THU., AUGUST 30, 2007
Playhouse Records: Songs for Groove Architects
by Philip Sherburne
There aren't many labels whose name fits them better than Playhouse. Since 1993, the imprint has played with house music in all its forms, remaining faithful to the music's original Chicago and New York traditions even while testing its edges and underpinnings with some of the most inventive productions in contemporary electronic dance music.
Playhouse's parent label, Ongaku, was founded in Frankfurt in 1992 by Ata Macias (aka DJ Ata) and Heiko Schäfer (aka Heiko MSO), also the co-founders of Frankfurt's legendary record store Delirium. (It's hard to imagine the history of German electronic music without Delirium: the Kompakt label and shop arose, six years later, from the Cologne franchise of the Frankfurt operation.) To satisfy its founders' restless tastes, and reflecting the rapid pace of electronic music's evolution in the early '90s, Ongaku quickly spun into three sister labels: Ongaku, devoted to the uncompromising bangers of the day; Klang Elektronik, dedicated to more experimental techno and minimalistic dance music; and Playhouse, reserved for house music's shuffling, swinging glide. (Today, only Klang and Playhouse remain active; Ongaku hasn't put out a record since number 30, 2003's "Gallero," by Night on Earth, aka Paul Brtschitsch and André Galluzzi.)
Over the years, Playhouse has grown to encompass a staggering array of sounds, but it's worth noting that the first act on Playhouse, a duo comprising Alter Ego's Roman Flügel and Jörn Elling Wuttke, called itself Holy Garage — an unequivocal reference to the Paradise Garage, generally considered the birthplace of disco. (Offenbach's Robert Johnson club, run by Ongauk's Ata, makes similarly explicit the crew's debt to black American musicians.) Appropriately, much of Playhouse's output nods towards classic styles. Thomas Melchior, recording for the label as Melchior Productions, has amassed a stunning body of work including three EPs and a masterful album, The Meaning, that's based upon skeletal, skipping rhythms and fleshed out with spare melodies and splashes of tone color, all animated by soulful vocal snippets and hiccupping gasps of breath; you can hear in it echoes of Todd Edwards' buoyant New Jersey house, but somehow made even more billowing and strange.
Like Melchior, both Roger23 and Prosumer use little of the self-consciously digital sound design and computer-aided composition that's long been so prominent in German electronic dance music, preferring the ragged sounds of analog machines and the unfussy flow that results from paring back the elements to a minimum. Stylistically, too, their influences couldn't be more evident: Prosumer's "The Craze," topped with the producer's own sumptuous tenor, is a virtual study in the soulful Chicago sound pioneered by labels like Trax decades ago. Another early single, meanwhile, is so faithful to the clockwork burble of early acid house that its creator, Roman Flügel, simply went with Acid Test as the name of his eponymous one-off experiment in gurgling functionalism. Losoul and Max Mohr are two more Playhouse artists that tease classic machine clang and tribal, rippling rhythms into lurching updates of old-school American forms.
The Ongaku crew has never pretended not to borrow from others — beginning with Ongaku's name itself, the Japanese word for "music." (Ongaku was initially the alias used by the trio of label-founders Ata and Heiko MSO along with Uwe Schmidt, aka Frankfurter-in-Chile Atom Heart, perhaps electronic music's most famous borrower and begetter of bastards, so it can hardly be surprising that Ongaku and its own offspring have never bothered themselves much with provenance.) But unlike so many borrowers, Playhouse gives credit where credit is due, and not just in terms of titling. One of Playhouse's earliest successes was "Lovelee Dae," by the New Jersey "spiritual house" duo (and onetime Motown signee) Blaze. "Lovelee Dae" is a flat-out gorgeous tune, certainly one of house music's crown jewels; from its glimmering loops to its vocal refrain — "It's a lovely day, and the sun is shining/ Everywhere I go, I see children smiling" — it's a strong contender for the best sunrise selection in all dance music. Its subaquatic shoomping is the prototype for much of what has come out of the deep-house revival in European dance music over the last six months; despite (or maybe because of) the simplicity of its groove and its analog synthesizers, as the years go by it sounds less and less tethered to a specific moment, and slips into something like timelessness.
Playhouse de-assembles and reconstructs house music's very foundations like a kid absorbed with a set of building blocks.
"Lovelee Dae" is by far the most traditional of Playhouse's releases (it's also one of very few by American producers; other Americans on the roster include New York's Benny Blanko and Los Angeles' John Tejada and Arian Leviste). After that, the label sends its tentacles in virtually every direction, affixing them to ever more disparate tendencies and drawing them back to the center where a steady pulse beats. A club night where only Playhouse records were played would probably feel more diverse — and yet uncannily coherent — than a night devoted to any other dance-music label. You could veer from the minimalistic funk of Bodo Elsel's "Discount Baby (Perlonized)" — one of the only selections in the eMusic catalog featuring the Perlon label's Zip, aka Dimbiman — to the Italo-inflected detroit techno of Common Factor; from the warped-plastic undulations of Isolée, whose 2000 album Rest remains one of electronic dance music's weirdest, most rewarding listens, to the post-disco camp of Captain Comatose. (Captain Comatose's punchy, punky singalongs make for some of the most energizing party music ever crafted — the rare body of work that would stand up as well in a warehouse party as at a wedding reception, albeit a very hip one.)
Playhouse knows a big tune when it hears one, and its founders aren't too proud to license a strong track that deserves a wider public. That was the case with Blaze's "Lovelee Dae," and it was the case again with Lindstrøm's "I Feel Space," the epic nu-disco anthem that the label licensed from the Norwegian producer's own Feedelity records in 2005. More recently, Playhouse picked up Simon Baker's "Plastik," a monumental slab of rollicking arpeggios teetering in the balance between slinky house and bombastic techno, that had originally appeared on Baker's own Infant label (courteously issuing it under the alias Infant Presents Simon Baker, a nice bit of free publicity). The exchange has worked the other way around, as well: When Isolée turned out an unexpected underground smash with his liquid and Latin-tinged "Beau Mot Plage," they cushioned their nest egg with the proceeds from licenses to two other labels.
But turning out obvious hits is hardly Playhouse's only interest; for all the strength of its singles, the label has also provided a platform for some of the most cohesive electronic dance-music albums of the past decade, notably, Isolée's We Are Monster and Villalobos' Alcachofa. Both of those are unfortunately currently unavailable on eMusic, but last year's Songs for the Gentle, by Berlin trio My My, is. In My My's singles, you can hear the group piecing together its approach one track at a time, crafting a patchwork of overdriven analog gear, unbridled drum-machine patterns and scraps of tone color; on the dozen songs of Songs, all these elements swirl together and are given shape by an unabashedly melodic approach, with the group's uncommonly acute sense of timbral contrast seeping between the cracks like iridescent caulking. While most of its tracks could easily be played in a nightclub — and often are — its curiously weightless heft also helps make it one of the rare dance-music albums that's just as rewarding played start to finish on a home stereo.
This inclusive sensibility — not either/or but and/also — perfectly epitomizes Playhouse's philosophy, de-assembling and reconstructing house music's very foundations like a kid absorbed with a set of building blocks and all the time in the world. Fourteen years into their easygoing run, Playhouse's extended play-date shows no signs of slowing down.
Playhouse's parent label, Ongaku, was founded in Frankfurt in 1992 by Ata Macias (aka DJ Ata) and Heiko Schäfer (aka Heiko MSO), also the co-founders of Frankfurt's legendary record store Delirium. (It's hard to imagine the history of German electronic music without Delirium: the Kompakt label and shop arose, six years later, from the Cologne franchise of the Frankfurt operation.) To satisfy its founders' restless tastes, and reflecting the rapid pace of electronic music's evolution in the early '90s, Ongaku quickly spun into three sister labels: Ongaku, devoted to the uncompromising bangers of the day; Klang Elektronik, dedicated to more experimental techno and minimalistic dance music; and Playhouse, reserved for house music's shuffling, swinging glide. (Today, only Klang and Playhouse remain active; Ongaku hasn't put out a record since number 30, 2003's "Gallero," by Night on Earth, aka Paul Brtschitsch and André Galluzzi.)
Over the years, Playhouse has grown to encompass a staggering array of sounds, but it's worth noting that the first act on Playhouse, a duo comprising Alter Ego's Roman Flügel and Jörn Elling Wuttke, called itself Holy Garage — an unequivocal reference to the Paradise Garage, generally considered the birthplace of disco. (Offenbach's Robert Johnson club, run by Ongauk's Ata, makes similarly explicit the crew's debt to black American musicians.) Appropriately, much of Playhouse's output nods towards classic styles. Thomas Melchior, recording for the label as Melchior Productions, has amassed a stunning body of work including three EPs and a masterful album, The Meaning, that's based upon skeletal, skipping rhythms and fleshed out with spare melodies and splashes of tone color, all animated by soulful vocal snippets and hiccupping gasps of breath; you can hear in it echoes of Todd Edwards' buoyant New Jersey house, but somehow made even more billowing and strange.
Like Melchior, both Roger23 and Prosumer use little of the self-consciously digital sound design and computer-aided composition that's long been so prominent in German electronic dance music, preferring the ragged sounds of analog machines and the unfussy flow that results from paring back the elements to a minimum. Stylistically, too, their influences couldn't be more evident: Prosumer's "The Craze," topped with the producer's own sumptuous tenor, is a virtual study in the soulful Chicago sound pioneered by labels like Trax decades ago. Another early single, meanwhile, is so faithful to the clockwork burble of early acid house that its creator, Roman Flügel, simply went with Acid Test as the name of his eponymous one-off experiment in gurgling functionalism. Losoul and Max Mohr are two more Playhouse artists that tease classic machine clang and tribal, rippling rhythms into lurching updates of old-school American forms.
The Ongaku crew has never pretended not to borrow from others — beginning with Ongaku's name itself, the Japanese word for "music." (Ongaku was initially the alias used by the trio of label-founders Ata and Heiko MSO along with Uwe Schmidt, aka Frankfurter-in-Chile Atom Heart, perhaps electronic music's most famous borrower and begetter of bastards, so it can hardly be surprising that Ongaku and its own offspring have never bothered themselves much with provenance.) But unlike so many borrowers, Playhouse gives credit where credit is due, and not just in terms of titling. One of Playhouse's earliest successes was "Lovelee Dae," by the New Jersey "spiritual house" duo (and onetime Motown signee) Blaze. "Lovelee Dae" is a flat-out gorgeous tune, certainly one of house music's crown jewels; from its glimmering loops to its vocal refrain — "It's a lovely day, and the sun is shining/ Everywhere I go, I see children smiling" — it's a strong contender for the best sunrise selection in all dance music. Its subaquatic shoomping is the prototype for much of what has come out of the deep-house revival in European dance music over the last six months; despite (or maybe because of) the simplicity of its groove and its analog synthesizers, as the years go by it sounds less and less tethered to a specific moment, and slips into something like timelessness.
"Lovelee Dae" is by far the most traditional of Playhouse's releases (it's also one of very few by American producers; other Americans on the roster include New York's Benny Blanko and Los Angeles' John Tejada and Arian Leviste). After that, the label sends its tentacles in virtually every direction, affixing them to ever more disparate tendencies and drawing them back to the center where a steady pulse beats. A club night where only Playhouse records were played would probably feel more diverse — and yet uncannily coherent — than a night devoted to any other dance-music label. You could veer from the minimalistic funk of Bodo Elsel's "Discount Baby (Perlonized)" — one of the only selections in the eMusic catalog featuring the Perlon label's Zip, aka Dimbiman — to the Italo-inflected detroit techno of Common Factor; from the warped-plastic undulations of Isolée, whose 2000 album Rest remains one of electronic dance music's weirdest, most rewarding listens, to the post-disco camp of Captain Comatose. (Captain Comatose's punchy, punky singalongs make for some of the most energizing party music ever crafted — the rare body of work that would stand up as well in a warehouse party as at a wedding reception, albeit a very hip one.)
Playhouse knows a big tune when it hears one, and its founders aren't too proud to license a strong track that deserves a wider public. That was the case with Blaze's "Lovelee Dae," and it was the case again with Lindstrøm's "I Feel Space," the epic nu-disco anthem that the label licensed from the Norwegian producer's own Feedelity records in 2005. More recently, Playhouse picked up Simon Baker's "Plastik," a monumental slab of rollicking arpeggios teetering in the balance between slinky house and bombastic techno, that had originally appeared on Baker's own Infant label (courteously issuing it under the alias Infant Presents Simon Baker, a nice bit of free publicity). The exchange has worked the other way around, as well: When Isolée turned out an unexpected underground smash with his liquid and Latin-tinged "Beau Mot Plage," they cushioned their nest egg with the proceeds from licenses to two other labels.
But turning out obvious hits is hardly Playhouse's only interest; for all the strength of its singles, the label has also provided a platform for some of the most cohesive electronic dance-music albums of the past decade, notably, Isolée's We Are Monster and Villalobos' Alcachofa. Both of those are unfortunately currently unavailable on eMusic, but last year's Songs for the Gentle, by Berlin trio My My, is. In My My's singles, you can hear the group piecing together its approach one track at a time, crafting a patchwork of overdriven analog gear, unbridled drum-machine patterns and scraps of tone color; on the dozen songs of Songs, all these elements swirl together and are given shape by an unabashedly melodic approach, with the group's uncommonly acute sense of timbral contrast seeping between the cracks like iridescent caulking. While most of its tracks could easily be played in a nightclub — and often are — its curiously weightless heft also helps make it one of the rare dance-music albums that's just as rewarding played start to finish on a home stereo.
This inclusive sensibility — not either/or but and/also — perfectly epitomizes Playhouse's philosophy, de-assembling and reconstructing house music's very foundations like a kid absorbed with a set of building blocks and all the time in the world. Fourteen years into their easygoing run, Playhouse's extended play-date shows no signs of slowing down.
© 1992 - 2009 All Media Guide, LLC