Metropolis Present Day? “Thee Album”

Felix Stallings Jr broke big, of course, with electroclash and his enormous Kittenz and Thee Glitz album in 2001 which catapulted him into partying with Madonna and life on the international big club merry go round. He was already an underground mainstay by then though: an impossibly prolific producer and DJ, taking his fellow Chicagoan and sometime mentor DJ Pierre’s tense, dramatic “wild pitch” house sound to new levels of immersive weirdness. On his debut album it’s all present and correct: one- and two-note throbs and pulses, strange voices saying strange things, a sense of chasmic depth opening up beneath the groove. You can actually hear the 80s synthpop undercurrent that would erupt a few years later in Kittenz but most of all you can hear darkness, strobes and sweat. It’s worth noting that even after his mega success, and for all the somewhat chaotic nature of his career, that Stallings never lost this sense, and his entire catalogue can be mapped out from this first milestone.