Sold-Out Silk
JUPITER JAX “CITY LIFE ’88″ CS (SILK048)
City Life ‘88 is the hypno-melancholic dip-trip synth-fantasia of Maltese-born producer Rudi Agius aka Jupiter Jax, a daytime computational biologist and nighttime sensational keyboardologist, coding and de-coding his way through London, UK. As a teenager, the studio head began throwing underground parties in Malta, flying artists in from Crème/Bunker/Clone and revivifying the mezmer-magic of early Chicago house and obscure Italo-Disco. Simulations are what he’s best at in the lab and on the board; fusing different sound styles, an ‘omni-influence,’ to conjure a nocturnal neon city. Elevated and “out there,” reminiscent of a rawness, slipping into sleekness, hoppin’ around the Hague, analog n’ lost.
TELESEEN “PASSAGES” CS (SILK047)
Teleseen’s producer/drifter Gabriel Cyr bounces back n’ forth between Rio and NYC, sometimes dropping down in Africa or the Caribbean, absorbing Mid-East beat feasts, electro-ragas, Ethiope tropes, and Carnivale Dance Hall into his Blessed-Meets-West multi-culti mash-ups. Teleseen drags the dancefloor to the desert floor, creating saxxy, sandy, sensual stops around the midi-map of Ethnography House. A standout in the SILK catalog, as it 69′s 808′s for swirling global exotic exploration; Bumper Dub for NatGeo trips, sambas for Saharan sunsets, enigmas for your long-ass train trances.
VERTICAL67 “SOULMATES” CS (SILK039)
Casual R n’ B swagger, puro-Euro instincts, and super studio techneeks are all over Soulmates, Vertical 67’s debut SILK cassette caress. The Berlin beat-maker combines the bass-session styles of Nigel Rodgers production with warm n’ fuzzy, as-the-gear-turns heartbreak house. You won’t know what you’ve been missing until you have it; 7 soul staples that enhance the mood and trance the mind, move the groovester and satiate the taste-tapper. Get Vertical, baby.
JUST BLACK “CAN’T PUT MY FINGER ON IT” CS (SILK035)
Smooth is the groove with Just Black. These deep house pulse-progressions – toned with a waz of acid jazz – make you hump n’ pump yr body right. For slow burners, all-nighters, jam vamps, sleek seekers, jackin’ jills and running men. Can’t put your finger on the center of the club-hubbub? Six tracks of now and how, surged together by the slinky Sir Stephen. Baby you can drive my car, if Just Black’s on the deck. Limited lucky 100.
ANDY SANGRIA “KILL THE PRECEDENT” CS (SILK034)
The Sangria atmosphere is chilled with notes of ripe summer fruit. Like a hazy hi-five from the hand of Knuckles or Fingers, “Kill the Precedent” warps and wonks with a past-tense idealism. Supple samples, subtle bubbles, soupy bloops, smeared snares, raw awe – Less dancing than dreaming, and more than dreaming, dreaming of dancing. Distill the Precedent. Bleeding edge mixing by the light knight of bright nights Sir Stephen. Limited Edition of 100.
LA VAMPIRES BY OCTO OCTA “FREEDOM 2K” 12″ (SILK031)
Octo Octa adds the melancholy to LA Vampires’ infinite fadness on “Freedom 2K,” their reachin’/preachin’ 50/50 collaboration on 100% Silk. Here LaVamps has traded her cheap n’ chic booty-budget grooves for sleek n’ chic haunted house. With lyrical allusions to Minnie Riperton, Arthur Russell, and Evelyn Champagne King, vocalist Amanda Brown reappropriates realms of romance, skewing them into fresh sonic moods. Her wash n’ rinse sing/speak is backed by Nick Malkin’s keys-like-skippin’- stones, Britt Brown’s Tex-Mix dub-bumps, and Brian Foote’s sense and sexpertise, which are all just spit and shine for Octo Octa’s moonlit piano naïve melodies. An extra-finessed Malvoeaux remix closes out the collection. Gloss and glow design by aesthetic-elevator Bobby Houlihan, with silver and pink toned drop-of-androgeny photography by Ashley Anthony, will push your candy buttons. Freedom 2K provides dance or be-danced-on anthems for the 21st Century, with a diagonal devotion to our generation’s gay nineties. “We were living in a fantasy” – George Michael, Freedom 90.
JONAS REINHARDT “FOAM FANGS” 12″ (SILK029)
Foam Fangs could be a term used to describe SILK’s preferred take on that too-easily dismissed 70’s dancefloor dementia of disco – the soft bite, love nibble, mirrorball on steady/ready perma-revolve. Jesse Reiner (Jonas Reinhardt’s first mister, alongside past/part-time collaborators like Phil Manley of Trans Am and Damon Palermo of Mi Ami/Magic Touch), who never quite had the Kranky krinkle of his ohm-ambient labelmates, travels head-on, Tomorrowland-style, through long-form cosmic Moroder constellations of ‘Foam Fangs.’ Nothing frothy about it, though there is a bit of the rubbery in Reiner’s bounce-about, cool, funky kraut-disco. Suddenly we’re beaming back to a time when the world looked forward, envisioning a 21st century decked with silver, chrome, and neoprene. It’s a sonic space both transparent and shiny; the metallic ding and cold ribbon of data, scrolling through infinite space. The opener, “Foam Fangs,” transports us instantly into an ever-expanding universe of sound and light at once fanning out and folding in on itself. Variations on that theme continue as the Jonas journey oscillates through the beat-beyond. With a digital-only remix by Beat Broker.
COYOTE CLEAN UP “FROZEN SOLID” CS (SILK027)
Coyote Clean Up, aka Ice Cold Chrissy, went to the same high school as Madonna. He’s raved alongside Detroit hard-knockers and partied with the big D noise-boys. FROZEN SOLID’s got the pickled perspective mesh/mash-up of glam-mo sensuality, post-industrial apocalypse humor, and Midwest wind-chill dream grime that all the coasters could use a sonic dose of. Snatch, crackle, pop: these are the backroom, rotating bed, velvet wallpaper, dance jams SILK built the foundation for their house on, sparkling and fading into the mini-reels of cassette candy. Vintage is only a vantage point for the crickety critics – CCU’s got old style for the new world, fresh and frozen for all you future freaks.
POLYSICK “FLOW FM” CS (SILK026)
Tune in Tokyo, Rio, Rome, to Flow FM, Polysick’s choppy, blip-bloppy, reality-byting radio station. Channel glide between robotic-chaotic dub, ecstatic acid static, sunny synth sampladelica, Jack-the-Risker groove stabs, Rowdy Rick Dees-sleaze, organ-doning vogue-zoning, crunk color wheelies, sweet jellies and sick jams. And now a word from our SILK Sponsors: Flow FM has the sleekest sounds on the blare-waves.
OCTO OCTA “ROUGH, RUGGED, AND RAW” CS (SILK025)
First in the SILK DJ Cassette Series, Limited 200 Edition. 35 minutes of previously unreleased Octo Octa tracks, mixed together for a smooth, creamy flow. 100% MILK. These bootlegs were made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do. Snatch one up.
ROLAND TINGS “MILKY WAY” 12″ (SILK024)
Like the satisfying first sip of soda water spritz, Roland Tings’ debut EP, Milky Way, bubbles, barms, and beads through your body. Roland Tings is Rohan Newman, a Melbourne producer who, like recent rubies Holy Balm, Forces, and Canyons, proves there’s just more and more greatness behind the great and powerful Oz. Melodic acid trips doused with swish-ticky-booms, like a rubber ball in space with endless bump and bounce. Sweet off his Japanese jaunt, speeding things down with Sapphire Slows shows, Newman’s taste is pure effervescence and buoyancy. But he’s got a percussive stickiness as well, a vim/vigor that raps and rips through Trax touch-ups and echo-plexes. Not the nineties but the “none-ties” – no glimmer glam, or sampladelic vocal vacations, or happy house heartbeats. He ends the creamy Milky Way with a brilliantly wonky theme that springs like a wind-up toy gone loose. Roland Tings, Dings, and Zings.
POLONAISE “TROCADERO” 12″ (SILK018)
Scott Goodwin has elevated electronics through deliberate drone as Bonus and maximized minimal techno as Operative but with Avalon Kalin, the fine finder of Finesse, and tasty treater of Glass Candy, they’ve found a key-board to Portland paradise with Polonaise. The twosome remind that romance is alive and lively on “Trocadero,” a vibrant valentine to primitive piano-plush early house. As the San Francisco danger-disco-drug-dance destination Trocadero Club sucked you into its sparkle spectacle so, too, does this EP: down the K-for-Kraftwerk Hole into those chase-bassy Black and White balls, all trance tuxedos and superfluid Steinways. Polonaise patience keeps you measured and mindful, freely feeling a designed dance; the blueprint for boogie. Bot-bops and Polonaise sauce, eat it up.
BOBBY BROWSER “JUST BROWSING” 12″ (SILK017)
Bay Area bruiser Andre Ferreira aka Bobby Browser makes PeopleMover music: taking his sweet time to glide. Side A Bass-ic backdrops are ever-changing: wade through winds on the night yacht, dewy fields for the drumline, front row Fashion Week, whirl-a-girl-globe-twirl. Side B Glist-opher Guest vocals by Mara Barrenbaum give the EP that art-echo-deco, opulent opera, Blessed House happy-hedonist feel. Rollin’ Roland silly strings play cucumber-cool Q and A with bubbly-bath acid stabs. It’s sunny techno, rat-a-tat trance, Tom Bomb Club Dub, woodwind hopscotch, Rob Rouser five-star quality. For your Uplift Mo’ Blow Party Plan. Just Browsing? Just Buying.
PEAKING LIGHTS “936 REMIXED” 12″ (SILK014)
Ponies from the SILK stable turn ‘936’ dub-a-dub lullaby groovers into full-on synth-sex, acid-bubble, twinkle-starshine dance ditties on this remix redux. Beat it with the chic vocal pitch n’ bounce and metallic/mechanic swing of Ital’s take on “Marshmellow Yellow.” Bring it on baroque with Xander Harris’ Sly and Dario giallo-reggae revision of “Birds of Paradise.” Innergaze hi-five the minimal wave of “All The Sun That Shines,” transforming the original into a syncopated psych-out dark-disco-dose FX fest. And Cuticle’s got the bleary bleep-bloop best of sweet serenade “Tiger Eyes” with Casio keyed-up flourishes, hi-hat space jams, and damp ramp-up breakdowns. Even beater than the real thing; let the Domino fall for ‘936’-gone-nightlife.
100% SILK 2011 TOUR T-SHIRT
We danced on water so you didn’t have to. Get the shirt and fool them all. Looking good is a breeze.
On American Apparel tees.
PHARAOHS “UHH UHH” 12″ (SILK012)
Cat in the Hat hats off to mad Madchester vibes in Pharaohs debut “Uhh Uhh.” You’ll have Happy Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays bouncing around to Pharaohs’ electric piano keys, synthetic drum pads, funky 80s breakdowns, and pitch-shifted-way-down vocal samples. A lot of freaky dancing went into this jangly, baggy World Party: Dublab aesthetics, memories of Buenos Aires bootleg cassettes, wave bending in Waikiki, Suzanne arts and Kraft. Add a bit of bubbly St. Germain acid, a pinch of 60s extended jazz grooves, a dash of KLF big band UK nonsense, and a touch of 94.7 fm liquid sax/velvet breath and you’ve got the deep pleasure of Pharaohs. Like nothing the SILK has seen before; taking the shiny dance floor to the warehouse cement floor, to the sandy patio floor for some hot, hot Hacienda nights.
OCTO OCTA “LET ME SEE YOU” 12″ (SILK011)
‘Tryin’ to let it go’ is the theme here: yearnin’ to earn it. The Octo Octa rhythm IS feeling, especially when yr feelings are hurt. From letdown to getdown, when melancholia’s callin ya, Octo Octa can break through. Emotions run high, and these cuts cut through somehow. It’s dance therapy – Docta Octa is in, checking yr pulse, charging by the half hour. Feelin’ blue can be electric. If yr here, now, you haven’t missed a thing. For the ball drop, the balloon drop, the moments after we’re sweat-soaked, covered in glitter, standing in a room full of strangers and lovers and memories all fading into fog. And the DJ played on. Turning this house into a home.
ITAL “ONLY FOR TONIGHT” 12″ (SILK010)
Dancing in the light of a miracle: that’s the gift Ital keeps giving. A love song from an era gone, “Only For Tonight” is a tawdry affair with rhythm, fickle and free. And if rhythm is a dancer, then Ital is her choreographer – he’s got his hands on her hips and he’s showing her the way. Ital knows how to lift you up, and up and up. There’s no ceiling to his dancefloor, no cap on his bottle of juice, and with this – his second SILK – Ital’s found his first sexy single. Twelve inches of time running out; you’ve got this night with Ital, but will you love him tomorrow? Lovers don’t just rock; they let their bodies talk, but only for tonight.
MAGIC TOUCH “I CAN FEEL THE HEAT” 12″ (SILK009)
Groove into Magic Touch’s pleasure factory, a floor-to-ceiling inventory of disco-covalence, guitar gush rush, even-better-than-the-real-thing sample soaring, and jumpin’ jackin’ flash. The A side has you feeling the burn after a serious night of get-down. Or tasting the burn after a serious night of get-up. Flip to the B side when you’re looking for love in all the ripe places. A vice is nice, but pills will never thrill you like the sensation of Magic Touch, that feverish fantasia of sweet heat. Let his fingers do the work, let the magic take you away, and please pump up these jams. If only to stop the longing…“I Can Feel The Heat” features bonus shredding by So-Cal amigo Josh Anzano and “Clubhouse” stars additional instrumentation by Miracle Clubber Honey Owens.
INNERGAZE “SHADOW DISCO” 12″ (SILK008)
Innergaze your innerself – it’s a Rorshark shock of broken dreams and disco balls, cracked make-up mirrors for lipstick stains and smears, and sugary sweet Tom Collins highballs to spill and then slip on. Innergaze makes dance music to stumble around to, at 3 a.m., when the dry ice is dried out and you can’t find your fur coat. There’s taking candy from a baby and then there’s taking candy-colored cocktails from a stranger who’s dosed you with Innergaze’s bump and fuzz and slo-mo vo-co’s. For writhing on a cold white leather couch in the air-conditioned club. Or for wearin’ white leather and gettin’ way laced. For Brooklyn Babes and Waldorf Astoria Queens and Bushwick Billionaires. Bubbles and trance for the Bridge and Tunnel set. Based on a lifetime of nighttimes, the syrup n’ synth soundstage for romance, tragedy, and a few glassy-eyed, glossy-mag’ed dream sequins. Strictly ballroom, strictly Freudian, and strictly speaking from the Innergaze Shadow Disco: Are you my mother, lover?
SIR STEPHEN “BY DESIGN” 12″ (SILK007)
Catwalk calls from a Creole Camelot; Sir Stephen’s more Boy London than Boy Bayou. Like the well-lit fitting room of a United Colors of Benetton store in Milan, “By Design” is consumer-cool counter culture, if the counter’s a denim bar that only takes gold Amex. Like the pool on the roof of a luxury hotel in Tokyo, “By Design” is Starck-er than stark, wetter than wild, and deeper in the shallow end. Like a Kuwakuba runway during Paris fall fashion week, “By Design” is baggy on Agynes, mixxy on Moss, jammin’ on Gemma. It’s so down it’s beat, so afterhours it’s early afternoon, so oversized there’s room for two. Made by design with the finest materials – rayon and on, cashmere and cream, and 100% silky Silk. Yeah, boy.
XANDER HARRIS “I WANT MORE THAN JUST BLOOD (HIGH HEELS REMIX)” 12″ (SILK006)
Italians may do it better – ice cream, genuine leather, synth splatter – but everything’s still bigger in Texas. Like this X Large redux from Austin’s X Harris. He calls side A the “high heels remix” which is chop-shop talk for shoegaze if yr shoes happen to be red patent pumps. Less gore than before, more vast unknown than he’s ever shown, side B soars like the flight of a DJ navigator who’s recently returned home to realize he’s left the 80s far behind, it’s almost 2012, and everyone he loves has aged and moved on without him. But the force is still strong with this one. If Xander Harris had a hammer, he’d beat down John Carpenter’s door, turn that Carpenteria into a Danceteria, and make that grave-waver Sweatt. Finally, an escape from New York.
GILLETTE 12″ (SILK005)
Utopian cities aren’t built in a day, but obelisk-o discos high-rise and fall during a Gillette night. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re not floating through space, we’re riding the Gillette monorail through a black-lit, airbrushed metropolis where ‘cussive keys are cold currency. It’s Gattaca enacted, Tommorowland for the modest techno fan, lullabies for the liquid metalhead, a Blade runner for your money. Dualities are dueling for yr ear-space: melancholic yet uplifting, picturesque while bleak, indefinite but somehow fated. Remote with control. When Gillette plays you’re the ping pong, the dance floor’s yr game table, and those hand claps you hear are the sounds the fans make when you cross the line. Now dance humans, make your kraft work.
MARIA MINERVA “NOBLE SAVAGE” 12″ (SILK004)
Bedroom dance from a London flat where the wanker walls throb with the echo unlimited drone of a pretty pulse. Amazonian/ Estonian goddess and self-professed hippy chick Maria Minerva builds the bump ‘n’ bass bricks for a real Bloc Party. The sounds of Side A play like a simpler-times-ode to the early 90s with touches of tribal trance, jungle-not-jungle hacker boy beats, layers upon layers of loopy lyric love, and the bubble-blowing atmospheric long walks we used to take down dark PM Dawn hallways. But the hit here is Side B’s “Disko Bliss,” where Maria’s brand of coke-coke-a-choo disco could chill out even the hottest of Donna’s summers while the SILK vinyl goes sizzle and crack. If Blondie was weirder, if Giogio Moroder traded pasta marinara for boiled potatoes, if Madonna’s post-rave bedtime stories actually went deeper and deeper, you’d have Ms. Minerva. But would she have you?
CUTICLE “CONFECTIONER BEATS” 12″ (SILK003)
Misunderstood during their time together by an Iowa City that couldn’t feel the computer-generated heart beating as one, Cuticle make the music your mind hears inside the green grates and grids of Tron. More deft than the Daft soundtrack, more dizzying than that Disney score. Side A enters the matrix with whirls and swirls as this plane of reality becomes a Cool World full of alien auto-tune and deep dance data. Side B is one long blue pill – lazer tag, Strange Days steady cams, mighty morphin’ synths n’ toys, circuit board swing, a cyber-symphonic time warp. If neon lovers glow in the dark then Cuticle can be seen radiating for miles. From the finger-less gloves of Daren Ho (Driphouse), Brendan O’Keefe (Nimby), and Jeff Witscher (Rene Hell): a three-dimensional systems preference sound show.
THE DEEEP “MUDDY TRACKS” 12″ (SILK002)
Coating like liquid sugar on top of solid sugar, The Deeep’s “Muddy Tracks” aims to please, tease, and see right through you. This is the kind of Toronto shamanism you never knew existed; it’s like someone pulled the stinger out of Beth Gibbons, like someone sucked the poison out of Tricky to leave you this stripped and satisfying zombie trance-hop stomp. This one takes the acid out of ACID and replaces it with a batch of ayahuasca. With remixes that lovingly introduce an easily dismissed relic of the garage past – the guitar – and jubilant Indo-Eastern tricks into the bold fold, this 12” is for sophisticates only. Those of us nostalgics who like to dance in our mind and then wax much poetic about it later.
ITAL “ITAL’S THEME” 12″ (SILK001)
Hot and sticky humid DC nights. San Fran brotherly love bangers. You-Can-Have-It-All loftings in Brooklyn. Ital bounces between these like a mechanized conga beat, offering up the kind of cuts that make you move like the smoother, sweeter version of yrself. This is the ultimate reversal of the day that disco died, the perfect envisioning of a dance culture that threw away the cheeky kitsch of hustle hangovers but held on to the je ne sais quoi of glitterfeti neon nightlife. “Itals Theme” is magnetic; the cold open for a one night stand, the montage you’d set yr Thursday night to – back when Thursday night was Friday night and you had to get out of the house. “Queens” reverberates through the dance hall like a rubber ball, off one wall and onto the other, picking up sweat and steam on the way. “One hit” sounds like the scaling of a skyscraper, higher and higher. Just writing “Makes you wanna dance” would be simply, stupidly, an understatement.