Dance music is a futurist's game, and footwork is no different. When the music bubbled up out of Chicago's South and West Sides two years ago, listeners took notice in part because of the undeniable newness of the sound. Since then, conversation has focused on where footwork is going, especially on where forward-thinking artists both here (Sepalcure, Machinedrum) and across the Atlantic (Kuedo, Addison Groove) are taking the sound. Planet Mu releases by Chicago artists like DJ Diamond, DJ Nate, and DJ Roc ensured that the scene's progenitors got their due, but those albums-- especially Diamond's Flight Muzik-- strove for rhythmic and melodic complexity foreign to the scene's established M.O.
Traxman is the latest Chicago artist to record a full-length for Planet Mu. Da Mind of Traxman is notable in part because it's an album more concerned with footwork's past than its future. A godfather of the style, Traxman came up in the 1990s ghetto-house scene and fostered the genre through collaborations, DJ sets, and mixes without building up much of a catalog under his own name. Da Mind of Traxman sounds like its title, the pent-up musings of a veteran spilling onto wax. The conversational powers of footwork shouldn't be underrated: Those whirring vocal samples are a language game waiting to happen, and the genre's unapologetic, unmonitored sampling culture allow it to interact with other musics in ways that house and techno often can't.
Traxman syncs footwork to its Chicago lineage-- juke and house-- but more interestingly to soul, funk, and rock. Opening track "Footworkin on Air" features what sounds like a wooden xylophone competing with a pointillist sequencer and blocky bass. It's as light and frothy as footwork gets, and it has as much to do with Aphex Twin as Dance Mania. Traxman often downplays his drum machines; I get the impression he cares as much about Rhodes pianos as he does 808s. "Itz Crack" and "Rock You" contrast lilting jazz/soul melodies with quick, non-invasive percussion. On the infrequent occasions where he slips into vulgar ghetto-house mantras, he sets them against his weirdest compositions. "Going Wild" (a collaboration with Rashad and AG) is schizophrenic, vacillating between chirpy irritants and half-time bass distensions, all keeping uneasy pace with a wordless, Eastern vocal melody. It sounds like paint flakes off of Flying Lotus' drywall. "1988" pays homage to the sci-fi synth ropes of vintage Detroit techno.
Of course, there's nothing particularly "footwork" about the Dilla-isms of "Lady Dro" or the tin-roof patter of "Sound Filed", but that hardly seems the point. When, on "Lifeeeee Is For Ever", he stirs Prince's organ-backed monologue from "Let's Go Crazy" into a stuttering frenzy, it feels less like album-closing pathos and more like a producer saying, "oh yeah, I forgot, I really love Prince, too." Listening to Da Mind of Traxman is a little like staring at a page of .gif images: Those short, repeating animations have a way of revealing detail. And when they don't it's still comforting to know that they'll spin there in perpetuity. Da Mind of Traxman is Traxman's musical history set on loop, a conversation held in stunted, loving bursts.
