CHICAGO HOUSE BREAK



These tracks are a slice of Chicago house music from 1980-1995. House music was born in Chicago and these early tracks by artists like Larry Heard, Ron Trent, Fast Eddie, and Farley "Jack Master Funk" gave birth to a music phenomenon that took the world by storm. These early tracks are raw, experimental, and funky. Check the way artists combine the James Brown sample-crazy breaks of late 80s hip hop with the beats of house music to create something called 'hip house'. Hip house was the life-blood of Chicago house parties and school dances in the late 80s and early 90s. House music was also a staple of Chicago top 40 radio, and every night the music's jacking rhythm could be heard pouring out of apartment windows and car stereos. This music is the foundation for all modern dance music, and like it or hate it, it all began in Chicago.

Porter Records / Eclectic Sounds

Music is a diverse and dense universe, crowded with divergent sounds and artistic interpretations. It takes a good record label to sift through the plethora of sounds and give life to important works of art. Porter Records, a small upstart created in 2007 by a record collector with a passion for sound, is turning out to be one of the most unusual and creative labels running. The label's variety of music is staggering, and label owner, Luke Mosling, is dedicated to keeping the variety flowing in the years to come. Currently, the label releases everything from hip hop, reggae, free jazz, soul, and experimental electronic. While eclectic, the music on Porter records is never elitist or confounding. If anything, Porter gives listeners the unique chance to experience a wide variety of sound in a context that is accessible and understated. The label also has a unique design aesthetic, reminiscent of the well branded packaging from labels like Blue Note and Impulse in the 1960s. Each Porter Records release has a distinct visual presentation, which helps the label stand out in a saturated market.

Mosling runs Porter Records as a one-man-band, and he views the label as an extension of his diverse record collection. In the next year, Mosling plans on putting out a host of rare-reissues and new releases featuring everything from organic hip hop groups to ambient electronic artists. The label also plans to reach into the global music community and release jazz and experimental music from Europe and Australia.

For information on Porter Records and its upcoming releases, visit http://www.myspace.com/porterrecords.


When Porter Records artist The Misled Children remix Dr. Dre and Snoop- it's a wacky affair.

A Piece of Plastic with a Hole

What the hell is genius? “A little piece of plastic with a hole?”
If you are unfamiliar with the production work of J-Dilla, you are missing out on a legacy that is both insane and brilliant. This is a man who could create musical soundtracks with layers of simplicity and unusually crunchy funkiness. His work is revered by most modern day hip hop producers, and I have even heard the notoriously bombastic Busta Rhymes get choked up when discussing the man’s talents. The interesting thing about Dilla is that he liked to play around. He was a prolific experimenter and his sketches are still out there, in the world, waiting to be put to vinyl. One of these sketch collections, released by Stones Throw Records in 2006, entitled Donuts, exemplifies Dilla’s penchant for insane creativity. Donuts is really just a collection of digitally chopped up soul, funk, doo-wop, and rock records, with a limited amount of sound effects and tampering. The record illustrates the genius of a man having a love affair with music history and the possibilities of a sampling.

A perfect example of Dilla’s production style and sketch technique resides within the tune “Workinonit.” The tune is a re-contextualized version of the British pop band 10cc’s song “Worst Band in the World.” The tune is a funny, sardonic, minimal attack on the modern music industry. For Dilla, the tune is sample rich, with tough funk drums, an echo filled bass groove and vocal stabs ready for the plucking. Dilla’s genius is the fact he identified the song as being great sample material. Anyone can hear a sample in a Roy Ayers groove, or a James Brown vamp, but to find a potential banger in a goofy, one off single, by a fluffy British pop band- that is quite another thing altogether. Dilla’s ears were golden and if more of his uniquely off the wall sketches see the light of day, the game will be better for it.

Between Motown and a Hard Place : Recession Era Hip Hop from the Midwest

It’s all over the news, we hear it on almost all channels of communication: This is the worst economic period since the great depression. Once lucrative business are laying off hard working stiffs left and right, the auto industry is seeking bailout money, and unemployment numbers continue to grow. Living in Chicago, there are numerous signs of a downward economic spiral. It doesn’t take a sociologist to notice there are more rust covered cars on the road, young kids in dusty coats, stores boarded up, and more forlorn faces on the cold Chicago streets. This recession has affected Chicago in a very unique way. Chicago was experiencing a boom at the millennium. The culturally rich city was experiencing unprecedented real-estate growth and business development, and for better or worse, gentrification was awkwardly revitalizing parts of the Midwestern metropolis. Over the last eight years, Chicago has not been protected from the credit crises and the all encompassing national recession. Chicago, like many a Midwestern city, has succumb to a national gloom.


Detroit is a city familiar with depression. A city built on the dreams of auto manufacturing and industrial prowess. A modern city filled with progressive ideals and cursed by corruption. The recession has turned most Midwestern cities into a collection of micro- and macro- versions of Detroit. That being said, Detroit is one of the few cities that has built a cottage industry on struggling and surviving. Detroit’s music exemplifies the very middle class ideals of work, struggle and redemption. In the 1960s, the Motown label produced music born out of the civil rights struggle and the materialistic opulence of an auto industry at peak performance. The music on the Motown label was at once soulful, spiritual, and elegantly acceptable to a mass audience. Somewhere between Motown and Reaganomics Detroit city lost its zeal for elegance and began embracing its more bare-knuckled aesthetics. The global economic transitions of the 1970s and 80s proved to be fatal for the city built on the singular dream of dominating global auto manufacturing. After Motown, Detroit gave birth to burgeoning hardcore punk, techno, and garage rock music scenes. The music coming from the motorized city in the 70s and 80s was anything but polished. It was raw, masculine, and industrial. Whether the pounding drums from punk bands like the Meatmen or the unforgiving motor beats of producers like Juan Adkins, in the years following Reaganomics, Detroit music was trying like the devil to break free. Through music, Detroit was crushing its economic failures, while celebrating its hard fought work ethic and creative soul.


Detroit has been living the death of the American dream for decades, beginning with the race riots in 1967, up to its induction as the “murder capital of America” at the dawn of the 21st century. This story of boom and blight is a story being repeated throughout America’s Midwestern cities. It’s a tale being told in the back alleys of Chicago, and the streets of Minneapolis. Detroit has suddenly set the tone for the entire Midwest, and its music speaks loudly to an audience with active, open ears.


In 2009, it’s not New York, LA or the dirty south that is setting the musical backdrop for the blighted economy and the hopeful optimism of a new president- it’s the Midwest. The raw, soulful sounds born out of cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit seem to be pushing forth a generation of beat makers and lyricists not concerned with stylistic convention or ashamed of hard times. Artists such as J-Dee Yancey and Black Milk in Detroit, as well as Brother Ali in Minneapolis, and Qwel in Chicago, continue to make music with a very Midwestern aesthetic. It’s an aesthetic that resonates over the sound of closed factories and foreclosed homes. These Midwestern music makers owe a thing or two to Detroit, a city that has been making art in the face of hard times for decades. The duality of art and struggle echoes loudly in the music of revered producer J-Dee Yancey. The producer, who worked with everyone from Common, Erika Badu, and Tribe Called Quest, gave his beats a rough hewn, collage feel. In a J-Dilla beat, it is as if each track had been compiled from rusted Motown studios, discarded Cadillac grills, and shoes wrapped around telephone lines. His music was not only sonically well crafted; it was music that was directly taken from the Midwestern streets on which he was raised. It could be argued that J-Dilla made music that described his city better than a thousand news broadcasts or documentaries. His legacy of local appreciation, home grown soul and acknowledgment of the daily grind is being continued by Detroit artists like Black Milk and Invincible.

This Detroit Aesthetic isn’t just held within Michigan state lines. In 2008, Washington bred producer Jake One collaborated with a host of divergent MCs for his eponymous debut LP entitled White Van Music. The LP featured numerous Midwest MCs and had an overt nod to blue collar roots and the raw, unvarnished style so loved in the bread basket of the free world. Midwest MCs Brother Ali and Freeway provided the album’s introductory single “The Truth.” The track, while overtly earnest and completely ‘un-hip’ lets both MCs showcase their Midwest values and speak to the problems that face middle America at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. What is so striking about this track, found on an underground hip hop record, is how unselfconscious the track sounds. On “The Truth” Brother Ali breaks into a sing-song verse more reminiscent of a Baptist sermon than the flow of an underground MC. On this track, Ali is blowing not in a palace, but a studio apartment in a Midwestern city, eating ramen noodles with a pregnant wife, and he’s letting the struggle pour out through every lyric. This aesthetic isn’t atypical in the Midwest. A few hundred miles underneath Minneapolis is the Chicago, home of Qwel. Like Brother Ali, Qwel has a flow partially borrowed from the African American Blues and Gospel spoken word traditions. On his 2005 LP, If It Aint Been In A Pawn Shop, Then It Cant Play The Blues, the MC fully embraces the role of a world weary sage speaking about blue collar hard times and survival within the maze of the city. On this recording, Qwel becomes something of a hip hop Nelson Algren and uses his mic to weave intricate stories about blue collar survival.

There is a workman like quality to Midwestern hip hop, and whether born out of Detroit or just influenced by its plight, hip hop in the middle of America is more relevant now that it has ever been. It’s the sound of factory fathers, bus riders, and tarnished silver chains. It’s the sound of aspirations, realized or not. It’s the wail of tarnished hope, untapped potential, and without a doubt, it’s a sound that deserves our attention.

Peace, Love, Weed, 3D: Out of the Bush and into the Weeds

Eliot Lipp, beat producer, smoker and world traveler, has just released an epic piece of 21st century electronic song bliss. I've known Mr. Lipp for quite a few years, even living with him briefly in 2003. We shared a two-flat, walk up apartment in an insanely diverse Chicago neighborhood. The apartment was a long train ride away from the hip and pretentious parts of Chicago. The closest thing we had to a record store was the Arabic grocery that sold Jordanian pop cassettes along with candied almonds, hookahs, and fruit juice. Eliot has since moved to North Hollywood, and the producer currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.


We shared the apartment/music studio with two other music makers, and suffice it to say I learned a thing or two about making beats, italo-disco, Georgio Moroder, and jazz fusion. Lipp has always been a prolific music maker and a man of immense intuitive creativity. His beat making catalog is sprawling for a kid who has yet to french kiss thirty. Eliot is a rare breed. He is a music maker that is at once cynical about his own abilities and completely optimistic about the world of music. The kid loves sound. On his new record, Peace Love Weed 3D, Lipp intertwines cynicism with sensitivity and a willingness to suspend his own musical disbelief. The product is a joyous, naked, corny, strong, and completely innovative piece of unpretentious sound. I will refrain from the standard music review and just simply say that PLW3D invites Lil' John, Timbaland, Prefuse 73, George Duke, Georgio Moroder, Luke Vibert, and Herbie Hancock to a cocktail party, gets them drunk on punch, and then forces them to skinny dip at the synth pool. What surprises me about PLW3D is how un-hip it sounds. Lipp made this record for himself and that is to his credit. It is a record he would enjoy listening to, and he isn't concerned with how this beat cake will taste in the mouths of hipsters in his Brooklyn neighborhood. Lipp is also collaborating with other musicians these days, namely Guitar Ron and members of the Pnuma Trio. This collaborative spirit has had a maturing affect on his beats. His synth lines are more considered, and his melodic phrasing is elegant and restrained. PLW3D is the product of many divergent factors, but it is without a doubt, one of the most accomplished releases from a producer who is searching through the crates and the weeds.

http://www.myspace.com/eliotlipp