Saturday Night Traxx_121920

Now Dance Sounds: Samii, Jitwam (with Kaidi Tatham), Seven Davis Jr., James Bangura, Walter Ego, Waajeed, Dan Hartman & Loleatta Holloway (with JARC), Authentically Plastic

God, I miss dancing. I miss the feel of a dance-floor, even a crowded one—especially a crowded one. These places made the rest of life bearable, made the connection real. Now we’re all just dancing in our minds, dancing with our minds. If we’re lucky enough to still be able to dance at all.

Samii Hagos has been singing around London for a few years now, most recently appearing as a featured vocalist on Dego's 2019 album, Too Much; and based on the warmly familiar producer credits of Figuring It Out, her debut EP which dropped in late November on Dego’s 2000black, she’s part of the West London house/broken beat/funk/soul community. “Here To Luv Myself” is a bit of potent relaxation: self-affirming disco-funk built on a fat bassline’s call-and-response with a funk guitar over rolling congas and drums, and Samii testifying with attitude “I don’t feel bad, I have the right to feel…Gooood!” It’s a lovely, early-evening kind of tune, and well worth singing along to, as we try to get through to the end of 2020 without survivor’s remorse.

One member of that 2000black West London crew who has production credits on Samii’s EP is the legendary keys player Kaidi Tatham, whose work seems to drop regularly at the moment. The newest stand-out is this remix of the title track on Jitwam’s EP, where a smooth voices-synths-broken beat builds into chunky, brass-fanfare-led groove. And then, around 2:45, the whole thing opens a much bigger number, with flutes and a clavinet and background singer, and eventually Tatham solo’ing over a jazz-funk big band (I keep thinking EWF). The whole production is not unlike the song’s title, and again, one can’t help but hope it’s the bloom at the end of a year’s frost. (Notice where my head’s at?)

More vocals! Like KDJ and Felix da Housecat, Seven Davis Jr. always seemed to possess a Prince-gone-house aspect to his music, a mix of deeply ingrained electro-funk with handclaps, layered freaky vocals and devil-may-care attitude. So of course he has a banging cover of “I Feel For You,” which you may have already heard the mighty Natasha Diggs play if you’ve spent some of your late pandemic nights stalking online Prince-tribute DJ events. It’s monotone in the best possible way—Sev harmonizing with himself like the sky’s gone all-purple. Apparently, according to an about-to-be-published interview, Sev has been fighting off depression and is on the verge of a bunch more musical drops in the near future. Rooting for him.

I didn’t know much about D.C. techno producer James Bangura before February, when his massive EP for Vanity Press dropped **(it’s weird that their whole Bandcamp/Soundcloud presence seems to have disappeared, no?).** Then I spent much of 2020 listening him drop numerous great tracks (on the summer’s NYC-changing Haus of Altr and Towhead comps, Step Back Trax, Art-e-Fax, Mister Saturday Night), and by year’s end, start engaging junglist breakbeat vibes. “Big Change” is my favorite off his new EP for the Misters, techno breakbeats and acid phrases headed for a horizon, “Where Were U in 92?” meeting the contemporary dub blow-up. One for the future, keep James Bangura in your sites.

EDIT: Found out why Vanity Press disappeared.

Based on Walter Ego’s previous work, the Sheffield producer has not really committed to a single lane, bouncing around bass-oriented dance music styles. The best tracks on his new Bodies in Motion EP make a case that he should concentrate on moody house beats serve as foundations for interlocking soul samples, and gateways into vaguely hauntological dimensions. “Tears” has a number of them that come together into one helluva tune: mournful ghosts of a barely tuned piano and a string section, some Wes Montgomery-like jazz guitar picking, and a chirpie (old Kanye-style) vocal that carries the title’s refrain (“tears on my pillow”) before breaking into a partial verse. The loveliness lies in how these move in and out of the shadows, the emotion building and falling, the meaning mutating.

Holy sh*t! Waajeed’s second mixtape to benefit his Underground Music Academy is even better than his first—and hopefully more on that entire project in the near future. For now, let’s revel in the wonder of “Ayyye,” where a drum machine and a banjo loop rise into a real nitty-gritty, Detroit do-si-do banger, before a Latin vibe enters the sound scene and syncopates with a echo-drenched keyboard, turning something already great into something very special. Tired of saying that anything Waajeed’s touched the last few years has turned into musical gold, but it’s still true.

One of my golden rules is that it’s VERY rarely a good idea to remix/re-edit a classic. Dan Hartman’s 1979 stomper “Relight My Fire” is a Loft legend for a damn-good reason, and when paired in its super-disco-remix form with the album instrumental “Vertigo,” it is a barnburner in any 4/4 context. Two primary reasons I am deeply feeling London re-edit duo JARC’s “reconstruction” of this fucking jam: First, there’s the overall light sonic touch, less a remix than an EQ’ing/remastering that brightens the strings and the percussion asides, toughening it up. More importantly, this version gives the spotlight (and, essentially, a four-minute coda) to Loleatta Holloway’s huge vocal performance. Originally playing off Hartman, Holloway is now given space to growl and roam, “strong enough to walk on through the night.” If somebody could re-edit that into its own thing, “Relight” may continue to pay bonus dividends.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote up a play-by-play of Nyege Nyege’s festival comp, spotlighting a track by Kampala, Uganda DJ/producer/trans activist/party promoter, Authentically Plastic, and their industrial percussive techno. In the process of research, I found a mix that they recorded for the excellent Black Science Fiction site in late August. Noisy and odd and life-affirming in all the best ways. Highly recommended.