Next Life album cover
Next Life

Various Artists

2014
Hyperdub

The death of DJ Rashad in April 2014 cast a pall over the future of the creatively flush early ’10s footwork movement. But that future would be in good hands, survived as Rashad was by the Teklife crew he and DJ Spinn had worked so long to build in Chicago. And months before the founding of Teklife’s own label, the collective pulled off one of the greatest footwork releases to drop on Hyperdub — one with a title that alluded to a Taso-popularized slogan, Teklife Till tha Next Life, that turned out to be better-served with a Through in place of the Till. Rashad’s there in spirit, but with only one track to his credit — the four-man collab/lean-and-molly clash “OTS,” where he shares billing with Taso, Spinn, and DJ Manny — Next Life meets its forward-looking title head on. Teklife’s Chicago-rooted unity pushes an attitude of defiance that feels provincial in origin but international in ambition, and this compilation’s embrace of other hometown predecessors that built the foundations of footwork itself — vets like Traxman (dropping berserk hi-hats and humid low-end beneath the ironic-for-dance command “Sit Ya Self Down”), Gant-Man (whose immersive “Jungle Juke” sounds less like either than it does like ineffable meta-techno), and RP Boo (whose “That’s It 4 Lil Ma” is one of the starkest yet most insistently aggressive beats in his vast catalogue). And since the juke diaspora broke out of its second-city confines, the inclusion of other regions’ adopters is crucial. So you get a couple choice cuts from NYC-based Durban (elegiacally building its trembling clapkicksnare jumble to an outer-atmosphere glide on “I’m So”) and Tripletrain (flirting with piano rave on “Never Could Be, Part 2”), while the emergent North Carolinian DJ Paypal shines on the borderline breakcore of analog-synth freakout “FM Blast” and the disco-as-fuck house-roots move of “U Should No,” the latter a group effort with Serbian producers Feloneezy and Jackie Dagger. But the core crew at the heart of the Teklife movement is just as rangy, whether it’s DJ Manny turning the titular voice sample of “Harvey Ratchet” into its own percussive intonation, or throne-heirs DJ Earl and DJ Taye throwing more flashy yet perfectly-timed tag-team kicks than the Young Bucks in “Wurkinn da Bass."

Nate Patrin

Recommended by
Who also suggested

If you select your preferred streamer here, we will save your preference and link to that platform if possible. This can always be changed in the Settings menu.

Apple Music

If you’d like to prioritize Bandcamp if available, tap the Bandcamp logo.

Since some albums are only available on one service, you’ll still see logos for other services if the album is only available on that service.

Next