Thunder Picks #043

Music

Here’s this week’s slightly truncated Thunder Picks. Truncated because of bank holidays and it being the week before pay day, which has also truncated my wallet and thus hindered record shopping. Still there are a few choice bits out there and it’s pay day today! Oh and those MCDE remixes are out too, go get ‘em!

Gene Hunt – Pandemonium (LA Club Resource)

This really is the old school meeting the new school – former Thunder guest and Music Box resident, Gene Hunt, makes his debut on Delroy Edwards’ LA Club Resource. Both the title track and ‘Jackzone’ sound like they could have been made by Delroy himself, high octane and abrasive, if you like your house music raw, this is for you. Like all LA Club Resource records, it’ll be gone in the blink of an eye.

Palms Trax – Forever (Lobster Theremin White Label)

Lobster Theremin golden boy, Palms Trax’s latest offering launches the labels’ new spin-off imprint, Lobster Theremin White Label. And if that wasn’t enough, White Material’s own golden boy, Galcher Lustwerk, chips in with a white hot remix too that’s worth its weight in gold. That’s a whole lot of white and golden stuff. Amazing music.

Repress of the Week (part 1): Last Session/The Innocent – Sometimes/Jack Another Day (Blue Cucaracha)

Apparently remastered from the original DAT tapes, this release sees Chez Damier and Ron Trent on one side, with the seminal ‘Sometimes…’, which was also released on Prescription, and Derrick Carter team up with Chris Nazuka on the flip for some hardcore boompty action. Serious stuff.

Repress of the Week (part 2): Danell Dixon – Dance, Dance (Nitegrooves)

What to say about this? Widely regarded as the high point of the Wild Pitch sound, this record is beyond essential and to this day sends shivers up my spine. Absolutely astounding house music.

Party of the Summer: Thunder with DJ Sprinkles, Friday 11 July (Dance Tunnel, Dalston)

The July edition of THUNDER brings DJ SPRINKLES aka Terre Thaemlitz to London to play a 4-hour set in the UK for first time.

There so much to say about Terre, it’s difficult to know where to start. American born, she cut her teeth as a DJ on the ballroom scene in New York in the early 1990s, when she also set up Comatonse Recordings, a label which has seen her release a hugely diverse range of productions, from concept-driven ambient works through to straight up house bangers, under a number of different aliases. Now based in Japan, in 2009 she released critically acclaimed album 'Midtown 120 Blues' as DJ Sprinkles, her male DJing persona. It’s an album that was highly regarded at the time, Resident Advisor rating it as the album of the year, but subsequently it is fast becoming regarded as seminal and is now set for a long-overdue deluxe re-release in the next few days.

Listening to the album it is clear that DJ Sprinkles is an electronic music producer with a message, someone who has something to say, passionate about music and the cultural significance of the music itself and the scene from which those sounds were born. Sprinkles is also passionate about DJing, drawn out mixes that let the music breath are preferred and that’s why we’ve asked her to play 4 hours, a first for a London set, so people can hear what she’s really all about.

Support provided by Miles Simpson & Rick Hopkins.

A limited amount of advance tickets will be available for £10, which go on sale on Friday 6 June at 12 noon. They’re available via RSN Tickets

Mix (kind of) Of the Week: My First Mixtape from 1991

Continuing with the self-promotion theme, I found the first mixtape I ever did when I was having a minor tidy up in the record room this wet Bank Holiday Monday past. It’s something I mentioned when posting that excellent mix by Chris Seddon in Thunder Picks #40, so I thought I’d give it a listen and see if it was as bad as I remember it. Really a mixtape rather than a mix, because the mixing is non-existent, maybe a little bit of slip-cuing and some records just played one after the other. Put together in 1991 on two recently bought belt-drive SLBD22s and a Tandy mixer, it would be fair to say my enthusiasm outweighed my technique by some way (something that might still be fair to say, tbh) but I actually enjoyed listening back to it, lots of happy memories associated with the music on it, some of which is pretty good and included records from Sweden, Belgium, Liverpool, Manchester, London, Glasgow, New York, Italy and beyond. So I fired up the old Technics cassette deck and slightly newer Tascam digital recorder and here it is…