The fight for diverse and conscious voices

I listen to a wide variety of music, but one of my big loves is recent house/electronic dance music. Herewith a small sampling of goodness and joy in that space.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRzGTIhc1Bk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DnVx6LEKOI
http://djsteveboy.com/groovelectric.html
DJ Steveboy's latest mix is a paean to the funky house club night. It's a solid mix with some prog-house overtones. I've pulled out two tracks from it that I think are worth your special attention.

The first one is Dave Floyd & Pookie's "London (Original Mix)". It's an amusing sound-sampling mix that uses bits from Dennis Farina's performance in the movie Snatch. The track has a good drive energy without too many BPM and Steveboy drops it right in the middle of his mix.

The second is Deadmau5 remixing Burufunk (http://www.myspace.com/burufunkmusic) & Carbon Community's "Community Funk". Burufunk is a project of a Texas DJ named Curtis Fallis. More power to him, I guess. I've never thought of Texas as being all that funky a place. This track uses samples of old-school funky electronic effects mixed in with standard house beats. Again, low BPM so it doesn't get frenetic, but it still has a lot of sustained energy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbeUqyDwyU4&feature=related
As with so many trips to YouTube I got sucked into watching the related vids. This here is one, and I'll probably blog more later. Here we get Deadmau5's take on Faithless's classic dance track "God is a DJ." I love the original track and I think Deadmau5 both respects and builds on the original here. He's using the semi-rapping vocals that made the original notable, and laying them over his own inimitable electronic stylings. In my opinion it doesn't get much better than this when it comes to electronic house.

http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/Underworld/track/Always_Loved_A_Film_AmpLive_Remix
Also in the realm of club classic all stars are Underworld (http://underworldlive.com/). They've been working in and out of the electronic music scene for going on three decades. Here, RCRL LBL offers three of their tracks, two new and one classic. The first, "Always Loved A Film" is an odd mix. It has definite house influences, but it's also got the high thin vocals that Underworld have been known for, as well as some very non-traditional beat signatures.

The second track, "Scribble", is much more ambient in vocal tone but again throws in a weird cross with high-BPM rhythms and a very drum-and-bass feel to its electronics. The two parts of the track set up a deliberate contrast and even though I'm not a big d-and-b fan I like this, in part because it plays counterpoint to your expectations so well, both with beat changes and sample drops.

And finally of course there is "Born Slippy" recorded live. This is probably still Underworld's best-known track and it's interesting to hear their live take on it.