Harold Heath's Supa-Summer-Sounds

Harold Heath's Supa-Summer-Sounds 2015 by Harold Heath on Mixcloud

This mix was triggered by a chat on Facebook one afternoon, with me soliciting suggestions for the perfect summer mixtape.  Aside from songs which actually mentioned summer or the sun all the music also had to possess an essential 'summeryness'. Quite what this quality is is hard to quantify, and much easier to communicate with the music itself; listen to 'Feel it all Around' by Washed Out or 'Strollin' by the Sunburst Band for example. To my ears they both sound essentially 'summery' - they have a quality to them of still, shimmering heat and of glowing warmth.  Through some careful or accidental manipulation of melody and harmony or clever juxtaposition of tone and texture, they somehow evoke the sun's sparkle on the sea in summer or the feel of hot black tarmac in the midday sun.  And whilst there are plenty of other tunes that also have this quality (a substantial amount of Air's back catalog for example - of which more later) these two served a specific purpose within the context of the whole mix, so they got in.  And the name of the 'Sunburst' Band - that's pretty summery right?

For me, its great to have a focus or theme when doing a mixtape, as it helps narrow down the content. My ideal Sunday afternoon is a friend calling and saying they urgently need 2 hours of exquisitely programmed, mulit-genre music for a book launch, consisting only of artists whose names begin with either P or R.  Yes, no worries, I'll get straight to it.

This 'Supa-Summer-Sounds' mix covers many different genres and music from a 40 year time span and includes music released this year. Making this much disparate music somehow gel and flow together as part of a larger whole is a particular skill, one that some DJs aren't too concerned about, instead insisting that track selection is the single and only important factor. It isn't. Track selection is the single most important factor no doubt but my opinion has always been that once a DJ has achieved and is maintaining a collection of the finest music, then they can enhance the listeners experience of their music, simply by when they play a particular track and how they manage the transition from one piece of music to another.  If you wanted to distill DJing down to it's very barest elements, it's this:

What, then when, then how.

I've always enjoyed the compositional element of DJing. Just like countless other DJs, I've watched dance floors for years and have learnt that context is everything; even the finest tracks can fail if they're presented in the wrong way or at the wrong time. Equally a night that looks doomed can be rescued by a good selection.  DJing is like serving a meal at a restaurant, and every individual track is a potential dish:  it might be that you, the restaurateur / DJ have the finest almond and cinnamon danish pastry ever created, but if you offer it up to someone who in the middle of eating a roast chicken dinner, then they're not going to want it right at that moment, no matter how good it is. Get these decisions wrong and the diners will become unhappy. They may even refuse to pay the bill. Get the decisions right and you might just soundtrack a night that will become one of their most treasured memories.

The mixtape gets it name from the first track: 'Summer Madness' by Kool and the Gang. Also known as the song which was sampled by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince on their bona fide summer pop-rap classic "Summertime". It's a lovely piece of restrained jazz/soul with gorgeous Rhodes chords, warm synth washes and the signature Arp Odyssey synth octaves.  It is the first of a few of the more obvious choices on this mixtape, the second being Quincy Jone's classic interpretation of 'Summer in the City', a groove you may recognise from being sampled on tracks from the Pharcyde, the Roots and Nightmares on Wax.  In a great example of musical restraint and teasing, Valerie Simpon's vocal doesn't even come in until halfway through the song, and when it does, it comes in halfway through the last line of the verse before the chorus.  Its one of her finest performances, her sweet, syrupy vocals melding with the thick chords of the strings and organ in a near-perfect audio evocation of the hot and heavy air of a city night. 'You've Got it Bad Girl', the Quincy Jones album this is from, is well worth checking out.

Large swathes of 'French band' Air's early output perfectly capture the warmth, light and still of summer for me. Many of their tracks from Premiers Symptomes and Moon Safari could have qualified for this mix on the strength of their warmth alone - to me they almost glow - however, 'Le soleil est pres de moi' ('The sun is close to me') makes the grade because of the brilliant song-title.

Special mention goes to Ashley Slater's 'Private Sunshine'; it's a good song with a strong hook, the backing really swings with a low level restraint that is very appealing and the stuttering string edits that appear only twice during the track add a nice contrasting cold, technical edge to the synths and crackly jazz samples.  I love records which mix and match acoustic and organic sounds, feels and textures with electronics in interesting ways and I particularly love if the juxtapositions can confuse me and the listener as to the date of the recording. Detroit's Moodymann excels at this, re-positioning slathers of old audio into new pieces that manage to simultaneously sound both new and somehow evocative of older genres like disco, soul and jazz.  The continued development and wider availability of good quality home recording and editing software has made the possibility of incorporating older pieces of musical texture into new shapes much easier and at the same time, has made the DJ's job more fun.  Good DJing is all about this re-contextualising of music, playing something in a new context, representing it in a way that brings out elements that perhaps it wouldn't otherwise be known for - this is why the best underground DJs love to occasionally play an obscure 80s synth pop b-side they've re-edited because they know that even in the midst of the deepest, most underground tech-house set they've ever played, if they set up the sonic context correctly, then that b-side will KILL.  

In keeping with this idea of tracks that exist almost 'out of time', or that are at least difficult to place chronologically, I've also included some hazy low-key summer-themed house, electronica and drum and bass and some jazz and latin in between, moving between decades, countries and genres to create the whole. In my mind, this aspect - how many tunes of certain genres to include, how much electronic music to how much organic, how many vocal tracks to instrumentals - these are all part of the overall decision-making required to produce a broad-genre mixtape that is perfectly balanced and that people will want to return to. Tracks like the Moodymann's 'Youlooklykeicecreaminsummertyme', the Ballistic Brothers 'Portobello Cafe' and Nu Yorican Soul's interpretation of 'Black Gold of the Sun' all are 'modern' tracks - in that they're constructed in studios on software rather than by bands playing together - but they all directly reference music of the past. Contemporary beats can sometimes sound over-powerful/harsh when played next to older records -  but tunes like these with one foot in the past and the one firmly in the present are just perfect when mixing up music from different decades, they act like glue and hold the entire mix together. 

Certain sub-genres of Hip Hop, being sample heavy, are perfect for this task and in fact, there was a period during the mid-to-late 80s, when, for me, Norman Jay was the world's most perfect sounding DJ because he could put together these fabulously coherent but varied sets that just wandered through the last couple decades of black music but were tied together by the most cutting edge music of the time - US hip hop - which had started to sample old black music from 10-20 years earlier. So the DJ could go from the old funk and soul records to the brand new hype jams and it would all hang together perfectly. It was in this spirit that I went through some of my old hip hop collection to see what might fit in with this mixtape - and the Handsome Boy Modelling School's offering (hip hop supergroup Prince Paul and Dan "The Automator" Nakamura) 'Sunshine' fits the bill. Its what people call a 'head nodder' for obvious reasons, and is a tune of contrasts; on the one hand its lazy beats and sleepy samples give it a hazy laid-back feel, and on the other it has a thick, almost claustrophobic quality to the production and vocal, that recalls the dense, dark almost paranoid feel of Sly Stone's 'There's A Riot Goin' On'. 

Finally, I also wanted to mention Rick James's 'Gettin it on (in the Sunshine)', a recent discovery for me.  Any track that starts off with birdsong is already scoring points with me before the music even starts.  'Getting it On' starts off with a little hippie acoustic guitar figure before the swooping strings, harps and angelic choirs begin and it's sounding as though its about to get all Rotary Connection before Rick comes in with an over-the-top vocal,  and just when you think that's it, we're in the middle of an over-ripe plum of a ballad, then Rick lets the funk rip as the rhythm section kicks in - and suddenly, we're all getting it on in the sunshine. 

Harold Heath's Supa-Summer-Sounds 

Click on the song title to go to a shop to buy a song. I've re-edited a few of the tracks on this compilation so some will sound different if you buy the original

Kool and the Gang - Summer Madness

Quincy Jones - Summer in the City

Air - Le Soleil est pres de Moi

Lonnie Liston Smith - Summer Nights

Ashley Slater - Private Sunshine

Ramp - Everybody Loves The Sunshine

Rick James - Getting in on in the Sunshine

Leo’s Starship - Give me the Sunshine

Sunburst Band - Strollin' 

Washed Out - Feel it All Around 

Stevie Wonder - Summer Soft

Leon Ware - California

Sons and Daughters of Life - Let the Sunshine In

Ellie Goulhart - Sunny

M.F.S.B. - Summertime

Philly Sounds - Waiting for the Rain

Sly and the Family Stone - Hot Fun in the Summertime

Aretha Franklin - Groovin’

Ronnie Foster - Summer Song

Ballistic Brothers - Portobello Cafe 

Handsome Boy Modelling School - Sunshine

Lennie Hibbert - Real Hot

Dennis Brown - Some Like it Hot

Jazzanova - Bohemian Sunset

Slusnik Luna - Sun (Kossin Mix)
The Beloved - The Sun Rising

Atjazz - Touch the Sun

Pucho & the Latin Soul Brothers - Heat

Bebel Gilberto - So Nice (Summer Samba)

Moodymann - Youlooklykeicecreaminsummertyme

Nu Yorician Soul - I am the Black Gold of the Sun (4 Hero Remix)

Avalanches - Summer Crane

House Music All Summer Long - July 2015

House Music All Summer Long - Harold Heath by Harold Heath on Mixcloud

How do you decide what tunes to include on your latest mix? If you're playing in front of a club audience, your decisions about direction, style and mood are going to be led, at least partly, by their reactions to what you play. But if you're making a mix for your mates or for a radio show and you're doing it at home without the adrenaline and drive of a live gig, how do you decide out of the thousands of records, CDs, files, USBs and hard drives full of great music, which tracks will be included?

For some DJs, they play at home the way they play in the club: they get on the decks, pick tunes and mix em together. Not me though.  For me, a home-made mix is a special thing, something to be laboured over rather than knocked out on a Friday evening over a couple of ciders. A few of the DJ mixes I've listened to over the years have become bona-fide members of my music collection, with as much credibility as artist albums.   The tune selection, the programming and the mixing are all so good that I'm happy to return to listen again and again.  I want all my DJ mixes to be that good that people keep them on their hard drives and their phones for years to come. 

So when you are playing in front of an audience, you get plenty of feedback, guidance and pointers as to what you should play next. This, together with your own experience all feeds into the decision making process.  When mixing at home audience-less you get time to consider all the different tunes that you could play whereas when gigging you get hardly anytime to change your mind.  You also get plenty of time to listen back to every transition and, if you are uptight enough about it, to go back to the recording and re-edit it to perfection.  

All these factors definitely effect the flow of the home DJ mix and means that its less likely that i'm just going to head out into the mix without giving some thought as to what I might play and when and how I might play it.  Instead, I have the time and space to really think about how to programme different pieces of music and to consider how they sound in the context of each other.

Going back to the question, how does a DJ choose which tunes to include, first, s/he will probably have some new music they want to showcase - DJs love new music like cats love catnip so when considering what music to include on their latest mix, it's likely that a DJ will have several new things they want to play.  If they're anything like me, they may well have some of their own new production to include too. This might help in narrowing down the field of what music gets included in this month's mix. Once the DJ has picked out a handful of  new stuff that might get played, s/he then have to reflect on the thousands of other pieces of music they own - and there is where the magic starts to happen: each new piece of music will trigger ideas of connections -"...this drum pattern sounds like it would go great with that deep moody tune from last summer..." - or "...this feels like that classic old tech-house stormer from a few years back but with a lighter mood..." - and the DJ's huge internal filing system starts to make links and connections between previously disparate pieces of music. 

Aside from your actual tune selection which is obviously the most important factor, it's these links and connections and how they work once you're DJing live in the club that are really what DJing is about and what will give you your signature sound - it's about managing the transitions to best serve your purpose. Cut it up back and forth between the two tracks, cut the bass, drop out the mids, slam the crossfader back and forth, project your own energy and enthusiasm through the machinery and out onto the dancefloor... or gently tease and stroke the faders, smoothly introducing first the top end, then the mids, ever-so-gently giving the low end a little tickle... tempting and teasing the dancers, easing them into a new, deeper mood.  

Because its all about manipulating mood - about building tension, increasing expectation, allowing a little release, then building the tension some more, holding the audience at a certain level, until they're almost screaming for release. A good DJ can play with these moods at will, just by their tune selection and mixing. 

In the spirit of creating and manipulating moods with music, I often like to start a house mix - which obviously is going to be full of house music - with something slightly non-house, just one or two tracks which are around the same tempo as house music but that don't have that 4/4 beat. It catches the listeners attention and is a great way of creating tension as the listener knows that a 4/4 kick drum is going to happen sooner or later but doesn't know when.  So this mix starts with another great Shur-I-Kan tune,on the Dark Energy label, a genre-less electronica track called 'Anyone For Love' which I guess if pushed I could classify as something like: half-speed, slo-mo-glow-machinica-but-with-slightly-trap-esque-beats+excellent-use-of-old-school-vocal.  It sounds great right? It is, and it mixed nicely into another track that is approximately house tempo whilst not having a house beat. 

Personally, I love it when a house DJ abandons the tyranny of the 4/4 for a few minutes and drops a breakbeat or something different.  The impact it can have on dancers who have been moving to a 4/4 beat for hours can be huge.  Get it right and, for a moment at least, you get to be the DJ hero.  Timing is everything when doing this kind of thing live, not only in when you choose to do it, but also in how long you do it for, leave it too long and there's always the danger of losing the momentum.  But this also provides another potential opportunity for DJ-hero-dom - because you drop something non housey for five or ten minutes in the middle of a house night, the room goes crazy and then you get to put some house back on and you get to unleash the true power of a 4/4 beat on a room.  Never underestimate the power of a simple 4/4 beat over a decent sound-system when it hasn't been heard in the room for a while - its all about context.  Get this transition back to house right and it will set the place alight and instant DJ-hero-dom awaits. 

The second track is the uncharacteristically-distinctly un-house 'RP Foolin', recorded by Demarkus Lewis for the ever-reliable Lost My Dog label.  Yes that's right, its a record by house music Don Demarkus Lewis that isn't a house record.  Playing this of course, gives me a reason to go straight into YSE's awesome re-rub of 'Foolin'.  YSE are a pair of UK producers who released one of my favourite UK house records ever in the shape of 'Bounceback'. DJs take note, if you want a tune that will make a dance floor go off, buy this.  In the meantime, this remix from a couple of years ago is also a very effective dance floor tool.  

My mental map for this mix was to start with a couple of non house warm-ups, then move into house, take it deep and melodic, all drifting pads and warm keys, take it a bit darker, then work in some percussive-heavy tracks to balance out the over-all journey, finishing up on a few new bangers and an oldie.  This is pretty much the approach I would take with a live gig, group together a couple of sub-genres, gather together some new stuff, make a mental map of where I might take the music - the difference being with live gigs that the moment I arrive I immediately and completely abandon any idea of a plan and just ride the waves of energy and adrenaline. Honestly, EVERY SINGLE time. 

The more percussive heavy tracks that I eventually selected included a great tune from uber-producers Swag ( Chris Duckenfield & Richard Brown), their remix of Afro Mystick's 'Infinite Rhythm', a tune that originally came out in 2007. Eight years on and it sounds as good as it ever did, packed with heavy-duty synths and exquisitely programmed percussion all precisely massaged and mixed to perfection ready for dance floor action. The trouble with playing some records is that they sound so great that you find yourself struggling to come up with something that's good enough to follow it in the few minutes you have until you need to start mixing again. You could call it the 'Duckenfield/Brown' effect. You could, but you' d be missing a trick, when you could call it the 'Swag' effect right? 

Obviously I like all the music I play, but standouts for me at the moment are inevitably the newer stuff - we DJs are so fickle, always attracted to the shiny and new:  the new Roberto Rodriguiez 'Intuition' on Lazy Days is great : it's a nice tight, clean production with undulating acid/moog b-line and DuBois-esque chords - just when you think you can't play another acid record, something like this comes along.   Also on Lazy Days the repetitive, percussive-heavy groove combined with jazzy chords and sax snippets* of 'Coming Back' by Lay Far is really working for  me at the moment as well.

Last couple of tunes are Asad Rizvi's firing remix of Brett Vasser's 'SuperBump' which is like all of Asad's productions - another brilliantly put together slice of dance floor destruction from a producer who knows intimately what works. Happily, this mixes perfectly into Funk D'Void's re-rub of Lucca's 2008 'Woodblocker' taking the mood from sophisticated funk to epic deepness via two serendipitous key-matched minutes.  Happy Days. 

House Music All Summer Long - Harold Heath Summer 2015

Shur-I-Kan - Anyone for Love - Dark Energy Recordings

Demarkus Lewis - RP Foolin - Lost My Dog

Demarkus Lewis - RP Foolin - YSE Remix - Lost My Dog

Milton Jackson - Don’t Worry About The Drums - Dark Energy

Ray Saul - Another Beginning - Deep Site Recordings

Jon Delirious - Believe in You - Giom Remix - Lost My Dog

Alexander Saykov - Lies - Portofino Sunrise

Kollektiv Turmstrasse - Was Bielbt - Jimpster Vocal Remix

Michel Cleis - Hey Lady Luck - Jimpster Instrumental Edit - Crecimiento

Alex Arnout - In My Soul - Asadinho Remix - RVS

Shur-I-Kan - Like Rick Says - Dark Energy

Terry Farley & Mark Cooper pres. Bedford Falls Players - Recall The Morning Time Dub - Unrivalled Music

Afro Mystick - Infinite Rhythm - Swags Found a Groove Dub - Om

Lay Far - Coming Back - Lazy Days
Roberto Rodriguiez - Intuition

Brent Vassar - Superbump - Asadinho No Sax Dub - Blockhead

Lucca - Woodblocker - Funk D’Void Remix - Sound Of Acapulco

Click here if you prefer Soundcloud.

* Whilst I am perfectly happy to enjoy the music of the saxophone outside of house music - indeed John Coltrane is one of my favourite artists (though not the later weird stuff though right? right.) - for some reason I generally cannot abide the sound of a saxophone jazzing out on top of a house record. To my ears it always sounds wrong, incongruous - a saxophone doesn't belong on a house record anymore than an Akai MPC belongs in a Debussy performance. I am aware that it is an arbitrary distinction and that there's no logic to it, but then that's the beauty of the arts isn't it, we're not slaves to reason and logic. But Lay Far's 'Coming Back' has the sax sample buried so deep and made it so repetitive that it just sounds like a nagging synth and doesn't offend me.  I have in the past bought house tunes then later found them to have a saxophone break two thirds of the way through and been so offended that even the thought of editing the sax break out isn't enough to stop me abandoning the track and never playing it again. Because I feel like I've been tricked into buying a tune that is in fact an impostor - I thought I was buying a decent track when in fact, I was buying a house record with a saxophone on it. 

Harold Heath's House Harmony - Spring 2015

Harold Heath's House Harmony Spring 2015 by Harold Heath on Mixcloud

This hour-long selection kicks off with a track of mine. I often try to include at least one of my own productions in my DJ mixes, although I often struggle with choosing which one.  When I listen back to my own recordings, I tend to hear the production, rather than the music; all those hours spent tweaking the EQ on the clap and getting all the elements to sit together nicely, colour how I actually hear my own tracks and I find it really hard to rate, judge and quantify them.  If I listen to a promo I like, I can immediately start to make judgements about where and when I might play it: is it a peak-time track, a slow builder or simply a DJ tool to assist transitioning from one thing to another?  DJs build up the ability to analyse the make up and content of a piece of music in terms of how it would perform on a dance floor. But as soon as it comes to listening to my own productions, I really struggle to hear them - all I hear are the production decisions. 

Listening back to old DJ mixes of mine, I realised that I generally place my own productions at either the very beginning or very end - an unconscious reflection of my own inability to have any kind of objectivity about my own music.  So, the first track on this mix is my remix of Shur-I-Kan's 'Kissing' from last year (released on Ross Couch's Body Rhythm Recordings).  It's the first of three of his tracks on this mix; I'm a fan of his productions so getting a chance to remix one of his tracks was a real treat for me.  It was no surprise that the quality of the parts was excellent. The percussion was superb - perfectly produced and totally non-generic. The bass line was phenomenal in its richness - there must have been some serious layering and processing in the production, I could have it way down in the mix and it was still rock solid.  This track is also great to start a mix as it begins with a sample from an old recording of jazz standard "The Thrill is Gone" which appeals to my sense of a DJ mix having a very definite beginning, middle and end. 

There are two other tracks from Shur-I-Kan included.  'Won't Love Can't Love' (released on Fred Everything's frankly marvellous label Lazy Days) has been a particular winner on the dance floor lately.  When I dropped it in the Arches in Brighton recently it had a couple of DJs coming up the booth sniffing around - "oooh this is nice, what's this 'arold?'

And speaking of Fred Everything, I've also included his remix of Deux Tigres's 'Butterfly' - a track I have yet to play out; its one of those tunes that all DJs have - that they think is great, clever, a little different, nice and moody and that they rarely get a chance to drop.  It's a little different to some of his more club-friendly fodder and aside from striking a great melancholy mood with hints of Underworld's 'Dark and Long', I like the way the tension builds until the huge Reese-esque bass line drops several minutes into the track. In fact, I'm definitely playing this next time I DJ out. 

When I'm DJing a house set, I like to play a few different sub-genres - in my head I categorise the house music I play into vastly over specified micro genres: 

"Deep, in a US soulful way, but with a vague hint of European dubbiness to the mix, and something of a Tribal-in-the-mid-90s-style element to the drums, although in no-way a tribal record. Dancefloor Damage rating: 8.5"

"Percussive heavy tech house, but good tech house, with an originality rating of 0.2 but a funk rating of A++ File under success-guaranteed-only-after-3am"

This DJ mix is no exception and features a few different house sub-genres and moods touching upon deepness, funk, smooth-sophistication and raw energy.  After a few deep and moody records I start to up the energy with a couple of funkers from Stimming & Nick Curly before heading over to the US for some Kerri Chandler, Andrew Emil, Halo etc. then finishing on some heavier tunes from Nacho Marco and Kyle Hall.  Essentially a DJ has three questions to ask themselves, in this order:  

1. What will I play? 
2. When will I play it? 
3. How will I play it? 

Once a DJ has collected together a pile of great music, they then have to decide when to play each track - and in doing so they draw upon their knowledge of genres, of beats and bass, to work out what tracks will compliment each other the most and how they will work together to create a flow to keep the dancefloor moving.  Finally they have to ask themselves how they're going to play the tracks - how they will make the transitions between moods, when they'll change the style abruptly and when they'll create a slow teasing transition that will drive a room crazy with unreleased tension...

Hope you enjoy the mix, if you do then please comment and share, if you don't like it, comment anyway, I'd love to hear what you think. See you on the dancefloor soon...


Tracklisting:

Shur-I-Kan - Kissing - Harold Heath Remix - Body Rhythm Recordings
Kim Kimra - Raise the Dead - Love from San Fransico Remix - Mantis Recordings
Shur-I-Kan - Something In the Air - Lazy Days Music
Deux Tigres - Butterfly - Fred Everything Remix - Mood Music
D-Dub - Deep Blue - Stimming Remix - Tiger
Mark Broom - People - Nicky Curly Remix - 20/20 Vision
Halo - Here Dis Sound - Franck Rogers Remix - Siesta Records
D58 - Ekkohaus - Kerri Chandler Remix - Moon Harbour
Chad Mitchell - I Surrender - Andrew Emil’s San Frandisco Dub - Roam Recordings
Fries & Bridges - Forever This - Phil Weeks Remix - The Factory
Shur-I-Kan - Won’t Love Can’t Love - Lazy Days Music
Ourra - Corralia - Lucky Sun Recordings
Pete Dafeet - Wife - Nacho Marco Remix - Lost My Dog
Cromie - Vines - Kyle Hall Remix - Peach