Tuesday, May 27, 2008  12:01 am 

Alexis & Alonzo take it back to the old school

Where two good men and excellent friends of thee 20JFG with an awesome taste on all things, of course music, take us on a trip back to the old school warehouse/discotheque whence all good things came, and to which we pay homage on a daily basis from this humble zine of yours, say hello to Alexis and DJ Alonzo from Top Nice Club, and enjoy a blissful trip into the beautiful space of the past across n dimensions of awesomeness, it doesn’t get any better than this, cadets.

Press alpha, and jack.

The lamentable decline of house music has continued virtually unabated since the late eighties to the point where nowadays excitement can be generated around the most uninspired piece of roundabout twittery. It could be said that the heterosexualisation of dance music and ‘clubland’ in general has brought the culture too far into the public awareness to allow any kind of experimentative ideas to thrive, as the demands of commercial success and acceptable limits of diversity drive a system where audiences are no longer open to the unfamiliar. Perhaps i just have an incredibly idealised view of the past. But, it seems to me that the lack of a simple degree of uncertainty within the playlists of today’s nightlife brings people to expect the expected. Where the mavericks survive a sense of how things used to be prevails, and something like a scene may rear its head, spawning any number of second-rate copyists, largely manifesting themselves in the form of four skinny boys with eight skinny legs and a yelp to match. I risk sounding like a curmudgeon here, but i really have no interest left in the new. There’s far too much past to learn of before the contemporary can even come into thought, and secondly, it’s just not worth facing the inevitable disappointment resulting from disparities between anticipation and reality yet again.

If you take as example the microcosm of Chicago in the years immediately preceding the house music boom, the way audiences accepted music they had very likely never heard before was astounding, as evidenced particularly through the playlists of radio station WBMX. It was music to make you move, predominantly geared towards the gay dancefloor. And what came of that environment changed everything, for better and worse.

Now, we are expected to consume club oriented songs in environments that oppose the ancestral intent of the music. Are we to dance in the middle of shopping malls, cafes and restaurants? Well, I would if they played songs like this there:

Bam Bam – Give it to me

Da Posse – In the Heat of the Night

A Guy Called Gerald – Blow Your House Down

Links- Bam Bam Da Posse A Guy Called Gerald

Alexis is going to be starting some hot shit in London soon, we’ll keep you posted.

After this exhilarating trip into the hyper-space of black acid futurism (and an indictment of much of today’s dance music with which we mostly agree, with a few footnotes you have surely heard- and will keep hearing- in this place) , nothing better than a cocktail by the neon-lit Italo beach with DJ Alonzo, there are no words to describe this mix save, ‘Gee’. If you have seen him getting down live, you know what we mean.

This is what Alonzo has to say about it- “During the track Venise – Playboy I went down four storeys and collected my freshly cleaned laundry, went back up again and playboy was still going so I mixed in Tubular Affairs”

Let the music talk, fucking class.

DJ Alonzo- Stockholm Bedroom Special

Tracklist

Spargo – Go
Chris & Cosey – This Is Me (Loda Remix)
Fabrizio Fattori – Appunti D’Africa
Meo – Cikuana
Sumeria – Dance And Leave It All Behind You
M Like Moon – Sunlight
Yellow Power – Hai Samurai
Venise – Playboy
Samoa Park – Tubular Affair
Tommy Kelvin – Jungle Bow Wow
Eloy – Horizons

labels >> A Guy Called Gerald, Bam Bam, DJ Alonzo, Da Posse, alexis, xxjfg

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