MICHAEL FREEDBERG

Dance marathon

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:48:04 GMT

Victor Calderone at Therapy, March 1, 2008
A full brigade of House Nation citizens turned out for Victor Calderone’s marathon spin session at Therapy last Saturday.

House heads

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:18:59 GMT

Valentine's Day at 33 Lounge
The lounge at 33 Restaurant & Lounge on Stanhope Street in the Back Bay may just have Boston’s tiniest dance floor. The upstairs restaurant isn’t much bigger.

Sander Kleinenberg

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:59:36 GMT

This Is Sander Kleinenberg | Ultra
Kleinenberg’s 28 selections were made by names not well known — the classic strategy by which a DJ projects his own sound, one unmistakable for anyone else’s.

Flower power

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:41:23 GMT

The return of Jeanne Mas
As I write this, I’m listening to the newest Jeanne Mas CD, The Missing Flowers .

CRISIS RESOLVED: After a long, profound fall, Jeanne Mas is back.

As I write this, I’m listening to the newest Jeanne Mas CD, The Missing Flowers (eDina). Twenty-two years ago, her debut CD, Jeanne Mas (EMI), took the world of variété française by storm. Mas’s voice — petite and soprano, fluttery, flamboyant — simply exploded out of the speaker, tender and sexy, irresistible. Very quickly she became the most intensely loved of that era’s variété française stars. And almost as quickly, she lost the heights. By 1994 she was forgotten. Little wonder that, in this new CD’s title song, Mas ponders plaintively, behind the flowers that are missing, the lovers who too are missing.

The follow-ups to Mas’s debut, Femmes d’aujourd’hui and Les crises de l’âme (both EMI), repeated almost exactly the sound, tempo, and subject matter of her debut. The little she added — political and social commentary — she bungled. She was too feminist for a decade moving away from feminism, and Afrocentric as well. Her inability to sustain the magic of her debut was particularly damaging because in 1986 there appeared Cendres de lune, Mylene Farmer’s debut CD, whose odd mélange of libertine sex and pensive sadness made Mas’s affirmative sexuality sound naive, surface, and glam where Farmer was gloom.

And just as quickly came new, intense, and difficult CDs by two who had been major variété stars before Mas ever appeared: France Gall (Babacar) and Jane Birkin (a live Je suis venue te dire que je m’en vais). After Gall’s soulful romanticism and Birkin’s wistful, mordant storytelling — both of them backed by blues-rock bands as serious as anything available at the time — and Farmer’s CD after CD of ever more piquant, risqué, profound speculations on Edith Piaf’s “Je ne regrette rien” theme, what room was there for Mas’s wrong turns?

Mas’s fall was a profound one. Whereas Gall, Farmer, and Birkin have all maintained, even improved on, their ’80s popularity, Mas by the mid ’90s was out of music entirely. Yet some fans remained. And eventually there was music for them. Discarding, at last, the Italian arrangers and producers who had made her magnificent debut and its three follow-ups, Mas became, on 1996’s Jeanne Mas & les Égoïstes (Arcade), a very different sort of rockeuse from before. Fronting an old-school band of guitars and bass only — no orchestration, no atmospherics — she sang harshly, from the back of her throat. In “Si fou, si west,” there was bitter humor, as she shared plenty of dirt about her years adrift.

Suburban house

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:04:44 GMT

DJ Deka’s sweet ride
At Rise the Saturday before Christmas, DJ Deka played a four-and-a-half-hour set.

PRACTICE! Deka has worked hard to develop his own brand of “hard New York tribal” house style.

At Rise the Saturday before Christmas, DJ Deka played a four-and-a-half-hour set. Deka has become the most prominent of the new breed of Boston-based house-music spinners, and he drew an almost full dance floor of fans. He did not disappoint. For the two hours of it that I attended, it was the best set I’ve heard him do. His style, he says, is “hard New York tribal,” but he has of late also favored electro-house and tech-house sound effects, and at Rise he used both, adding them as a kind of aural frosting atop his cake of deep, thick, fist-like beats.

There were also vocals: tape-distorted low-frequency male voices and slutty girls’ monologues coaxing and funning at the dancers with lines like “Close your eyes,” “Lose control,” Danny Tenaglia’s “I’m gonna take you on a tour . . . of a 12-inch.” To insert his vocals, Deka used three turntables: two to overlay rhythm sounds onto another track’s silent patches, the third to overlay them both with teasing voices. As for the beats of “New York tribal,” he made them as hard and thick as the genre (created, he says, by Victor Calderone) offers, in a syncopated, flirty texture that forced feet to dance, legs, hips, you name it. He did it to the dancers and then did it again, imaginative mixes — radical tempo changes, from down-beat to revved-up — that kept the surprises coming.

Deka’s fans were a diverse group: a few muscle guys, a lot of slender young Euro and Asian guys with very short haircuts, here and there a gal or two, many of them Rise regulars. The crowd also included other DJs. The mix of dancers was very Ibiza, even if the weather outside was Moscow.

Not Ibiza at all is Tabu, a bunker-shaped nightclub on Route One in Saugus, where Deka DJ’d back in November. But it is suburban — Deka’s roots. Here are guys wearing flared slacks and open-neck shirts. They gather along the sides of the dance floor, avoiding the metallic purple light show. The gals are wearing office dresses or pencil jeans and snug sweaters — one or two actually step onto the dance floor, moving to the rhythm. It’s an aggressive mix, almost rough enough for Rise.

Roger Sanchez: Release Yourself

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:55:43 GMT

Vol. 6 | Stealth
Sanchez tests the limits of the tough, the frantic, and the joyful. Fans expect no less.

Victor Calderone

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 20:03:27 GMT

Evolve | Ultra
Victor Calderone ranks among the top house DJs, and his newest mix makes it clear how he got there.

Smooth moves

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:54:05 GMT

Underworld and John Digweed, Bank of America Pavilion, September 15, 2007
The music of Underworld is almost supremely funkless.

House at home

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 19:18:54 GMT

Jon Viera’s local Escuro label
If you’re a producer of house music and you’re looking for a label, you might well submit your tracks to Escuro Records.

HOOKED: “I’d go to flea markets for 12 hours. Then to the record store. I was a label hound.”

If you’re a producer of house music and you’re looking for a label, you might well submit your tracks to Escuro Records. Jon Viera, a young clubgoing type who grew up in Florida but graduated from Peabody High School, has based Escuro in his house — indeed, in the computer room upstairs. That’s where he can usually be found, listening to tracks submitted to him, producing new tracks, and communicating with artists, DJs, producers, and, in this case, the Phoenix.

The night of my visit, I find Viera at the computer. DJ Deka, a friend whose debut hit, “In the Darkness,” is an Escuro track, is there too, watching the Red Sox on television. Pizza is ordered. It might easily be just another sports night in the suburbs for two hard-working guys.

How did Viera get into house? “I was still a kid, living in Florida. A friend would bring over his tapes — I liked the artwork and I liked the music. Soon I started seeking out raves. Eight or nine hours of great beats! Hey, I’ve always walked the path of a different drummer, so at raves I found perfect happiness, which I couldn’t get from Top 40. So there I was, getting home at 6 am, when the rest of the guys my age were just getting up. It was kind of my secret, my passion — it was mine, nobody could take it away from me.”

It was the mid 1990s. Raves ruled. Viera started buying vinyl. “I’d go to flea markets for 12 hours. Then to the record store. I was a label hound. I was always begging mom for more money, spent every penny I could. Five years ago, I moved from record collector to the DJ booth. After a while doing that, I decided that my true future was in running a label. Now this was the time when, because of the Internet, all the real-world record stores were closing. I realized that digital distribution was the way to go, and it made things possible for me, because on the ’Net you don’t have to worry about being shafted by a distributor or paying to have vinyl pressed.”

Sultan

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 17:59:27 GMT

Montreal | Yashitoshi
The first track of this CD establishes a taste in dance music that’s recognizably, authentically Montreal.

Back to the future

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 14:54:40 GMT

Chuck Love, Rise Club, August 3, 2007
Love’s dancers looked just as discofied as his music sounded.

Cedric Gervais

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:15:53 GMT

Miami | Yoshitoshi
This set by influential French-born, Miami-based DJ Gervais lives up to its title.

Ultra Naté

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 14:24:36 GMT

Grime, Silk and Thunder | Tommy Boy
On the cover of her fifth CD, Naté looks to-die-for in midnight-blue opera gloves and strapless gown .

Gus Gus

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Tue, 22 May 2007 15:23:17 GMT

Forever | Groove
This Iceland outfit’s fifth album says electronic club music — the kind created by DJs, not rock bands.

DJ Jazz

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Mon, 21 May 2007 22:22:15 GMT

Mark Knight, Underbar, May 17, 2007
We’ve become accustomed to thinking of jazz as delicate sounds played by iconic wise men (and women) in museum-like settings.

House girls

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 19:13:20 GMT

BonTon Productions keeps Boston’s dance clubs moving
The last time I saw Maria DiIulis, the owner of BonTon Productions, was at Rumor, the popular Theater District dance club on Warrenton Street.

SCENESTER: No one has done more than Maria DiIulis to make house music big deal in Boston’s clubs.

The last time I saw Maria DiIulis, the owner of BonTon Productions, was at Rumor, the popular Theater District dance club on Warrenton Street. She was greeting guests in the “house music room” with a huge smile on her face and a notepad in her hand, checking off names on her “guest list.” Most she knew personally, and like me, they seemed thrilled to be recognized by a major nightlife “scenester” — which DiIulis is.

I doubt if anyone, DJs included, has done more than Maria DiIulis to make house a big deal in Boston’s nightlife. She sponsors at least a dozen DJs, including such major locals as Craig Mitchell, Jay Prouty, Shlavens & D-Lav, Etiquette, and Taner K. In most of her e-mail “event Invitations” she includes sets by these DJs and others that are available for download. In addition, she and assistant Danielle Dior (until recently joined by Mandy “Krokodile Tears,” who has just been hired to promote Avalon Fridays) send invites to a vast list of house fans, many of whom they know by name. The invitation is sent as an e-mail or bulletin to your MySpace page, and all you have to do is respond to join the guest list. Being on the list gives you a substantial discount at the door. It also means you’ll get into the club a little more easily, because the BonTons have their own admission line. And you can always call one of the gals by cell and she’ll come out and get you in.

After a BonTon-promoted gig ends, the gals often go to Rise, Boston’s after-hours house den. There they seem to know just about everybody. How did they become acquainted with so many house fans? More to the point, how did DiIulis — who grew up in Bridgewater, far from the downtown scene that house has always been — become a house fan? “I always loved listening to dance music. I especially listened to Vinnie Peruzzi [the late radio DJ whose disco classics broadcasts were extremely popular and who himself was known throughout Greater Boston as “Disco Vinnie”] and so did my best friend. She invited me to come to Tokyo. It was there that I discovered the club scene and fell in love. I was excited!”

Dubfire

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 19:58:44 GMT

Taipei | Global Underground
Those who saw Dubfire in Boston last September will be surprised by the sound of these two sets.

Future past

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:40:12 GMT

Ute Lemper, Berklee Performance Center, March 10, 2007
Why not sing the past as if it were the future and not the past?

The rumor mill

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 18:15:00 GMT

A new home for house music
“Church on Sunday” is one of the newer house-music events in the city.

INTERNATIONAL HOUSE MAFIA: Rafael is from Puerto Rico, Miranda from Newburyport.

“Church on Sunday” is one of the newer house-music events in the city. It gathers at Rumor on Warrenton Street at 8 pm — very early for a house crowd, but so far so good. The very first Church, on January 14, packed the club wall to wall. Was it that Boston’s well-loved Craig Mitchell was playing? Perhaps. Yet the very next week big-name DJ Richie Santana did the spinning and also drew a large crowd. The Church services continue this Sunday with DJ Wayne Michael.

The event is sponsored by a team of three: Rick Dunn, Miranda, and Rafael (who at MySpace calls them “the Gay Mafia”). All are long-time denizens of House Nation. Dunn is well known in Boston’s gay community both as a house fan and as the publisher of Edge. He travels widely in house club circles and maintains a growing list of contacts with DJs, promoters, agents, and record labels. Many of the dancers who gather at Church are folks on Rick’s contact list, which extends to Provincetown and New York City.

Rafael grew up in Puerto Rico, then moved to Miami, whose huge house scene he immediately took to, and then came to Boston. At Church he’s the doorkeeper and chief floor man, in charge of guest lists, security, and welcoming. His contact list also draws fans to Church events.
Perhaps the largest group of potential Church goers, however, are those who know Miranda, whose MySpace site says, “Music is my religion.” Miranda grew up in Newburyport. Her story is typical of Boston’s house community: “I was a big fan of hip-hop.” Pause. “But I hated it. So when my friends told me about Friends Landing, in Haverhill, I started going there. They played house music.”

Friends Landing is now closed, but for many years it was the Merrimack Valley’s chief venue for cross-dressers and other trannies. “And I hated that, too, at first,” she continues. “But the more I heard it the better I liked it.” Miranda found her way to the Loft, where she heard Armand Van Helden spin. (It was 1995, and Van Helden was then the king of Boston house music.) Later — like so many of the people who now do house promotion in Boston — she started dancing at Avalon’s hugely popular Sunday “Gay Night,” where “I took to the scene totally. Other than the Loft I had never come into Boston clubs before, but at Avalon I became friends with the bartenders.” She also had the spunk to persist as a house fan even though “at that time Avalon on Sunday was filled with bare-to-the-waist circuit boys who asked me to my face what was I doing there.” Now, however, “everybody knows who I am, and in any case, things have changed. Everybody dances with everybody now.”

Dennis Ferrer

MICHAEL FREEDBERG — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 21:44:09 GMT

The World as I See It | MVD
Dennis Ferrer now has a full-length CD out after a decade and a half of single-track releases, many of them hits.