If one wonders what the distinct Homework sound is then much is to be found in their past aesthetic representation. When these two youngsters started messing around with turntables, back in 2007, they used to perform in immaculate white shirts and raven black ties. And even though longtime Dutch partners in musical crime Tom Waist and Zip Stolk have left this iconography behind, they still emanate an sense of clear-headed playfulness. Behind this swagger lies a wide-raging love for contemporary dance music that always comes in handy in the ever changing spheres of house music. Especially now that the genre is turning to ever stranger and/or vintage sources of inspiration with the likes of Round Table Knights, Jesse Rose, Renaissance Man, Claude VonStroke and Mowgli, whom the duo draw much of their inspiration from.
After years of hunting for the freshest and most innovative sound, the two boys from Amsterdam really found their path when, in 2009, they hooked up with their friends The Heykids ("the kings of the Amsterdam underground scene") to organize what is now considered as one of the most innovative and revered club nights in Amsterdam: TAFKAF. The night focused on the newest house sound: a unique amalgam of a deep minimal set up combined with an 'anything goes' hiphop approach to sampling everything from Eastern chanting to Gypsy strumming. TAFKAF was the first party to present Amsterdam to the aforementioned 'midget' sound and its relevant players, bringing the city such talent as Solo (UK), Justin Martin, Renaissance Man and the New Judas crew. During those precious nights Homework saw their true calling. The realization of innovation overtook them. Since then they've always been looking for an innovative advance to music, sifting their way through trends and genres with the greatest of ease, always with a keen sense of class, style, aptitude and madness.
Much of their evolution as artists can be seen in their ever-changing production work. After long and hard work on a varied oeuvre of different material, the boys got catapulted into the international house scene through the release of their widely supported 'Fissa Tune EP' on Exploited and the accompanying hype surrounding the title track 'Fissa Tune', which, through consistent appraisal from the likes of Brodinski and Jesse Rose, found its way to many a chart and dj set.
Things are looking bright as a summer morning for the two youngsters and it seems their star can only rise to even greater heights. One thing is certain: wherever dance music goes, Homework will have found their way there, one step ahead of the hype, waiting for you to follow.
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“Grauzone (German for grey area, was a band from Berne, Switzerland active in the early 80s.
At the end of 1979 Marco Repetto (drums) and GT (bass) left the punk band Glueams, to form together with Martin Eicher (guitar, vocals, synthesizer) a new band called Grauzone. Martin had already supported Glueams on their single mental. They gave their first concert in March 1980 at the club Spex in Berne. Martin’s brother Stephan Eicher (guitar, synthesizer) and Claudine Chirac (saxophone) supplemented the group temporarily in live appearances and recordings.
After ten concerts, four singles and an album the group split up at the end of 1982. GT and Marco Repetto formed together with the former Glueams guitarist Martin Pavlinec and the drummer Dominique Uldry, the band “Missing Link”, later “Eigernordwand”. GT supplemented the futurism oriented performance group “Red Catholic Orthodox Jewish Chorus” around performance artist Edy Marconi, in which occasionally Marco Repetto also played. Later the group changed their name to “I Suonatori”. Stephan Eicher started a successful solo career. 1988 published Martin Eicher his solo-EP “Spellbound Lovers”. Marco Repetto started in 1989 a new career as Techno and Ambient DJ, musician and producer (a.o. mittageisen v2). The band is most famous for their 1981 hit “Eisbär” (“Polar Bear”), which was later covered by the French band Nouvelle Vague. The single went to #12 in Germany and #6 in Austria. Another track that was played a lot in dance clubs in the eighties was the instrumental Film 2.”
Zip
With the killer bassline and stabbing synth riffs still sounding as good as they did back in ‘81. This is one of those Larry Levan classics which one can’t hear often enough! Imagine this in a large early 80’s club with a big system and the reverb of the room… shivers!
Zip
“A onetime gardener and an experimental techno producer with minimalist leanings, Lawrence (Peter M. Kersten) produced for Kompakt, Ghostly, and Mule Electronic, but the majority of his output was issued on Dial, the Hamburg, Germany-based label he co-founded with Carsten Jost and Turner. As with the material from a fair amount of his contemporaries, the division between Lawrence’s rhythms and textures was often a blurry one, though he gradually embraced a cleaner sound with a broader instrumental palette. Throughout the years, his discography maintained a unique touch and downcast mood that mirrored the grayscale graphic design in which his releases were presented. His full-length works included Lawrence (Dial, 2002), The Absence of Blight (Dial, 2003), The Night Will Last Forever (Dial/NovaMute, 2005), Lowlights from the Past and Future (Mule Electronic, 2006), and Until Then, Goodbye (Mule Electronic, 2009), and he also issued dozens of 12” singles. Prolific in a remixing capacity, he took on tracks by Goldfrapp, Martin Gore, Superpitcher, Audision, and several others, typically with stunning results.”
Waist.
“Like Aphex Twin, Autechre were about as close to being experimental-techno superstars as the tenets of their genre and the limitations of their audience allowed. Through a series of full-length works and a smattering of EPs on Warp, Clear, and their own Skam label, Autechre consistently garnered the praise of press and public alike. Unlike many of their more club-bound colleagues, however, Autechre’s Sean Booth and Rob Brown had roots planted firmly in American electro, and though the more mood-based, sharply digital texture of their update seemed to speak otherwise, it was through early 12”s like Egyptian Lover’s “Egypt, Egypt,” Grandmaster Flash’s “Scorpio,” and “Pretty” Tony Butler’s “Get Some” that their combined aesthetic began to form.
Booth and Brown met through a mutual friend, trading junked-up pause-button mixtapes of their favorite singles back and forth. Happening onto some bargain-basement analog gear through questionable circumstances, the pair began experimenting with their own music before they were out of high school. After some disastrous experiences with a few small labels, the pair sent a tape off to Warp Records, whose early releases by Sweet Exorcist, Nightmares on Wax, and B12 were announcing a new age in U.K.-based techno (and one in which Autechre would become a key component). Releasing a handful of early singles through the label, Autechre’s first stabs were collected on their debut full-length, Incunabula, as well as the 10” box set remix EP Basscadet.
Subsequent albums reached a wider audience through stateside reissue, first on Wax Trax!/TVT, later on Nothing (the label managed by Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor), and finally through a stateside branch of Warp. Although stylistically rooted, affectations for the ponderous extend beyond their name and track titles (“C/Pach,” “Bronchusevenmx24”), with the basic premise of their approach being music without a whole lot of stylistic baggage but plenty of DSP’ed-to-death hyper-programming. Later albums like Untilted (2005), Quaristice (2008), and Oversteps (2010) were not as groundbreaking, yet Autechre easily retained one of the most distinctive sounds in the world of electronica.
In addition to Autechre, Booth and Brown released material as Gescom on their own Skam imprint and through the Clear label, most notably the Sounds of Machines Our Parents Used EP on the latter. The group also provided a number of memorable remixes (oftentimes more memorable than the original material) for artists including Palmskin Productions, Slowly, Mike Ink, DJ Food, Scorn, Skinny Puppy, Tortoise, Phoenecia, Various Artists, and the Black Dog.”
Waist.
“Undercurrent has long been considered one of the classic piano/guitar duo sessions, pairing Bill Evans with Jim Hall. These studio dates were a jump start for Evans’ career, which he had placed on hold after the unexpected death of his bassist, Scott LaFaro, a few days following their historic Village Vanguard recordings were made. First reissued on CD in 1988, this 2002 edition features the same music, but remixed with gorgeous 24-bit sound and the songs re-sequenced into their original LP configuration, with the alternate takes and initially unissued tracks following them. An added bonus is the removal of the graphics from the striking cover photo, as well as the inclusion of a photo of Evans and Hall taken at one of the two sessions. The seamless way they swap between lead and supporting roles throughout gems such as the waltz-time “Skating in Central Park” adds to the overall appeal of the disc. Though the master take of “My Funny Valentine” has a smoother introduction, the alternate has more intriguing interplay between the two men. The other selections are every bit as masterful. Although Evans and Hall would later do a follow-up duo session for Verve, this memorable CD is the one to acquire first.”
Waist.
“Haruomi Hosono, overshadowed by his Yellow Magic Orchestra bandmate Ryuichi Sakamoto, has still forged a unique path through ambient music, building on the advances made by the soundscapes of Brian Eno during the ’70s, though he recorded his first album before Eno had even joined Roxy Music. Born in Tokyo in 1947, Hosono studied sociology at Rikkyo University, forming several bands while still in school. His first band, Apryl Fool, released their self-titled LP in 1969.
Throughout the early and mid-’70s, he played the part of studio musician and bassist, and formed two fusion projects, Happy End and Tin Pan Alley. Later in the ’70s, he began recording tape and synthesizer experiments which culminated in the album Cochin Moon, released on the Japanese King Records. By 1978, his group Harry Hosono & the Yellow Magic Band had sprung into Yellow Magic Orchestra, with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi. Coming just a few years after electro futurists Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, YMO pursued a similar trail, later incorporating synth pop and new wave as well and becoming Japan’s most successful band during the ’80s — even though they had broken up by 1984.
Even while Yellow Magic Orchestra was still around, Hosono had been busy with other projects. With three labels to his credit (YEN, Non-Standard, and Monad Music) and releases on those labels under guises such as S-F-X, Mercuric Dance, and — most prolifically — F.O.E. (Friends of the Earth), Haruomi Hosono stayed active into the late ’80s. He composed scores for the films Paradise View and The Tales of Genji, but became disgusted with the industry and withdrew from music altogether by the turn of the decade. The pioneers of ambient house began to namecheck Yellow Magic Orchestra in the early ’90s — even producing a YMO remix album called High Tech/No Crime featuring the Orb plus many others — and Hosono returned with 1992’s Medicine Compilation From the Quiet Lodge. Albums for Creation and Polygram followed during the mid-’90s.”
Waist.
“With a style similar to Moodymann’s take on Detroit tech-house as a melange of distorted disco-funk and boogie, Theo Parrish originally grew up in Chicago but moved to the Motor City by the time of his late-1996 Baby Steps EP on Elevate Records, a subsidiary of 7th City. From the EP, his Chicago tribute “Lake Shore Drive” later appeared on the Kenny Dixon/Moodymann release “Inspirations of a Small Black Church,” and Parrish also worked on tracks by Rick Wilhite, Dewayne Davis and Norma Jean Bell. He continued through 1997 with singles for his own Sound Signature label plus Music 15 and Filth. In late 1998, Peacefrog released two Theo Parrish LPs, both of which were issued on CD as First Floor. Also a stellar DJ, Parrish is renowned around Detroit for his sets of downtempo jazz-funk and disco.”
Waist.
@ZombieDisco just checking the wavs in the office. Mental!
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