Octo Octa &c

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