Classic House Music

Touch Magazine Issue 17 July 1992

HOMEGROWN HOUSE
As house music continues to tighten its grip on the dance music scene, it’s us Brits who are leading the field. Are we finally a force to be reckoned with? Dave Lambert checks out the main contenders.
Britain has always had a reputation for promoting and appreciating the best dance music. But although many of our clubs are regarded as among the best in the world and our DJs and remixes (Mackintosh, D:Ream) are finally receiving recognition they deserve, you’d be hard pressed to fill your box with solely domestic house records. First the Italians showed the originators of House, the Americans, a few tricks and the last year saw a rapid rise in the number of British acts bringing out quality house. The following people are a fair representation of this fresh and exciting new British house scene.
THE AZULI POSSE
With years of experience at the retail end of the dance music scene, Black Market’s Dave Piccioni foresaw the pitfalls of releasing domestic garage as Bonai UK productions and last year decided to launch his Azuli label as an import. The reasoning is simple, most specialists split up house into British, Euro and the elite US section. At the time serious house heads would ignore the British releases racked up behind the counter and Dave knew that he had some worthwhile product which deserved proper attention. Three main acts make up the label’s roster, Chocolate Fudge, K.C.C. Collective and the Elements crew.
Chocolate Fudge are Miles Morgan and Baby Sean and it was their ‘In A Fantasy’ which was Azuli’s debut release in August last year. Playing heavily on Sister Sledge’s ‘He’s The Greatest Dancer’, ‘Fantasy’ contained all the elements of a true Nu Groove/Strictly Rhythm garage production; funky basslines mixed with sharp snares and ‘dirty’ vocal samples. Miles and Sean continued the theme with two other EPs on Azuli, ‘What You Want’ and ‘Locomotion’ as well as two Travis Nelson productions ‘Love Thing’ and ‘Everlasting’ and the current biggy Mount Rushmore ‘Got To Be Free’ on their own Planet label. There is a new Travis Nelson ‘Tunnel of Love’ and another Chocolate Fudge ‘Stomp EP’ pressed and ready to go and they have also teamed up with bongo player Pascal for a new release ‘Homegrown House’ on the Tomato label. The duo are currently working with a male and female vocalist on a number of original compositions because, as Miles told me, “Once you have a string of successful releases and some good strong songs the industry starts taking you seriously.” The ‘import scam’ however didn’t quite work to their advantage when Danny D wanted to sign ‘In A Fantasy’ to his Slam Jam label and spent days trying to locate Azuli in New York with no joy.
K.C.C. are ex-member Keith Franklin, Colin McBean and Cisco Ferreira and are the most experienced production team on the label. BTP’s ‘Release Your Body’ in 1987 and ‘Bang You’re Mine’ from 1989 are two of the biggest British house tunes of all time and for many gave both Franklin and fellow BTP member Kid Bachelor and Lesley Lawrence everlasting cult status. In fact, Keith claimed that the drum rhythm that Morales used on ‘The Your Friend’ is in fact taken from one of the arrangements on the No Smoke track ‘Koko’ which was recorded during a BTP session at Warriors Dance. In 1989, Keith teamed up with McBean and the multi talented Cisco, who has production experience with Robert Owens and R&S’s CJ Boland amongst others, for the first K.C.C. release ‘State Of Mind’ and followed that up in 1991 with ‘The House Of Basic Grooves EP’ on the Italian Flying label before signing to Azuli. To date they have three Azuli releases to their credit, ‘Groove Thing’ and ‘Heaven’ as K.C.C. featuring Emile and most recently ‘Music (Takes).
So far the Elements trio Zaki, Adam H and Roberto Mellow have two releases on Azuli, ‘Sensory’ and ‘Disco Elements Volume 1’. The follow ups are ready to go and they also have a new twelve entitled ‘Deep Collective’ forthcoming on the Zoom label. All future Azuli vinyl will appear as UK releases.
2 DOPE PRODUCTIONS
Currently riding high with the success of their first two EPs ‘Mighty Riders’ and ‘The R&M Project’, the uniquely deep soulful house and garage sound of Martin Mothhater and Ricky Morrison first surfaced on the US Big Beat label over a year ago with the obscurely titled track ‘Back To Me’. At the time a bona fide deal looked in the offing but unfortunately Big Beats supremo Craig Kallman, who had picked up the boys own white label whilst in London, moved to Atlantic. After hawking their material around the majors, where they were advised to either go off and make a rave track or wait until ‘there was more budget’, Ricky and Martin decided to launch their own Mighty Riders label. Much like Azuli, to overcome the prejudice of the musical purists they decided to package their first release as an import and quickly sold 2,000 copies around the world. Amazingly enough some of the specialist London shops who were aware of the nationality of the production team behind the track still refused to stock the record. Nevertheless the sheer professionalism and quality of their material shone through and the duo now have a few platters worth of new material ready to go either on their own Mighty Riders Records label or their new Mighty Riders Trax label.
FABI PARAS
Amazingly enough it’s only a year since Fabi (or Fabio as he now likes to be known) released his first tune Mr East From The East ‘under the name Two Eastern Mysteries on his own Dischi D’Importazioni label. A totally original mixture of eastern rhythm and tribal percussion, it signalled the burgeoning of a fresh new talent on the scene. ‘People’ and ‘Sack The Drummer’ followed, each with a limited pressing and all exploring new and original ideas. The recent ‘Cool Lemon’ EP and Ten Dead Men ‘We Kill Love’ offer the usual diverse mixture of inventive breaks and samples all bound together with Fabi’s distinctive bongo percussion. Did he teach the Italians the tribal sound we ask ourselves? For further proof check his latest offering ‘Hypnotic Eastern Rhythms’. Fabi also has a number of co-productions to his name - with Outrage the club anthem ‘Tan Handsome’ and ‘Drives Me Crazy’ which should eventually see the light of day on Boys Own and the new Cowboy label! Londres Strutt as ‘Smells Like Heaven’. His cohort as Outrage is, he tells me: somebody fairly well known who wants to remain anonymous.