by the Twelves
Last spring, the Juan MacLean issued “Happy House,” an E-shiver of a
tune that made 12:40 go by so swiftly I figured an hour of variations
on that sunshine-disco tract wouldn’t be too much to ask. I was wrong
two ways: MacLean’s The Future Will Come (out on DFA in April)
is more of a grower than the in-your-face “Happy House,” and even that
12-inch’s tinny keyboards rising into the mix halfway through didn’t
prepare me for how synthy this prime new remix from MacLean sounds. His
reworking of Brazilian electronic duo the Twelves’ “Be My Crush” sets a
half-dozen or so glowing synths spritzing side by side, shooting off
tiny sparks together. There’s a woman singing, but the words are more
decoration: not completely understandable and hence more alluring.
Roy Davis Jr. EP
by Roy Davis Jr. ft. Erin Martin
(Scion Audio Visual)
Five mixes of a song called “I Have a Vision,” this release is
clearly Chicago house veteran Roy Davis’s bid for higher visibility
among younger clubbers. Davis has always made gospel-tinged tracks
whose bump and swing is lissome without ever sounding dinky, and this
one seems keyed to the cautious optimism of the early stages of the
Obama administration. Which is weird, because on paper, the EP
basically screams “late ’90s.” Not only because Davis blew up with
1996’s “Gabrielle,” which helped codify two-step garage, still the most
bubblicious of posthouse styles, but because it features mixes by Todd
Edwards (whose cut-up, strung-together sound snippets and skipping high
hats and snares were an even more crucial two-step forerunner) and Fred
Falke (who first emerged with production partner Alan Braxe in 2000,
their cavernous synth gauze tied into the tail end of pre-9/11
“superclubs”). Neither man’s mixes (Edwards does two, vocal and dub,
Falke one) sounds much different than what they’d have done back then,
which isn’t a complaint. By contrast, it would’ve been hard to predict
in 1996 that John MacLean of rockers Six Finger Satellite would become
the Juan MacLean of today; knowing the Juan, though, his particular
remix of “Vision,” which uses the same basic ingredients as his
reworking of “Crush,” comes as no surprise (which, again, is no
complaint). The focus here is laser-sharp rather than dreamily
soft-focus: MacLean builds rich tension in the back half of his
nine-minute workout by marching in a high-stepping 303 line from which
everything else shoots off. 