This was the question put to me recently by a promoter. The intention was obviously to put a certain type of sound in a box: Don’t go too Disco, don’t get weird.
Firstly - don’t get me wrong: I Love (with a capital L) House Music. Absolutely 100% adore it. But musically I’ve always found my attention shifting to different places that made sense to me musically. It’s a big reason why Broken Beat (aka the sound of West London in the late 90s/early 2000s) resonated so deeply with me. The melting pot of ingredients that went into this sound consisted of a Jazz sensibility, still focused on the dancefloor, and deeply soulful.
Let’s talk about Disco. It’s a sound that most people associate most prominently with Frank Booker. With good reason. My kind of disco is not the white-washed, formulaic disco of Abba and The Bee Gees… But the sound of uptempo R’N’B (thank you Mel Cheren!)... Black music, made for dance floors, with sophisticated musicality, and a soulful feeling.
Boogie: The electronic offshoot of Disco… Drum machines replacing live drummers, synthesizers replacing rhodes… The tempo is slower, but the funk is alive. The soul lives in the music. Again. And again. The sound of music. Dayton.
Which brings us to Garage & House. When you hear Garage, what do you think of? For me, it’s the sound of post-Paradise Garage NYC: Tony Humphries, Blaze, Smack productions. Gospel influenced dance music.
House? Are you house? What is House? A feeling!! Hahaha. I'm not the person to tell you what house is - what I do know is that it's certainly best shared together on a dancefloor.
This is what I want to share with you in the House of Booker.
