Techno/House Bobbins of the past

not to belabour the point but I honestly think 001-006 (the ones I'm most familiar with lol) are among some of the purest expressions of house music qua house music ever put to vinyl ... I guess I find that hyper-focussed reductive approach eternally appealing, it really feels like the perfect late morning / early afternoon after-party music, just neutral and beautiful and unthinking like an Agnes Martin canvas

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

If we're still in the mountains, lets make room for the silliness of 007

Absolutely appreciating the Mountain People love on this thread. Thanks for your recommendations. They do all sound very similar but then I think that’s the point of this music.

It all reminds me of good Herbert.

not to belabour the point but I honestly think 001-006 (the ones I'm most familiar with lol) are among some of the purest expressions of house music qua house music ever put to vinyl ... I guess I find that hyper-focussed reductive approach eternally appealing, it really feels like the perfect late morning / early afternoon after-party music, just neutral and beautiful and unthinking like an Agnes Martin canvas

― missingNO, Friday, October 8, 2021 10:33 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is definitely belaboring the point. "Purest expressions of house music qua house music"? You and I are listening to very different house music.

I know that sometimes when I've pushed back on Bobbins threads in recent memory, it's been read as being "an asshole," but I'm really not trying to be a jerk— I just don't hear what y'all are hearing, at all.

(Also these sorts of friendly disagreements used to happen all the time on ILM Bobbins threads when I first joined, so I'm truly posting in that spirit)

I do miss the days of 100 post arguments over villalobos remixes, which are the purest expression of ilm house discourse, but also feel like there’s not much to “argue” about re: Mountan People and that style. It just kind of does what it does in that “neutral, unthinking” way, but I don’t see that as resulting only in positive experiences. Very easy to see how it comes across as just “neutral and thinking” (read: “boring”) but it’s a quality I’ve developed a taste for, as in similar stuff by Cab Drivers, and perfected by people like Thomas Melchior. It’s very “ordinary” and routinized but in a way that has enough quirks and subtleties to do “ordinary” differently.

Yeah, I think I just find most Mountain People stuff really boring— "neutral" is perhaps the best descriptor for it, and while I like a fair amount of music (and even house) that might be described this way, I find most MP records to be completely lacking in affect or color. Not for me...

I guess that part of the reason why I push back, perhaps, is that it seems so diametrically opposed to some of the West End stuff that was being praised on this thread a few posts prior, which I also found awfully dull— a lot of West End stuff is kind of by-the-numbers deep house or disco-inflected NY house, and the tracks that were posted weren't anything special...

But I think my tastes are really different than a lot of others around here, it seems, which is fine. Just makes for some bafflement on my part, at times.

i don't have a horse in this race but tbh i don't even know what house music is anymore.

i do have some ... possibly boring ... thoughts on what constitutes boring dance music, for me, personally. i'm still working out how to explain it, but it's basically any track with static, loop-based construction with no musical phrasing happening. where you can hear the ableton layout, basically. i don't mind very simple or reduced musicality, a slowly evolving filter over some jittery effect for example, but when there's just 32-bar loops stacked on top of each other it sounds completely dead to me, actually makes me irrationally angry. there's a lot of stuff out there like this! i'm always listening for musical phrasing and if it goes somewhere interesting or unexpected-but-perfect then even better.

I feel that, too. A decade ago I interviewed Rolando and he said, "it's all just techno to me man," and while that's a truism at this point, it really is all just techno or house to me— even when I'm listening to something that's more like drum'n'bass or trance or whatever, my reference points always go back to house or techno.

It's funny, this discussion has made me think of artists I like that *do* use really repetitive musical gestures and make "workmanlike" tracks, and one is the ever-elusive POM POM.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvfUx2NhT2c

My first thoughts as to why I like a track like the above but don't like Mountain People is mostly one of timing and "vibes"— I tend toward more minimal, late-night, industrial sounds, particularly in my techno. Polite loopy stuff to "come down" to rarely moves me, probably because in my raving days I was very much into ambient music or silence for those moments. My tastes in house are more traditional, maybe, in that I tend to dig the more "organic" sounds of people like Theo Parrish and that whole wheelhouse.

I can see why these Mountain People tracks seem boring, but I can also imagine it being 6am and lost in the groove in a warehouse and feeling those warm chords wash over me. They're not obvious hits or thrilling moments but I'm listening to 007.1 as posted upthread and there's a hi-hat coming in that's made me quicken up. I'm not sure I'd love a whole night of this but dance music singles never exist in a vacuum.

Totally. Those MP tracks are nice grooves to slide into a set of diverse house tracks.

Lol, it makes sense I’ve never got, and often straight up disliked, Pom Pom. But all that means to me is, when you’re dealing with fairly stripped down and repetitive tracks, a minor inclination to certain moods and sonic flavours really makes or breaks the track. I mean, there’s SO much bad late 00s deep house, and a lot of that comes down to that “you can see the abelton arrangements” quality (lol, remember when Oslo and mobilee were hot shit?), and listening to MP today, it hear something that’s outlived it’s contemporaries.

just sampling the mp tracks they sounded very good to me, i like the reduced kerri chandler thing going on, plus enough happening to keep me entranced and moving.

but honestly, and i find this more and more, i have to listen to a whole track from beginning to end at least once to know if i like it or not, and lately i feel like i can only devote that time to certain things. i do need to make a project out of listening to everything posted in these threads without an agenda before the end of the year.

I'm not sure I'd love a whole night of this

Thats a fault of a DJ not the fault of any particular record!

Well yes, I didn't want to hit out with a cheesy cliche but a good DJ can make a decent record sound phenomenal in context and these are the kind of things I can imagine work really well as bridge-building moments in a set.

I didn't mean that exactly! More that however great a record might be you still want ebb and flow with other records, and for things to go around the corner and find pockets of space too

Break SL on philpot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Abhply77Fs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thv38Yp4PF8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qduy_1cRi78

Daryl Bryant - Under My Spell (1998) fitting that early afternoon vibe

Like that.

Wish one of my fave Philpot records were available on YouTube but alas

the samples on the Clone website give a good idea. sick record, think i picked it up at Halcyon the year it came out

https://clone.nl/item6947.html

more limpid Zürich reductionism, this time from Canson on Morris Audio Citysport Edition (2003)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrxVsTdTv1c

One of Dave Clarke's first releases and now 30 years old

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGLbp5veVgs

Satoshi Fumi presents Owl - "Do It The Music" (Italic, 2005), jazzy astrodynamics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utT3Z3wUrNY

Nitzer Ebb - "Fun To Be Had (Steve Masters 12" Mix)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xu3uNPiX-0

(p sure that's a re-edit of the Dust Brothers' mix from this)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPAoaDOOa7c

Queen Factory - Good Year

Came across this understated Wednesday morning bus stop dreamer from 2002 recently. Incongruously, its the flip side of a remix of Queen's Another One Bites The Dust

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0nRl0m-CTM

Daff - Reversal (2000)

Wondered about this mysterious escapade for some time! Looks like the only release by the artist, and the only release on the label

sick live set by Cabanne from 2004! I miss this quirky, funky, irreverent style of 00s minimal house music, labels like Telegraph, Musique Risque, Circus Company, Karat, Minibar, et al. ... who in 2021 is making stuff like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCthwpo4q3Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpoIni8mhq8

Malcolm Moore - Nomad Mood (2010).

One from the sea bed, could never find on yt before but its up there now, surveying the steppe

missingNO, I don't know who is making music like that anymore. That style seems to have really fallen off in a huge way.

I also think, tho, that some of that kind of thing became subsumed by the more minimal ends of tech-house.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PosOz9j13uE

Fresh & Low ‎– Funky Daze (1997)

Didn't realize this was an F&L track, might be the best one too

Love that "quirky, funky, irreverent style of 00s minimal house" but can't think of many artist doing it now that aren't the artists doing it 15 years ago, though one example that comes to mind is Digby. My sense is a lot of quirky/funky/irreverent house is coming out, but it's has this bold sound that's unlike the microhouse style of Cabanne/that mix, while the microhousey stuff tends to be more serious.

Should go in the bobbins 21 thread but this seems relevant here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVRBNUItM1g

Nitzer Ebb - "Fun To Be Had (Steve Masters 12" Mix)"

<3 <3 <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s_rRvFIRvc

I like the other side better on that one, but both are good - and the previous Tofu as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdtHj9w4mSw

Oral Experience - Timbo

dub/lounge ephemera from 1997

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHCFRqiMp4k

Shafty - Deep Inside (Of You) (Soul Trance Mix)

Its on holiday!

on a holiday, deep inside (of you)

love that one

Looks to be a pretty well known one but never heard it before!

it was on a popular dave lee / joey negro compilation of itailian house called "italo house" from a few years ago. also selected by our own boxedjoy on his latest mix!

I will look for that mix!

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

Uncanny Alliance - I Got My Education (Masters At Work Dub)

Didn't know this MAW dub before either. The original is quirky and sort of fun, but this is the one

catnip to me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUlBze9Gt6Q

Flip - B1 Untitled on Xspheremental Concepts from 2000

LOVED this for ages but never knew what it was. Until today!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKZrX-M_RGQ

Another Phil Asher banger, All I Want, from 2012

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9CsWk9myUg

I’ve been searching for this one for 25 years no less. Colin Dale played it on his Kiss FM show when it came out. I thought all the El Chocolate records weren’t for me but this one is good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf-gwmRRlqs

Nu-Era - Cost of Livin from 1994,

This one hiding in plain sight (on the Deepest Shade Of Techno Volume I compilation)