8 Tracks: For ‘The Emotional Life Of Savages’ With Teleseen

What can I say about the great Drexciya that hasn’t already been said? An inspiration for me since I first heard their music in the early 00’s when I was a student in Chicago. This track is a staple of my dj sets and definitely tipifies the vibe I was trying to capture on a few cuts on the new record. Their productions have an incredible combination of depth and economy that the best of house and techno shares, the ability to create a whole landscape with a very limited sonic and rhythmic palette.

I spent some time in Morocco about ten years ago and became obsessed with the way they were using auto tune in pop music there. At the time the sound was much rarer in western pop music and still widely hated by journalists as a mark of the dreaded inauthenticity. I was already a fan of the sound at the time but was blown away by the aggressive and original(to my ears at least) way that the effect was being used in morocco and started to incorporate this sound into my own nascent experiments with auto tune, that have been a fixture in my work ever since. This sound influenced the vocals on “Khalil” on the new record.

Classic jam from the master Airto Morirera. Batuque with a jazz fusion twist at the end.

Album closer from Caetano’s 1977 masterpiece Transa, recorded in London during his period of exile from the dictatorship in Brazil. This songs has a simple harmonic and melodic structure and oscillating rhythm that unfolds slowly over the near ten minutes of this song as the musicians wring every drop of tension out the repeating figures. Amazing lyrics in this one for those that understand Portuguese.

In early 2016, after being interested in Sabar drumming and senegalese music in general for a long time, I had the chance to visit Dakar and actually see some of it in person. What has always impressed me about sabar is that it seems to have no meter, but rather have a sort of conversational structure to it. I imagine learning to sabar being more akin to learning a play or a script than knowing time signatures and rhythmic patterns divided on a grid. Bits of the influence of this style of music can heard on “Jaguar”.

Utaki were a percussion ensemble from Belo Horizonte, Brazil who mostly recorded on homemade instruments and worked with Phillip Glass and Paul Simon among others. This song, from their album “Mapa” has a gentle yet insistent pulse that leaves only a few steps away from dance music. Was listening non stop to this during production of the record.

I was gutted to learn of the recent passing of South African Afro-House master DJ Spoko. I love the extreme portamento lead synth sound he used so frequently and this song is a great example. Also a staple of my DJ sets and a huge influence on the sounds of the record.

Niagara are a criminally slept on live hardware unit from Lisbon, and the sole non-batida act on the beloved Principe Discos label. I was already a big fan of theirs when I asked them to remix my 2014 release “Anamorph”, when I heard what they turned in my esteem for them only grew. In fact I remember feeling that I needed to step my own game up after I heard their remix. They’ve been steadily releasing great music the last 4 years and this song is no exception.