _you've_ never done it before

i don’t necessarily disagree with you, but sometimes when people (some people?) do this we call it cultural appropriation, so i think the formulation there might be incomplete? or maybe there’s no such thing as cultural appropriation, and everyone is just iterating

this appeals to me somewhat because i think “cultural appropriation” is a weak critique in general, though i also can’t sit too comfortably w the idea that bradley nowell et al are just “iterating” toots and the maytals

the nice thing abt house : techno culture is that iterating is built in, i guess. last night i was listening to mfon’s “ron hardy’s ressurrection” and akio milan paak’s “version city episode” remix and jr vasquez’s “my loleatta” (as ellis-d) and thinking i will just never get sick of tracks that iterate on elements of the loleatta holloway “dish-a-pella”. then i heard a derrick carter track i’d never heard before, and it was a cover of jean carn’s “was that all it was”, etc…

it's just doing the same shit countless other people have done before you, and it doesn't matter if everybody else has already done it because _you've_ never done it before

I think you need to have this attitude to make house & techno at all, or maybe any music, given what's come before.

I think as we get older we also become more aware that every idea tends to have a point of origin or two that we didnt know about

"i don’t necessarily disagree with you, but sometimes when people (some people?) do this we call it cultural appropriation, so i think the formulation there might be incomplete? or maybe there’s no such thing as cultural appropriation, and everyone is just iterating

― the late great"

lol i'm not touching the "cultural appropriation" argument, if that's a critique someone wants to make i'm not in a position to challenge that

"another way I think abt it is the increasing alienation of a very online life makes ppl miss 'common ground'

― xheugy eddy (D-40)"

for me it's not a nostalgic thing. i'm not yearning for a return to the '90s. that sort of "common ground", the hegemonic narrative, was one that didn't have any place for me. it's rebuilding something from the roots in a way that has a place for me. like, a lot of stuff i work towards within the queer communities i operate in is sort of reinventing the stuff that's been done by christian institutions for ages and ages. but christianity doesn't really have a place in it for queerness, at least that's my opinion, so iteration means doing the same things it did in a new way.

Octo’s “Stars and Water” either doesn’t remember that humanity decided to leave the “let’s slow the track down and then speed it back up again” trick (per “French Kiss”, “Belfast” and “The Rockefeller Skank”) in the nineties, or doesn’t fucking care.

― Tim F, Tuesday, September 6, 2022 3:41 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

she did it on "spin girl, let's activate!" too! i feel like it's just really good timing. so much of h&t now is just good timing plus a fun toolbox.

replaying that remix she did for dj q out lately, it's a high water mark of her recent stuff imo.

not sure if this one was ever posted itt, it's a belter

fatherhood - mural (octo octa remix)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYUQaHk0gIs

one thing people might miss when talking about octo octa is, i think she really takes off from the butch femme gentleness and sophistication that terre thaemlitz has at his best in melodies and chords. which of course comes from some sources (see that tt collection of old deep house tracks that showcase that light, gentle, euphoric sound). i think octo octa is really gifted at bringing out a certain plush beauty that's somewhat tough but feminine to the core. she had so much of that kind of energy the one time i saw her, and it all just bled into everything she played.

i'm a huge fan if you couldn't tell.

"a certain plush beauty that's somewhat tough but feminine to the core" is a good description of her music

"another way I think abt it is the increasing alienation of a very online life makes ppl miss 'common ground'

― xheugy eddy (D-40)"

for me it's not a nostalgic thing. i'm not yearning for a return to the '90s. that sort of "common ground", the hegemonic narrative, was one that didn't have any place for me. it's rebuilding something from the roots in a way that has a place for me. like, a lot of stuff i work towards within the queer communities i operate in is sort of reinventing the stuff that's been done by christian institutions for ages and ages. but christianity doesn't really have a place in it for queerness, at least that's my opinion, so iteration means doing the same things it did in a new way.

― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, September 6, 2022 6:02 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

idk what this has to do with nostalgia unless its nostalgia for a time when ppl went out dancing more and were isolated less; when dating wasn't outsourced to swipes, when hanging with friends wasn't outsourced to parasocial podcasts, when restaurants werent delivered by paper bags. i'm not saying nostalgia for monoculture as much as an appreciation for 'common ground' between people, irl relationships. I mean, 'french kiss' was hardly hegemonic just bc it was something that became 'obvious' among an extended community, even if it was a hit

like, wouldn't resentment about the 'obviousness' of french kiss gimmick be a critique of hegemony's eye of sauron reducing the effectiveness of a particular artistic maneuver, not a nostalgia for that hegemony

idk what this has to do with nostalgia unless its nostalgia for a time when ppl went out dancing more and were isolated less; when dating wasn't outsourced to swipes, when hanging with friends wasn't outsourced to parasocial podcasts, when restaurants werent delivered by paper bags. i'm not saying nostalgia for monoculture as much as an appreciation for 'common ground' between people, irl relationships. I mean, 'french kiss' was hardly hegemonic just bc it was something that became 'obvious' among an extended community, even if it was a hit

― xheugy eddy (D-40)

"people", though... who's "people"? the stuff you're talking about in your litany of "remember when" is stuff i do _now_, hanging out with friends, going out to restaurants and coffee shops, dating. in the '90s? in the '90s i was a miserable fuckin' mess. there's for me the Before Time, this unimaginably hellish way of living. the '90s for me was trolling and flaming on Usenet, being isolated, not having friends in person, all of the things you say define The Way We Live Now. trans time, queer time, trauma time, there is no past, present, future, no progress, no regression. there is only _now_.

I mean I was in high school in the 90s and not going out at all, lol, and I resist all the time (tho I do feel their pull certainly more than I did pre smartphone) the weird social media based drive toward atomization and away from community, I of course don’t claim that as a universal experience though! I’m trying to describe an overarching trend as representative of a yearning for resistance to existing technological trends, not universalize my own experience

Or to put it another way, a lot of 80s-90s culture is worried about top-down authoritarian dictates of culture, cf songs about the government telling you you can’t do this or that, or admonishing us for watching too much tv. In such an environment, the mass exposure of a simple creative technique can ruin the technique by association, by a feeling of overexposure.. I’m trying to suggest it’s a lot harder for us to be “overexposed” to a technique, that we are all much more aware of the multiplicity of niches, that there can be some insanely popular song that you completely avoid and never come across, and so using its techniques doesn’t feel as particularly loaded politically

Anyway this was intended to be a supplement to what you were saying not a contradiction of it, just another perspective

rushomancy you should listen to French Kiss :)

Anyway this was intended to be a supplement to what you were saying not a contradiction of it, just another perspective

― xheugy eddy (D-40)

oh that makes total sense and i 100% agree! sorry, just didn't get what you were saying initially :)

rushomancy you should listen to French Kiss :)

― Tracer Hand

listening to it now, it's cool but music like this is so _contextual_, it's body music and it's 7 in the morning, i haven't had my coffee, i'm listening to this streaming on youtube on my shitty computer speakers in my tiny apartment alone, and this is clearly not the environment. particularly when listening to unmixed versions of tracks, every one of them has this slow intro where it builds up from nothing and that's not how one experiences these in person. there's one intro per set and the rest is just music.

oh god it just turned into a sexy slow jam with the orgasm noises, this is kinda gross tbh? to me, this like, represents a male view of sexuality? there's a synth squiggle and it absolutely, this is like "whole lotta love" levels of stuff here. i like "whole lotta love"! though i prefer, these days, the tina turner version, because there's something i love about hearing a woman singing about her dick.

like it's hard to put into words, particularly speaking as someone who doesn't come from an electronic music background and doesn't know very much about the history and culture, but there's something about her music that conveys feminine _empowerment_, i don't see her music as "tough" or "hard" just like... _energetic_. one of the things i hate most about patrick cowley's influence is the classification of hi-NRG as masculine, and even though i'm not masc myself i like upbeat music a lot! i mean i'd look at something like picopop which is _extremely_ energetic and _extremely_ femme.

regarding slowing a song and speeding it back up, i just... like, i don't even hear that as what octo octa is doing here, like, yeah, she's got a separate section in another BPM, it's as much "batdance" as it is "french kiss". the _point_ isn't that it slows down or speeds up, it's taking things in a new direction, looking at the subject from a different perspective, a different angle. it's like nirvana getting called pixies ripoffs for alternating quiet and loud sections in their songs. the slow section is deliberate but it's also... i mean it kinda reminds me of pink floyd's "obscured by clouds"! which, again, propulsive and ethereal at the same time.

really - and this is my background - i hear it more as a prog-rock suite kind of thing than something like french kiss, which is only interested in one thing and it's fucking disgusting :) there's a sense of being in _the moment_ rather than driving towards a climax.

lil louis literally only wants one thing and it’s fucking disgusting

i’ve always thought octo octa and especially eris drew are really really phenomenal djs, eris’ “raving disco breaks” in particular is some next level shit imo. their productions are not bad, but in my mind not nearly as inspired

however since i’ve had it on the brain (due to thread revive) i remember that the one production i keep coming back to over and over again is octa’s “power to the people”. i remember first time i heard it was a club situation, knowing the dj (friend) i “knew” it was off the (then new) resonant bodies album (which i hadn’t yet heard at all at the time) … i remember when the speech picked up and the kick came back i literally stopped dancing to boggle at how good the track was

the speech always seemed familiar to me, wasn’t sure why until last winter when i checked out a cspan talk with author / director of “how to survive a plague”. it’s act-up member bob rafsky, clip is in the film and excerpted in the cspan talk. a film well worth seeing

look at this shit, i was just introducing my girlfriend to octo octa, telling her how much resonant body meant to me (she had the same experience with tami t, which if you haven't heard tami t it is absolutely _peak_ transfem experience) and i'm looking her up on RYM and not only did she release vol. 2 of love hypnosis (which i missed out on a cassette of, serves me right for my life being a complete fucking disaster) but she put out this record on archive.org last month:

https://archive.org/details/minimal-tears-one

i really need to listen to more eris drew, i haven't heard nearly enough of her stuff

also here fwiw

https://minimaltears.neocities.org/

wtf, how was i sleeping on eris drew, this shit is fucking amazing, maybe it's because i don't go see a lot of djs - soon as i came out covid hit and since then ... i guess i could do dance nights and stuff, i don't really sleep these days, i'm just out of the loop what with not doing the socials and all.

Nice The Art of DJing feature on RA here:

https://ra.co/features/4145

eris’ “raving disco breaks” in particular is some next level shit imo

this sounds awesome, got a link to any particularly good sets?

i think one of the things that is really clicking with me right now, revisiting octo octa and eris drew's music, is this sense of _emergent_ transness. early in transition, octo octa's music was... not life-_saving_, but life-_giving_ to me. it gave me something to hope for. so much trans music is this sort of 4tran miserablist stuff and dysphoria is a _thing_, feeling bad is part of being trans. transition is a huge change, and that change is a good change but it's often difficult and it hurts, and sometimes it feels hopeless.

t4t luv nrg gave me something to look forward to, trans not as _becoming_ but as _being_. not just being, but t4t was this vision of a _community_. the worst thing about the dysphoria, for me, was feeling like i was the only one who felt that way, and so when that song with that hook, "i know exactly how you feel" came in, i knew she was right, she did.

and then covid and the slow collapse of my marriage fucked that all up. community stopped being about joy and was just about survival.

once we decided to all pretend covid was over and my marriage was dead, i wound up finding joy in community in other ways. that's the thing that i love about maya and eris's music now, just seeing how _many_ ways there are to be trans. when i look at maya and eris, i see accomplished, passionate, and fiercely loving women, women who know who they are and who love being who they are. maybe that's projecting, maybe they're just mirrors and i'm saying that because that's how i see myself.

but the thing is i also now see and value the ways in which i'm _not_ like them. i got friends who go out and dj all night and i think it's super cool and it's just not something i've gotten into really. i guess i could, i'm not really sleeping anyway, but the drop is brutal, and mushies don't play well with my mood stabilizers, and when you try to set up a date with molly a lot of the time tina shows up instead, and i just wind up doing t4t in other ways. my friends and i, we lie together, quiet and still, and hold each other and tell each other it's going to be ok.

anyway that's one of the things i love about their music now, the way it's about the joy of being in the moment, that it's one sort of transfem music and black dresses is another sort and tami t is another sort and that's without even getting into the whole panoply of _transmasc_ music which is its own amazing thing.

but what i also love about it is something that confuses a lot of people, in that it's not necessarily _obviously_ trans music in the way that, say, _transgender dysphoria blues_ is. trans music doesn't mean singing songs about being trans, it doesn't even have to be music that's _universally recognizable_ as trans. i got trans friends who hear maya and eris and they're like "wait, what's trans about this?" because transness isn't universal, because t4t doesn't mean every trans person for every other trans person. that used to bother me but now i think it's beautiful, that we're as different from each other as cis people are from each other.

new EP kicks ass

oh hell yeah

It does! I don't know what it is about her music. I've changed a lot in the past four years. I'm not really into the "T4T" thing like I used to be. Something about her music just resonates, just hits something within me, some deep trans joy. Trans joy isn't something I've really felt a lot of lately. It's good to know it's still a thing I'm capable of experiencing.

this is really great

Nobody told me about the Bored Lord album that came out IN NOVEMBER on T4T LUV NRG so now I am angry with all of you

no dedicated Eris Drew thread but the latest mix is incredible: https://soundcloud.com/eris-drew/eris-drew-mystery-of-the-motherbeat-vol-2-3

Thanks for posting!

Seconded!

for deep listening and personal synchronization with the heart of Motherbeat

count me in this is great

Nobody told me about the Bored Lord album that came out IN NOVEMBER on T4T LUV NRG so now I am angry with all of you

It really is! It’s like a much better version of that Pangaea album everyone got weirdly and unjustifiably excited about.

New DJ mix from Octo Octa:

https://octoocta.bandcamp.com/merch/groovy-girl-bang-the-drum-cd-mix

Physical media is _CD_! Oh my God, is this the first stirrings of the hipster CD revival? Not to worry, it's streaming on Soundcloud for those of you who just got rid of your CD players.