"Where's Carl Craig been?" my boss asked me a few weeks ago. "Just hiding somewhere being quietly genius?" Well, yes and no. Craig's output hasn't quite been as nonstop as his 1990s run of albums and singles, but he's still on the grind. He recently overhauled 1995's classic Landcruising-- now known as, well, The Album Formerly Known As... since the original is tied up in contractual disputes-- as a limited edition, vinyl import that's surprisingly one of the few you-didn't-ask-for-it-but-here-it-is re-recordings that improves upon the original. He released the great, grinding tech-house single "Sandstorm", sounding just like its title. And he's produced highly feted remixes for Delia and Gavin and Theo Parrish, although in both cases I can't quite hear what the fuss is about.
And he also released this Fabric mix. Standing just to the right of contemporary dancefloor trends, Fabric 25 is mostly house music you thought they didn't make anymore, almost shockingly basic and rhythmically direct, focused on the push-push-push-in-the-bush of a swishing or pounding 4/4 groove. Though Craig cheekily opens with the Ying Yang Twins' "Wait"-- plus some very Craigian atmospheric techno pads, turning it into the filthiest Basic Channel track you've ever heard-- there are no other curveballs. Tracks like Kenny Larkin's "Good God" and D'Malicious' "Alive" are transfusions of the gospel and soul blood that has been leeched out of house and techno in the 21st-century, and titles like "Africanism" tell you all you need to know. This is a mix made by someone who still hears house and techno as an extension of black popular music, something played during drive-time radio. (Right down to the bizarre ad-libs Craig drops on the mic throughout, somewhere between DJ Assault and DJ Kayslay.) While not quite screaming diva house, and though Craig's own "Darkness" sounds very much like a childhood spent listening to Kraftwerk, this isn't one for fans of Germanic eyewear.
Global Communication aren't quite in Craig's league as either producers or DJs, but they similarly stand outside whatever's going on in the Month in Techno column. Best known for the gauzy, gorgeous "Ob-Selon Mi-Nos", aka the more baldly titled "14:31"-- a tick-tock ambient techno track that GlobCom's Tom Middleton crafted as a requiem for his grandfather-- the pair has genre hopped from hard techno to drum & bass to downtempo and back again. Middleton is an especially enjoyable eclectic DJ-- the e-word usually being a sign of jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none-- who will slam handbag house Missy Elliott remixes into Bollywood drum & bass re-edits. At their best, Global Communication (or under their now-suppressed Jedi Knights moniker) seem like the kind of guys who don't care where a record gets racked in the stores provided it rocks the party-- without thinking they've reinvented the wheel for realizing a Cure song and "Bombs Over Baghdad" are the same tempo.
Fabric 26 won't quite have the walls dripping with sweat, but it's also a nice change pace from choking on sleek and vacuous electro-house, clip-clop minimalism, and disco bongos played by bearded stoners. If anything, Fabric 26 is made up of deeply unfashionable genres-- leftfield hip-hop, downtempo, broken beat, classic techno, and deep house. (No one likes broken beat for cred purposes; go up to a haircut in a Williamsburg bar and start excitedly talking about Daz-I-Kue and see if it gets you laid.) Nine tracks of lazy hip-hop beats softly kick us onto the dancefloor where we stand and nod and sip cocktails, stretching from the bass-heavy loping wobble of Dabrye to a cut-and-scratch routine from ex-junglist legend Danny Breaks. Steve Spacek curls some barely-there soul like wisps from a menthol cigarette and Maspyke (who?) tongue twists over liquid smoke horns on "Lightly Anxious". Things drift out of focus a bit in the middle, ironically as the tempo picks up into Chicago and Detroit revivalism. When the beat gets broken again towards the final fourth of the disc, attention snaps back into focus in time with those swinging triplets. (Seriously, it's a good genre, give it chance.) Fabric 26 is maybe not so good for dancing (even in your bedroom), but perfect for reading or, hey, writing record reviews. And, like I said, it's a nice change of pace, one that will probably sell approximately 1/8th of the proposed Villalobos installment, if the Fabric people ever resort to the bamboo shoots it's gonna take to get the disc outta him.
