<<anyone heard this mix cd by IF??
quoted 2 lines whats it like ?>whats it like ?
>any info greatly appreciated>>
If you're getting into old school electro or archival dance music in general,
this is one CD you must get. In fact I just saw a DJ spinning 80s electro
last weekend and I was a little bit disappointed because I just felt like I
was listening to _Mixed up in the Hague_... this CD almost cramps electro DJs'
styles because it "steals" so many of the classics (it's a shame there's such
a finite number of hits to be discovered in that genre). It's 21 (or 22?)
tracks, spanning about 1978 to 1985 I think, oscillating smoothly between the
related genres of electro--funk (hip hop meets Kraftwerk, essentially) and
Italo disco (the state of Euro dance in the early 1980s, a la Giorgio Moroder
and Alexander Robotnik-- all of these artists are featured), although it's
mostly discoish. So it has a lot of really famous classic tracks (and some
that were famous but aren't anymore, like the superb Mr. Flagio's "Take a
Chance"), alternating with a few more obscure tracks which I have no idea
where he found them (like an incredible track by Pluton and the Humanoids).
The mix is as tight as you can expect for that genre. There are a few points
where the fade seems awfully fast or the musical keys clash a little, but many
of these are old tracks that weren't "built for DJing" like a lot of modern
tracks (with melody-less intro/outros etc.) so there's not much you can do
about it as a DJ. The selection is pretty impeccable-- even the really famous
tracks are done "right," like Kraftwerk's vastly overplayed "Tour de France"
is featured (since it pretty much defined the whole early electro-funk scene,
along with maybe "Numbers") but only in a really cut-down version that doesn't
contain any of the lyrical parts... or the snappy electro version of the End
Theme to the Blade Runner movie by Vangelis, which might sound cringe-worthy,
but it's actually an amazing track and way ahead of its time... or a
non-standard but a-okay mix of Problemes d'Amour... Sorry I don't have a
tracklisting I can cut-n-paste but I have a hardcopy that I could procure.
There are a lot of directions in which I-F could have taken this mix; he chose
to keep it largely on the Euro/Italo "techno-y" side of things, sometimes
dropping straight-up disco (even the occasional tracks by an electro-funk
artist are still pretty much squarely in the techno aesthetic, although
there's no Detroit techno on this). In other words, to put this rather
crudely, it's a very "white," disco-centric mix. There's a whole genre of
electro-funk producers on the American side that he doesn't get into with this
mix, most famously e.g. Dr. Dre's original group The World Class Wreckin' Cru
or Egyptian Lover or Whodini or Newcleus or any number of others (although
he's got a couple on there, e.g. Jonzun Crew, but there's no rapping or breaks
or other decidedly funky elements about them)... This mix CD pretty much
ignores all that hip hop shit, even though the American electrofunk/hiphop was
probably closer to Kraftwerk than anything since then (they just ripped the
drumlines straight out of Kraftwerk, plus all the effects like breathing to
the beat). Personally, I would include some of the hip-hop stuff in my old
school mix, just to r3pr3z3nt, but I understand you only have so much room.
He also eschews the more rock-band oriented (how else does one put it?) new
wave electro-dance music of the 80s, but that's totally understandable.
Although I have to say much of the quirkiest, most bizarre dance music I've
ever heard comes from rock bands in the 80s (you know the type, like there's
always a guy with a strap-on keyboard, like ABC dude)...
Get this one quick, I think it's limited to 500 copies (it's a bootleg release
constituting the entire catalog of I-F's own Panama Records)... There was
supposed to be a second volume coming out but I don't know what happened to
that... Maybe someone can tell me... And then maybe pick up like the Dave
Clarke and Andrea Parker mix CDs for more shit... And there's some decent I-F
mixes online that have a different selection of tracks... Again, I have URLs
but not on me. Dilly.
Where do we go from here?
The words are coming out all weird
Where are you know
When I need you
-Radiohead
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