FUTURE-RETRO FLAMBE

‘Cor what fantastic diy-futurist packaging’ I said to myself upon prising open the jiffybag that fell on my doormat.

Now, I never know whether, upon receiving a lovingly-hand-taped mixtape to look through the tracklisting before listening, or just to dive in there and read up later – it’s been a while since I received a tape, not realising fully that it’s a whole other way of listening – no convenient skipping of duff tracks or any of that stuff. Plus the fact that for me even the act of listening to a tape requires unpacking a huge and dusty late 80s midi-system and setting it up in the corner of the front-room, so casual listening is out of the window.

The overall concept of the tape, if I get it, right, is that huge swathes of groovy club music (LCD Soundsystem, Soulwax, etc) are hopelessly retrophile in their sonix, and likewise there’s the whole past of vintage tracks which sound like they’ve bypassed 20 years to be plundered. This tape, then, is the axis where the new-retro and the vintage-futurists collide. or summat.

The retro impulse is a tricky one to contend with, innit, and it’s all pervasive in our endlessly voracious culture with it’s deadening compulsion to repeat and repackage the exciting new things of the past as though they’re gonna unproblematically retain their shock-of-the-new despite the passing of – I dunno – 30 years. look no further than the Franz Ferdinand, or maybe more contemporaneously The Klaxons. In a way the fixation on an unending golden era of about 20 years ago doesn’t really qualify as a nostalgic impulse cos the ideology that there’s-nothing-new-to-be-done is so ingrained that all that can remain is a deferential forelock-tugging towards the canon of classic-rock /‘authentic’ soul / ‘real’ hip-hop / ‘raw’ garage rock (…) as a perpetual golden age whose values must still be adhered to: musicianship / soul / presence. The Hornby-esque ‘real soul’ problem is exactly what’s up with the execrable opening track from Mark Rae (of Rae and Christiansen) which throws into 5 minutes more smarmily soulful and groovy tropes than you could fit into a Westbourne Grove wine bar. I can imagine nodding off to it at The Big Chill, or maybe having Just Jack chuntering banal social observations and stoner armchair philosophy over it. I’ll be the first to admit, despite the glorious packaging* (I can’t get over the packaging!) it’s not a good start.

Mercifully, thanks to some extraordinarily deft mixing skills, this morphs quickly into the slightly less ‘classic soul’ fixated robo-funk of Soul Mekanik – and the chattering electro-grooves and burbling synths, are rather like slipping into a warm bath. I’ll check more of their stuff out – didn’t they get roped into producing Kylie or Madonna or someone like that? I can imagine that, if they haven’t already. Sounds very French, like the post-Daft Punkisms of Mirwais, etc.

And speak of Daft Punk & they shall appear – this time remixing Scott Grooves’ slightly lumpy funky house homage to the Mothership Connection, lending it some Zapp-esque bounce n squelch. I’m feeling better already. I should also point out that this tape features some exemplary mixing and cutting, and the mix ploughs on into more French retro-funk, via Falke&Braxe’s remix of Kelis’ also-ran track ‘Bossy’, rendering it into a pre-Marley Marl OldSkool hip-hop set-piece. While this is no less in thrall to a mythic ‘realness’ of a golden age (all the endlessly reiterated tales of the Bronx, birth of Hip Hop, Block Parties, Breakers, Good Vibes, etc etc.) this at least retains a sense of distantiation and irreverence leading to something more than a slavish facsimile. I hadn’t noticed the mix gathering tempo towards all things funky house, but before we know it Eric Prydz is in the mix (yup, him who did that Steve Winwood track which plagued the world (well, at least Western Europe) for several months last year (or was it the year before?), here with an equally mindless but slightly less irksome slice of funkiness.

While it has the benefit of not making you want to go out and throttle people with your bare hands if you ever hear its incessant refrain, it’s ultimately pretty nondescript. But then, it’s in the mix, right? Luckily now I’ve blinked it’s gone again. I think another track’s gone by before we roll into a new remix of OT Quartet’s mid-90s hardbag anthem ‘Hold That Sucker Down’ which accompanied many of my formative binge drug-abusing and raving days, I’ll make no secret. And if it’s found its way into the hearts of the new Hed Kandi generation via some au courant remix action then so much the better. The remix loses none of the amyl-nitrate fuelled epic grandeur and hypnotic arpegiattions of the original – I’m just glad Rollo didn’t rope in his sister (Sister Bliss of Faithless infamy) or ‘rapper’ ‘Maxi Jazz’ to lend it some wordly philosophical insight. Fuck, hearing that riff again has set my jaw aching. And with that we sail towards the end of a side of ecstatic highs snatched from the jaws of a couple of slightly drab lows.

Then we come to the retro-futurist side of the tape:

This side sits much more into the electrohouse vein, like the latter stages of Side One, with a nod of Ritzy winebar funky house biznizz. Some vintage discoid actions creeps in c/o Boys Don’t Cry and Lipps Inc’s exemplary ‘Funkytown’ – which is unimpeachably a stone-cold classic. The side is let down by the inclusion of Eric Prydz’ execrable reworking of Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ which if you were really pushed you could say exudes some sort of boisterously cocky FHM swagger, but really it’s the nadir of modern civilisation. From here on the ElectroDisco/Funky House vibes are whipped into the thin sky-high atmospheres of helium trance, boomp-da-boomp-da whoosh as things skid to a dizzying halt leaving me spinning back to earth with a bump.

It’s been a dizzying trip. Partly fun, partly dire, partly just plain WTF??? Confusing. Overally I’d reckon the concept would benefit from more of a collision-course approach, maybe mashing up a juxtaposing retro future and contempo-retro in more of a jarring manner to get a grip on the continuities and ruptures, but overall I reckon this does what it says on the tin; plus it’s a good pre-going-out warmup tape too, or it would be if I ever actually went out. More than full marks for the packaging though, and the deck-proficiency skills. It’s an honour to receive such a lovingly crafted thing in every way!!

*Pics coming very soon!