Chicago House
- Thread starter DLaurent
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Arthur Brick
Mortar Life
+1 for Blackholes Sun God and Video Clash
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
Leo
Well-known member
not house specific, the mix of music/cultures that disappeared decades ago.
www.wbez.org
@padraig (u.s.), did you ever go there? might have been a little before your time, I don't recall your exact age.
30 years ago, teens could dance and find connection at a club called Medusa’s
Medusa’s was “like a community center for weirdos and freaks and everybody else in between,” say Chicagoans who went there as teens.
www.wbez.org
@padraig (u.s.), did you ever go there? might have been a little before your time, I don't recall your exact age.
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padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
Waaaay before my time. I'm in my late 30s, so I was 7 or 8 when that place closed. Never heard of Medusa tbh. There was a similar, very longrunning (since late 70s I think) night called Neo - bit more narrowly focused on the dancy end of goth, postpunk, coldwave, etc I think - that a lot of people I knew went to with varying regularity, but they lost their lease a few years ago and moved to a spot in Wicker Park. Not surprised Medusa got shut down an alderman, the area its in has been yuppie central since yeah the late 80s/early 90s. Tho there's a still a 4 AM bar/club right by there, Berlin, that does queer/performance stuff too.
I'm way more of a DIY space/basement show type than club dude tho, having up in DIY punk rather than dance music. If I do go see DJs etc it's usually at a warehouse thing somewhere you have to just know/ask for address. @linebaugh and I bailed on one of those last winter cos it was too late/cold. Also the kidz are forever having these events that begin at like midnight on a Tuesday and I'm like hell nah I have to get up for work in the morning (old man shakes fist at cloud etc).
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
Also as I think I've mentioned before Chicago has a long running tradition of DJs playing between bands at hardcore shows. Not back the 80s/90s that I know, but a decade or more at least. There's significant crossover between key active people in diy hardcore and certain areas of dance music. The B side of the most recent Los Crudos - almost certainly the quintessential Chicago hardcore band - LP is acid house type stuff. There's a monumental power violence/noise/etc fest this weekend (to which I am not going - I like a bit of power violence from time to time but the thought of 12 relentless hours of that interspersed with harsh noise etc is bloodchilling) and it includes some DJs doing jungle or gabber or similar I'd guess. And so on. So it doesn't surprise me to find out that cultural crossover has deeper historical roots.
Leo
Well-known member
curious to hear it, which album is that? they have only one record on bandcamp, a comp with about a ton of one-minute-or-shorter songs
Arthur Brick
Mortar Life
Arthur Brick
Mortar Life
Arthur Brick
Mortar Life
Someone’s review on Discogs:
Chilli_Fingers 7 Jun 2011
referencing Knee Deep (12", 33 ⅓ RPM) S 3003
When this record came out it was like a bomb had gone off in our heads. Me and my mate (Luke Leslie - RIP, 'The Ron Hardy of Edinburgh') sat up for about three days and nights solidly without sleep just necking Es, smoking draw and listening to "Lookin For Excitement" non-stop, again and again and again. Then that Saturday when we had our club on (Soma @ Wilkie House) we must have dropped it at least half a dozen times and of course as the last track when the lights came on. Twice. With the crowd going more and more mental every time. Lucious Lon got played a few times n'all. We were just NUTS about that early Saber/Dance Mania/Chicago Bad Boys records. NUTS.
When that single octave comes in at 2.02 it's just WOAH!! Then when that - whatever the fuck it is - noise comes in at 3.55 it's just like FUCKING HELL!!! COME AWWWWWNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!! Bass up full...everything in the red...BANG THE FUCKIN WALLS!
Love this track so much I even recorded a 'tribute' to it called "Lookin For A Rush" . For my money, it's the best house track ever recorded (Video Clash being the closest contender), and I just live for the day i'll hear something else that will tear my head off the way this did. Ol' Mr Major may have lost the plot with all that Euro techno / schranz guff but nothing will ever take away his glory from creating this peerless masterpiece.
My definition of House Music. Chris Low aka Dj Dexter, 2011
Arthur Brick
Mortar Life
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
monu-mental record, off topic but easily among a pantheon of pers favourites
there are plenty of vocalists on house tracks yet Mondee was in a different class, what I look back on is how you could blend far more fierce compositions as per the o.p with a soul-heavy 4x4 monster like this
anyway, back to the queen is dead
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
Acid, or jacking minimal punch tracks that shudder your chest cavity, through to soothing orbital space station soul
Ever addictive LH, 2 off this mini lp
tumbling through drug space, untethered, lost in Hulme, no coming back from this, what were you thinking doing multiple blotters in a northern English drug den full of bull mastiffs
Ever addictive LH, 2 off this mini lp
tumbling through drug space, untethered, lost in Hulme, no coming back from this, what were you thinking doing multiple blotters in a northern English drug den full of bull mastiffs
Arthur Brick
Mortar Life
william_kent
Well-known member
just along from the Kitchen, top floor flat behind the PSV, owned by a rasta with 5 pit bulls?
on the same stairwell where the pimp was hacked to death by a sword?
there's a funny story in the Weatherall tribute book where he recounts a story of being in a flat in Hulme thinking he could steal the contents of "a blind drug dealer's fridge*" and thinking he could have have got away with it, like fuck, everyone in Hulme knows who that is referring to, Weatherall would have got about one foot out of the door before being battered into oblivion...**
feeling nostalgic...
* which was full of drugs
** obviously, he didn't follow through on his thoughts, because, you know, he would have probably have died if he had...
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william_kent
Well-known member
Denise Motto - I M N X T C ( Extended Mix ) ( 1986 )
a perennial favourite of mine
no denying that bassline
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padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
hey yunno my bad Leo it was actually the most recent LP of Martin's later queercore band Limp Wrist, which makes more sense. For some reason in my head I was thinking it was Crudos.
But there's definitely a tradition of crossover. A few years ago Theo Parrish played an afterparty deal at a big DIY space that usually books hardcore etc but also synthpunk, noise, alt dance stuff and so on, kinda thing. It's what you'd expect, a largely queer crossover between people in punk and dance. Not unique to Chicago but stronger here than I've seen elsewhere.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
Always interesting to see these (justifiably) reverential outside takes on Chicago house, living here and it being such a part of the city's history, esp as its in a way that is fading a bit as Chicago continues to exemplify the national demographic trend of cities replacing lower-income POC with largely white yuppies etc who have very little if any connection to or knowledge of that kind of civic history.
Not any different than people like me being into the jungle etc produced by a largely - to my understanding - bygone London, or the relationship of many rap fans to 80s-90s NYC, or whatever, but really interesting to see the interest in the music completely divorced from the context that created it from within the context
Not any different than people like me being into the jungle etc produced by a largely - to my understanding - bygone London, or the relationship of many rap fans to 80s-90s NYC, or whatever, but really interesting to see the interest in the music completely divorced from the context that created it from within the context
shakahislop
Well-known member
these are great