Too Underground for the Main Stage

Influential Chicago house music producer Curtis Jones in his Cajmere guise put out this 2013 release consisting of previously released tracks and remixes and new collaborations with a bunch of dance music producers, including Maceo Plex, Jamie Jones, Pleasurekraft and Gene Farris. It’s a strong selection of hard-edged, twisted, narcotic, abstract, post-post disco Chicago house and techno productions. The new material nicely matches the older tracks because while stylistically there’s lots of variation, there’s a common thread that runs through them all, a distinctive warped intensity, an off-key, sideways approach that’s happy to sit with weirdness. 

Long-time vocal collaborator Dajae appears on “Satisfy,” a skeletal minimalist space-disco song, funky and haunting in equal parts, and Oliver $ collab “We Can Make It” keeps the same rawly functionalist minimal feel, adding extra oddness and some underground warehouse beats. Jamie Jones’ take on ground-breaker “The Perculator” is a nicely done crisp workout, but it’s inevitably eclipsed by the original in all its low-bass, robot-squelch-funk narco-tech disco-destroying form. Deep, new and mysterious, a lesson in how to party in the dark.