Now over two decades into its story, DJ Mes' Guesthouse Records imprint continues to serve up floor-friendly heat - fun, groove-driven, party-starting house tracks from a mix of newcomers and label stalwarts. There's much to enjoy on the label's latest vinyl outing, a ninth instalment in the ongoing Super Squirrel Tracks series of compilation style EPs. Dafunkeetomato kicks things off with the swirling, filter-rich disco-house heaviness of 'Can You Dig It', before Frivolous Jackson does a terrific job in beefing up and cutting up disco loops on the DJ Sneak-esque 'Work It Out'. DJ Mes opens side B with the low-slung, P-funk-goes-house excitement of 'Felter', while Wolfgang Gartner goes deep, warped and sub-heavy excellence of 'Dubplate', which boasts more than a nod or two to late noughties fidget house.
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY has had more than its share of out-of-nowhere bands following from the second big bang that was punk rock. The Babylon Dance Band, Circle X, Your Food, Squirrel Bait, Bastro...these are but some of the exceptional music acts originating in Louisville after 1977. Now it"s time for the great secret of the Louisville first-wave punk scene to be revealed: The Endtables. The Endtables were the crazed brainchild of guitarist Alex Durig, brooding chess-master of the amplified freak-out, and singer Steve Rigot, a flamboyant transgender giant from the shores of southern Indiana who reinvented himself as a Warhol Factory superstar. Like Scarlett O"Hara wrapped in a green velvet curtain, Rigot crafted his own glamorous reality from what was available in the blasted cultural landscape of 1970"s Kentucky. Gold spray paint, duct tape, Ace bandages ... a spectacularly other trailblazer who caused folks to toss their received ideas of beauty and go with the new thing instead. The band first took the stage in late 1978 and was finished by the summer of 1980. In the fall of 1979 they recorded six tracks at a Louisville studio, four of which came out on a 7" EP on their own Tuesday Records. The two remaining tracks ("White Glove Test" and "Trick or Treat") were issued as a single on Self Destruct records in 1991. Both records are among the rarest of any American punk release - more sought after than seen, passed on disintegrating cassette tapes and shouted over upon impact. The music of The Endtables is another chapter in pure American weirdness, as jaw-locking today as the day it was recorded. The scent of modern can be detected in Steve Rigot"s remote vocalese, set against Alex Durig"s guitar outbursts, while drummer Steven Jan Humphrey and bassist Albert Durig (age fifteen!) supply frenzied rhythm. The band rocks its fevered vision to a ferocious degree while Rigot grimly rhymes the truths that remained locked out of the public"s pop tastes in "79-"80. Thirty years of rap and roll later, The Endtables seem inevitable.
