The Eclectic Selector: LovEvolution special

The Eclectic Selector: LovEvolution special

24 October, 2009 | 10.34AM

• Written by: Elite Force
• Filed under: Music News: eclectic selector, elite force, tech-funk, u&a;recordings

Tech-funk luminary and Beatportal blogger Elite Force reports back from San Francisco’s recent Love Parade event (this year called LovEvolution), with video montages and eclectic dancefloor gems from the world of wonk.

His monthly ‘The Eclectic Selector’ blog highlights storming dancefloor destroyers from a proudly mongrel universe where house, breaks, techno, electro and dubstep co-exist happily together.

From San Francisco, with love

The San Francisco Love Parade has been running now for nine years, and in that time it has undergone seemingly annual name changes, partly due to the rather draconian (and somewhat mean-spirited) refusal by the the Berlin trademark owners to grant them a franchise for their own street parade.

Last year it was the LoveFest, and this year they decided to call it LovEvolution, presumably as a nod to September’s Burning Man Extravaganza, whose theme this year was ‘evolution’.

With next year’s Burning Man theme being Metropolis, one can only wonder what kind of mouthful the ‘Loveolopolis’ will prove to be, especially after a day of going stone-cold demented on the streets. And that’s exactly what happened this time.

Here’s my video montage from the event. The track on the video is Mike Hulme ‘100mg’ (The Loops of Fury Remix) and I genuinely lost count of how many times I heard it played by the SF DJ community that day.

I’d been fortunate enough to play out here on the Opel / Opulent Temple float last year, and whilst the size and scale of it had knocked me back slightly, this year it felt bigger, harder, faster, younger, and the energy levels right from the very start of the parade seemed to be at fever pitch.

As the day wore on and the civic centre square became log-jammed with writhing bodies and general insania, it was a relief for the more, er, ‘seasoned’ amongst us to have respite via the calm cool entrance hallway to the museum.

From mid-afternoon onwards, all I could realistically achieve was the occasional foray out into the throng (especially given I have ripped all the tendons in my foot a few weeks back and they were far from healed), and as I made my way into the booth of the Opulent float around 5.30pm, the entire rig was bouncing.

There were people on the roof, smeared over every nook of the speaker stacks, hanging from the scaffolding. We were having to repel pirates at times, as true crazies attempted to board the float, between the metalwork and tarpaulin.

It was no surprise to see someone plummet 25 feet into the crowd below just as I started my first tune, but they scurried off into the crowd all crab-like, the only thing wounded was their raver-pride and a few onlookers who were taken out like tenpins in the incident.

Impossible not to grin throughout from ear-to-ear, it will certainly go down as one of the most memorable and highly charged sets of the year, and a massive amount of respect should be given to the San Francisco legend, chief coordinator, good friend and rippin’ DJ, Syd Gris, without whom so much of this wouldn’t have happened.

Here’s what it looked like from the DJ booth:

On the musical front, it has been a hectic few weeks for me, attempting to put together a massive mash-up mix project called ‘ReVamped’, that I’ve been working on for a few months now. 

In between G5s melting down and the licensing job from hell to get permission to use as many of the mash-ups as possible, I’ve been burning CDs on planes, listening to promos in taxis on the way to shows, and generally shoehorning fresh sounds into my ears at every opportunity. As usual, there’s some great music around.

Maelstrom hails from Nantes in France and I had the good fortune to play for his crew at the turn of the year on a beautiful, crisp winter’s night.

They made the interesting point that ‘breaks’ is in many ways not associated too closely with club culture in France, it being reserved for the (clearly more discerning) palettes of the free party crowd.

His ‘The Jungle Jacker’ tune came my way a few months back now, and it seemed to capture the zeitgeist very neatly indeed – even the title gives a nod to the jackin’ bassline sounds that have dominated many DJ boxes this year.

With a similar baile-style rhythmic undertow, I’ve also been really getting into some carnival-tastic jackin’ house, more heavily laden with percussive chunkiness, something that Noob in particular has been delivering in spades of late.

A great example and a real staple in my sets is the excellent new single ‘Peanuts Club’ he did with Brodinski on Turbo, which is a great party-starter, and a welcomed move away from the jaw-grinding technoise that has dominated for a while now.

On a similar tip and going back several months is The Count & Sinden’s anthem ‘Mega’, which was a welcome return to form for the pair, and went down an absolute storm for me at LovEvolution.

Moving on to an altogether deeper set of sounds, San Francisco’s playfulness and refusal to take itself too seriously is epitomized by Dirtybird to me, so when I arrived in town the night before it was a no-brainer to head down to Mezzanine to check out Worthy and cohorts throw down their own wobbly vision of dancefloor quirk.

Theirs is a unique sound as we all know, but it’s the conviction and quiet confidence of this band of brothers that envelops the crowd in a warm glow, like a lingering hug from a much loved relative.

Check out Claude VonStroke’s ‘Vocal Chords’ or Worthy’s Chocolate Nut Remix of Edu K ‘Avec Bon Bons’ for inspiration.

In more familiar tech-funk circles, acid-house warrior, San Franciscan favorite and chief tech-funketeer, Lee Coombs, finally releases his ‘Light & Dark’ album this week on Lot49, which includes the slamming ‘Detox’ (below).

I’ve had the pleasure of DJing alongside lee on several occasions this summer, not least at LovEvolution where he looked genuinely awestruck on entering the booth, and it’s always a pleasure to hear what he has in his DJ box.

His sound is an organic, progressive one – in many ways seen to be more old-fashioned than old school – and his DJ sets remain warm, glowing with analogue valve-love, and executed with an easy confidence that comes from years of experience.

The return of disco?

I can’t say I’m thrilled to bits about the prospect of a full-on disco revival. In all its incarnations it has meant little or nothing to me, although I’m not so cold-hearted and joyless as to be unable to enjoy the odd extended Salsoul classic.

It has always been a subgenre that has failed to ignite any passion in me, although I do have a real fondness for those classic, jackin’ house tracks from the late 90s on labels such as Roule, where a half-bar or bar was taken and twisted, squeezed, used and abused for every ounce of worth.

So if this so-called media-sponsored ‘revival’ includes the likes of the fantastic Tronik Youth ‘Disko Suks’ (The Aston Shuffle Remix), then I’ll be happy to concede it wasn’t just a marketing campaign in the first place.

Tech fun

On the techier front, I have a couple of recommendations for this month that have been working a treat for me, with the offering from MiniMode being a particularly great example of what you can achieve with some dark reverb, some worrying subs, a bag of grade As, and a whole universe of devious intention.

In fact there’s also a very good album’s worth of stuff worth checking out from Marshall (aka Luigi Rocca) on 303 Lovers right now - some great tribal tech-house tracks on there, including his and Manuel de la Mare’s remix of MiniMode ‘Process’.

Also check Loco & Jam’s tech monster ‘Medusa’, for some classic big room build.

Dubstep grows

Finally, I need to recommend a couple of new dubstep tracks that have been rockin’ my world in a big way over the past few weeks.

It was great to see the dubsteppers with their own float at this year’s parade, and it had, not surprisingly, the most savage soundsystem on the streets.

The more I immerse myself in that world, the more likely it is that I’ll start dropping a few dubstep tracks in my sets, especially given the number of dubstep reworkings I’ve been doing of late.

If you only buy a couple of dubstep tracks this month though, I’d recommend these: Skream ‘Rumble Inna Station’ for the churning wobble, and Bar 9 ‘Extort’ for the kick-yer-face-off smackdown.

Here’s one more dubstep-tinted video montage of LovEvolution, featuring Chase & Status’ 2008 bomb ‘Eastern Jam’.

Okay that’s it for me this month. I’ll be back next month with another round-up of the best ecelctica I can find from the world of wonk. And if you want to submit music for inclusion in this column, send it to me via my Soundcloud Dropbox.

About Elite Force

Elite Force is often credited for being a lynchpin in the developing the tech-funk genre (an amalgamation of breaks, house, techno and electro) and in a career dating back to 1996, he has released a series of highly successful singles & remixes, finding broad support from DJs and musicians across the board, including the likes of James Zabiela, Sasha, Crystal Method, Laurent Garnier and Fatboy Slim to name but five.

In 2006 he set up his own imprint, U&A Recordings and has overseen it going from strength with chart-topping tracks from a burgeoning roster that includes Zodiac Cartel, Dustbowl, Mike Hulme, Meat Katie, The Loops of Fury, Rektchordz, Butter Party. and of course Elite Force himself.

His music has also been the soundtrack to many a movie, with a huge list of impressive A-list credits to his name, including the likes of the Matrix, Charlie’s Angels, Arlington Road, Mortal Kombat, Crow, The Bone Collector, The Jackyll, Spiderman 2. He’s also soundtracked a number of computer games, including no fewer than 5 FIFA games, several of the Wipeout series, The Matrix and Motorstorm, and also finds time to maintain one of the biggest blogs (Tech-Funk Manifesto) and forums (Tech-Funk Forum) out there.

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