The rise of footwork as a formidable sub-genre of electronic music over the last few years has raised an interesting question: How do you listen to the stuff? On one level, the Chicago-borne sound is purely functional; its high-BPM tempos, disorienting bass lines, and hypnotically repetitive approach to sampling form the perfect soundtrack for the juke-derived footwork style of dancing, which favors fast feet and athletic skill. Near the top of this decade, footwork caught the collective ear of the always-hungry-for-something-new UK dance scene: Forward-thinking label Planet Mu delivered a smattering of footwork-associated releases near the end of 2010, including the first volume of the scene-surveying Bangs & Works compilation. Much of the footwork music created around that time was fascinating, inspiring—and, as home-listening material, maddening.
Footwork’s relative inaccessibility suggested that it would become a niche concern in the constantly changing realm of dance music, but it stayed in the conversation, as solid releases from veterans of the sound, boundary-pushing newcomers, and canny genre-fusion outsiders pushed things in more musical and distinctly individual directions. All these roads lead to Double Cup, the new album from Rashad Harden, who produces as DJ Rashad. A gorgeous, invigorating collection of tracks that places equal importance on melody alongside rhythmic texture, Double Cup is unquestionably the strongest footwork-related LP since the genre was introduced to a wider audience. This stuff would kill on a dancefloor, but you don't have to watch anyone’s feet to appreciate what’s on display here.
Double Cup closes out a particularly fruitful year for Rashad, a two-decade-plus veteran of the scene who started dancing juke at 12 and began honing his DJ and production skills just a few years later in the early ’90s. In March, he made his debut on Hyperdub with the Rollin’ EP, an expressive collection that featured the astounding “Let It Go,” a game-changer of a tune with rolling, hyperspeed drums and an evocative vocal sample; in July, he dropped another solid EP, I Don’t Give a Fuck, the title track of which appears on Double Cup, too. (“Let It Go,” a superior cut and arguably Rashad’s strongest track to date, is conspicuously absent here, but the record’s overall high level of consistency makes its exclusion a negligible gripe.)
Ironically, Double Cup achieves a new level of musicality previously untouched by footwork by jettisoning much of the genre's rigid formality. This stuff is practically in Rashad’s blood, so his ability to dismantle the sound he’s lived with for much of his life and reassemble it in a fresh and exciting way is expected as much as it is impressive. For instance, he splices in other elements of beat-fixated music—jungle’s frantic mania, bass music's oblong structures, the glowing synths of vintage house and techno, West Coast hip-hop’s honey-slathered haze—to fit a more footwork-indebted framework. I've heard a few people compare Double Cup’s dizzying sampledelia to J Dilla’s masterwork Donuts; while the former lacks the latter's cohesion and singularity of purpose, both records possess the similar thrill of hearing a master of an existent genre taking their sound to new, exciting heights.
Footwork often sounds as handmade as it does futuristic, and being able to see the seams of tracks both imperfect and flawless is one of the genre's more endearing qualities. On Double Cup, those seams are more or less nonexistent—for music that is so frequently intense and hard-hitting, many tracks here possess an impossibly smooth finish. From opening cut “Feelin”’s twinkling sighs to the smothering sensuality of “Let U No,” it at times sounds like Rashad has literally opened a window in footwork's oxygen-sealed atmosphere. The bass lines smack as hard as ever, but they’re placed lower in the mix rather than serving as these tracks’ central axis, creating a more varied sonic topography that’s also easier on the ears.
Footwork’s practitioners tend to congregate in scenes, and Rashad is no different: He’s a founding member of the Teklife crew, whose logo is emblazoned on Double Cup’s packaging, and he’s also a part of the largely elder-statesmen Ghettoteknicianz outfit. Accordingly, Double Cup is collaborative—“I Don't Give a Fuck” and the harrowing weed anthem “Reggie” are the sole Rashad solo cuts here—with DJs and frequent collaborators Spinn (whose very good LP from earlier this year, Teklife, Vol. 2: What You Need, makes for a nice companion to this record), Manny, Earl, and Phil pitching in on additional beats and the occasional rap cadence.
It’s also a largely Midwestern record, and its sole misstep occurs in the form of a collaboration with a non-regional artist: UK producer Addison Groove, whose 2010 single “Footcrab” was instrumental in introducing footwork’s genetic material to bass music. His and Rashad’s “Acid Bit” is an intriguing curiousity, with plenty of the acidic synth work that the name implies, but ultimately the tune is a disruption to the album's already-nebulous flow. Which raises the other caveat regarding Double Cup: Listening to footwork in long stretches can be exhilarating, and exhilaration can often lead to exhaustion. The record runs 51 minutes long, and since it resembles less a properly structured album and more an expertly curated collection of tracks, it’s best taken in smaller bursts for maximal effect.
The greater Chicago area has frequently been at the forefront of left-of-center sounds that have bubbled up, from the coruscating rock deconstructivism of Shellac and Big Black, to Gastr del Sol’s amorphous genre fusion, to Frankie Knuckles’ still-standing reign as “The Godfather” of house music. The past few years, especially, have provided a few fresh and unfamiliar sounds in regional hip-hop and dance music, and Double Cup is the latest testament to the wellspring of ingenuity that Chicago’s recent musical culture has to offer. For Rashad, it’s a defining statement 20-plus-years in the making, a brilliant document that puts him in the position any veteran would kill to occupy: Instead of looking back at the past, now it’s all about where he takes his sound next.
