t/s: villalobos vs smagghe

picking "tiefschwarz/eulberg, therefore everbody wins!" is cheating and BEYOND THE PALE

villalobos beats smagghe. one looks like he has a tan is making progress out of rehab. the other looks like jesus on smack.

i don't like black strobe that much, but by my watch smagghe on a good night is one of the best DJs in the world. he can also be really boring, slinging hard-as-nails apocalyptic-death-techno for hours without letting up (judging by the dj gig i saw him do about six months ago at panoramabar), but when he's in good form, he's fuckin' unstoppable.

I love this logic.

geeta OTM about villalobos vs smagghe

Smagghe is more fun.

Neither are very surprising anymore.

I vote for Arnaud Rebotini.

BUT...berlin, and germany in general, will always have an edge, and that's because berlin has all the infrastructure in place to make great dance music happen on a massive scale--they have the big clubs that are closely attuned to interesting and 'underground' sounds; they have the media scene (groove, de:bug, taz, etc) that supports the DJs and the music; they have the huge number of DJs that support each other; they have the huge number of house and techno labels that support the producers. frankfurt and cologne have these things too, but berlin is different because it is still so cheap that it can support a whole city of djs, artists (who will make the album cover art?) and aspiring producers. and enough people without jobs that everyone can go to clubs until 8 in the morning and hear all the new music!

the most 'detroit' sounding record i've heard this year came from holland--that duplex record on clone! it sounds more detroit than detroit!

ah! i forgot to mention--berlin also has an abundance of fantastic techno record stores, which act as big creative hubs for the djs and producers; they're not just places to buy music. and then of course there's dubplates and mastering, so they're even doing the vinyl themselves. every part of the techno industry--berlin has it covered, without needing to depend on the U.S. or the U.K. for anything.

:(

I don't think the question is whether this music is gonna sound more American again but what kind of American - obv. a lot of electro-house over the last few years has sounded v. Chicago or Detroit-oriented, and it's only been with the second coming of micro in the past 12 months that this has receded again. It's always going back and forth though.

but yeah, i mean, berlin in general is not that diverse. there's not enough black people, for one. it sure ain't london or new york. it's not about to develop a ragin' polyethnic scene like 2step or bhangra. there's not enough people there who look like me (26-year-old indian girls who were born in new jersey.) that's part of why i didn't feel so comfortable living there for good. also the incredible diversity of new york, esp. queens, means it rules for food. i mean i could probably live without great techno, but i couldn't live without great bibimbap or dim sum or masala dosa or any number of things that new york does better.

Same goes for Villalobos, though. Smagghe IS a white guy. What's Ricardo's excuse?

(Sorry- I love Villalobos, but that last EP has to be the most over-hyped dance record since The Understanding.)

Minimalism is still kicking around, space disco is floating but not gaining, electro-clash may yet rear any ugly head before year's out (The Knife?), but by mid-2007 it will be ALL DETROIT.

(That's my guess anyway)

yeah, but ricardo has that drum-circle / spanish guitar / koto drum / gamean / mbira thing going on.

i wonder if villalobos has ever heard ken ishii?

This is basically me, and I will follow the herd....

-- vahid (vfoz...), March 21st, 2006.

Yeah and some of his tracks can sound that way when dropped in more diversified comps, but his proper albums, and even his DJ sets, can sound pretty caucasian at times.

But we can branch that into a whole separate discussion of the aesthetics of minimalism...

yeah, my memory is that we saw smagghe from like 1-4am (after basteroid, who wasn't much cop), and it was totally awesome with green laser pyramid madness, and then villalobos/hawtin from about 4 (matt left around then, i guess, when they played the rocker remix). but yeah, around 6am the villalobos stuff was totally spaced out and awesome and like nothing else i've ever heard.

i saw smagghe again a few months later in the main room and he was v boring, and i've seen villalobos again and he was great, so he definitely wins for djing. and production-wise they're not even in the same ballpark.

Ame I love (there's a liveset @ Club11 in Amsterdam doing the rounds that is amazing) although I already sense that vibe surrounding them of "we're not boring minimal but you know real-real dance". I can really do without the return of the deep house police (the local station not Vahid ;)

As for the original question. On a musical level Villalobos (although Smagghe's Fabric mix did remind me a lot of Villalobos). Haven't seen Villalobos spin live but his sets at Voltt always disappoint me for some reason.

They both look extremely cool though.

Ha! I was thinking the same thing just yesterday. Everybody did hear Ken Ishii around...what?..1993-1995.

Innerelements should make a comeback these days, totally nails that clippity-plok-klik-klak sound.

-- Giles Manius

Wasn't The Understanding pretty much panned across the board as being a really dissapointing follow up though??
(I think it's exactly 50/50, I like nearly _all_ the uptempo-pop stuff on it but find the Melody AM retreads across the board pointless & blatantly inferior to the first records tracks).

i am very suspicious of Sonar Kollektiv, at any rate.

LOL. "Zhey neffer zaw eet comink. Heheheh."

i am very suspicious of Sonar Kollektiv, at any rate.

Me too, but Soulhack by Forss is special though.

What I was talking about back up the thread was a merging of the feeling(or erm... soul) and harmonic directness of detroit/deep house with the more interesting elements of minimal/micro stuff (i.e. attention to detail and space, rather than plip-plop noises). Carl Craig's mix of D&G illustrates this intersection perfectly - although I guess he's coming at it from the opposite direction to the Berlin lot.

i've seen villalobos twice after that, and he was a little boring both times, so i think it's the luck of the draw. but my german friends tell me that the real way to see villalobos (and to understand his djing) is to see him play at these fucked up afterhours parties in berlin on sunday afternoons (i think), at this place called the club der visionäre.

however I have begun to doubt smagghe recently, think MANDY as selector/dj gets stronger and stronger, plus someone having production credits (black strobe doesn't count really, too separate) and label affiliations makes them a more interesting DJ in my opinion, it's about their aesthetic being more clear, for me anyhow.

one thing is sure, smagghe sure as hell isn't representative of any one genre, he is in no way a fair choice to rep electrohouse....

and doesn't booka shade play a big hand in producing the mandy tracks? or do i have that part wrong?

Ivan's production credits are strong. Not just his work with Black Strobe, but Volga Select, and he did some older stuff with French bands. Still primarily he is a DJ, he can cross over a few genres into stuff thats a bit moody, he's done a quite diverse radio show in Paris, but he's at his best when he is throwing down peaky riff lead electro. I saw him at Rex around the start of 2004 and he was great.

Ricardo is best at the afterhours. There are heaps of great photos from him rocking the sunday afternoon parties that are quite messy. There have been some here in London, and more in Berlin that are amazing. I think its interesting that his is music is better suited to both that environment and the quiter moments. I think labelling him a genius is one step too far, but he's definately prodigous.

http://www.planetxusa.com/pub/audio/djram/1996/120545.ram

(about 2:17 in on that sample)

Mysterious People 'Love Revolution (Mood II Swing remix)' Yoshitoshi US 1996

isn't that what ruined jungle?

i think villalobos' mix on the green and blue comp has minimal garage written all over it.

This is part of what i liked about the Uno Records mix, though it's more maximal electro-housish than minimal plip-plopish - esp. the really dubbed out tracks with cut up diva sighs and really immaculate surround-sound production.

why dont kompakt et al use proper divas? i would love to hear some proper female vox over minimal/electrohouse stuff. for some reason that uno mix didnt do it for me, maybe ill give it another try

time for the return of john ciafone?

because they want to keep selling records. ;)

The second Luomo album is pretty diva-ish, albeit in a dainty way.

I think that most recent Cassy release on perlon would classify here. Cassy in general, really, if her vocals on "true to myself" are any indication.

Smagghe is an all-over-the-place DJ with an electrohouse slant, which was the soup du jour of '05, so his relevance will depend exclusively on whether that style maintains its hold in '06, because he doesn't seem the type to adjust his sets to the current fad. Whether or not Black Strobe's LP tanks, if released at all in '06, will also factor into this. Someone suggested this ins't a factor, but I don't see how it isn't, since he's already run the gamut of label compilations and DJ mixes.

Has Villalobos ever had a finger on the pulse? My impression is that he marches to his own drum and always has. And since he never tours the US, everyone fan I know is far more interested in him on a compositional level. Isn't the question really whether or not anyone will continue to care about his style of house in '06?

Please make an album with tunes as beautiful as "true to myself" and "night to remember". an album of songs. there arent enough songs around.

thnx

A

"It's 1998 all over again ? Or you mean, people look for good tunes that came out before it all went electropear-shaped?"

ha ha no my point is that a lot of the euro stuff sounds like "Groove La Chord" at the moment. But feel free to pretend that there's some huge imaginary gap there, some unbridgable divide between brilliant euro-sounding techno from Detroit and abominable detroit-sounding techno from Europe.

Anyway people are too oppositional about this sort of thing. When I saw Trentemoller the other night I was reminded how the best thing about his tunes is always when those jacking snare/hi-hat percussive bits come in, it's so garage only totally alchemised into a minimal euro techno framework. It's pretty clearly a great hangover from his deep house days, but it's not like that means US 1 Europe 0, what a stupid fucking game to play anyway.

Yeah I know but my argument holds cos it was released on Transmat (or the parent album was, I dunno about the 12 inch).

"No fuck THAT. By and large the US is keeping the flame, people who appreciate it are just on their two feet, no tenterhooks, waiting for the rest of you to GROW the FUCK UP. Electrohouse is music that does indeed need saving. Sorry bit tired of BS "

Who here is enthusiastically rejecting whatever they don't currently DJ?

Yeah Tylero maybe people playing "Groove La Chord" now doesn't mean that much because really it has been played constantly pretty much ever sicne it came out.

smagghe at dirty disco, villalobos at technique.

what would YOU do?!

But I would like to see Villalobos too sometime again.

I just love Smagghe though, he is a great node if you like the electro part of electrohouse, always has records that you never hear from anyone else, judging by the sets I've downloaded.

The geek in me wants to see Villalobos, I bet he'll sound amazing altho can't remember what the PA is like in Mint. It'd be fun to get lost and not talk to anyone and get totally involved.

From the little Smagghe I've heard he sure knows how to party. He's also playing quite an odd, dirty club. Last I heard the DJ booth was a four poster bed, lots of floors, not very big, you get the idea. This will be a night of chatty mentalism.

Argh, decisions. I think it was Ambrose that mentioned Leeds clubs always having two great things going on the same night.

This is basically me, and I will follow the herd....