Suche:marsh mellow

Utter presents Marshall Jefferson's previously unreleased meditation opus 'Yellow Meditation For The Dance Generation' alongside two remixes from French production maestro Joakim.

Marshall Jefferson: Chicago House music pioneer, creator of the anthemic ‘Move My Body’, an original collaborator of Adonis, Ce Ce Rogers and Roy Davis Jr., production mastermind of countless dancefloor classics such as Phuture’s ‘Acid Tracks’, Sterling Void’s ’It’s All Right’, Hercules’ ‘7 Ways’… and the soothing voice behind a 36 minute healing meditation guide. Yes, really.

But let’s rewind, slightly.

In 2017, Marshall was approached and encouraged by Ian ‘Snowy’ Snowball to write his autobiography and the pair set about putting Marshall’s account of the history of House music together. The book, ‘Marshall Jefferson: Diary of a DJ’ was published in 2019.

Following the book’s release, Ian and Marshall's collaboration continued and during the pandemic an outlandish idea arose to create a piece of music combining Ian's interest in meditation (he runs Club Chi specialising in Shibashi Qigong - a form of Tai Chi Qigong - which is a gentle form of movement therapy/exercise) and Marshall's willingness to experiment musically to see what might be possible.



The result is ‘Yellow Meditation For The Dance Generation’, where Marshall vocalises Ian’s lyrics in his instantly recognisable voice. The keen-eared out there may also recognise aspects of the music itself as a stripped back, lengthened and far mellower version of Marshall’s 1985 obscurity ‘Vibe’:

“I would take tapes to the Music Box and Ron Hardy would play my music. ‘Vibe’ was one of those tracks. I recorded ‘Vibe’ in 1985, but it became one of my tracks that I just forgot about until some guy on Facebook sent me a recording of it that was taken from a club. The only person who I ever gave a recording of ‘Vibe’ to was Ron Hardy. The other people I know who had copies of the track were Gene Hunt and Emanuel Pippin (DJ Spookie).

"The original version of ‘Vibe’ was made using a Roland 707, Roland JX-8P keyboard and a Roland 727 drum machine. I was still working at the Post Office at the time, and this was pre-‘Move Your Body (The House Music Anthem)’. ‘Vibe’ has the building blocks for ‘Move Your Body’ because it was using the instruments on the track that I discovered what I could do with the bass sound, to make a track like ‘Move Your Body’.”



Still, Ian’s initial intention for ‘Yellow Meditation’ was function and it was designed to be a ‘Sequential Relaxation Exercise’ focusing on the Solar Plexus. Bearing this in mind, Marshall took a bare-bones and hypnotic approach to this particular re-recording of ‘Vibe’ so that the voice takes centre stage and listeners (hopefully) find themselves on a meditative journey. In fact, this long-form track was always intended as a private tool purely for meditation at Club Chi rather than released to the public - after all, Marshall had also created and released a more drum heavy, ’traditional’ club-focused 'Vibe Three' instrumental version for that very purpose - but a chance airing of the full 36 minute version changed its path.



Much like those 1985 ‘Vibe’ cassettes, Marshall had sent the track to a few close contacts, one of whom was Kieran at Phonica Records who aired it over the shop’s basement soundsystem. Its unorthodox nature caught the ear of colleague Alex (of Utter) and the seeds of a physical release were planted.

Eventually, with the full-version carefully whittled down to a vinyl friendly length of 24 minutes, full track parts in hand and a b-side to fill, Alex sought out one of his favourite producers to take up the remix reigns: Joakim. The Tigersushi co-founder and Crowdspacer boss has a long history of boundary-pushing remixes that straddle both dancefloor functionality and experimentation. This time the original material resulted in Joakim coming up with a number of ideas and he finally delivered two versions - one club focused (‘Vertical’), the other more introspective and meditative (‘Horizontal’), both of which appear on the final 12”.

The limited edition 12” also includes a download code giving buyers access to all of the vinyl tracks plus an 18 minute extended version of Joakim’s ‘Horizontal’ remix, its instrumental counterpart (for those who can live without Marshall's voice) and full 12 minute acapella (for those who can't!)


Alex

a A1. Yellow Meditation For The Dance Generation (Edit) 24:00
b B1. Yellow Meditation For The Dance Generation (Joakim's Vertical Remix) 9:09
9:05

Pittsburgh, PA-native Buscrates returns to Bastard Jazz with a synth-heavy 7" single, "Internal Dialogue." The two-tracker sees the artist take an easy-going approach to his signature funk-filled sound, with a slowed-down tempo and melodic key riffs. "Internal Dialogue" is a mellow boogie joint that combines plenty of Moog, rich ARP strings, and syncopated clavinet chord stabs; "Early Morning" is reminiscent of a late-90s neo-soul beat, with rich Rhodes chords, while a squelching bass line evokes 70s electro-funk. Both tracks are undeniably Buscrates and are sure to have your head bobbing.

Buscrates - aka Orlando Marshall - is a DJ, producer, and multi-instrumentalist based in Pittsburgh. He draws influences largely from 90s hip hop and early-mid 80s electronic funk, which is evident in the boomy, swinging drums and bubbly Minimoog bass lines heard throughout some of his productions. He works locally and sometimes internationally either behind a pair of turntables spinning 45s or working his trusty Roland SP-404SX sampler and various other little portable gadgets at one of his beat sets. Some of his production credits include Phonte & Eric Roberson, Wiz Khalifa, and the late great Mac Miller.

TLM025 kicks off with Erik Escobar and his cover version of Memories by Caruso. Erik is from Campinas in Brazil and a very well respected and talented musician. Taking the track into a completely different direction to the original this cover version is written for the dancefloor. Onto the AA side and Cormac Fulton (one half of Caruso) gives us a very deep track called Perplexed, a very moody affair with Matt Cox and Steve Conry on production duties. Next up is Time Machine from Detroit's Lorenzo Dewberry, another deep journey taking influences from the cities sound for another dancefloor piece. Lastly Gee W finishes off the EP with his track MarshMellow, a very nice laid back deep house track from the UK based multi-instrumentalist.
4 artists to watch over the coming years.