Black Strobe's own thread

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY

the essential mix = 10x as good as "suck my deck" or "death disco"

how many times must i tell you people??

smagghe is the fuse ... rebotini is the spark ... BLACKSTROBE IS THE BOMB

from 1991, credited to one morgan lekcirt and one "ellis d." (not to be confused with ellis dee)

also from 1991, i just like this one, i don't know why, it reminds me of blackstrobe but even more of miss kittin

the first record has truly astounding cover art

the second is much more minimal but you can see from whence the power flows ... "what are you doing with your hand, beavis?"

well if anybody likes those let me know and maybe i'll get my mp3 blog off the ground.

I like the Ghosttrack and Something To Do mixes because they suit 'woo, scary!' so well.

There are a wealth of good mix albums out there at the moment, more than ever and not just on Fabric, like more than anyone could buy, I think. I'm not just moaning for the sake of it, I just think Fabric getting all the big names gets kind of boring.

What is a "Fabric" mix, when someone does it? It's really devoid of character as a stable for releasing DJ mixes. As I said Eskimo release loads of good mixes and always put the effort in that Fabric don't.

I'm surprised by the reaction to my first comment, I'd have thought most people would agree!

http://www.dustygroove.com/images/products/z/zzchicagoboogiepresen_101b.jpg

http://gullbuy.com/images/smagghedeath.jpg

http://www.nlisp.nl/~adf/images/Club-Culture-Club-Compilation.jpg

http://www.residentadvisor.net/images/reviews/summer_madness.jpg

Just a bit of imagination in each one at least. The mixes should be about the DJ doing them, not the club. Now as I said the Fabric mixes are good, it is just an irritant for me, that's all.

And the reason Fabric gets the big names is cos they like playing there! It's that simple.

Put it this way, wouldn't you rather anyone else was releasing the mixes? I know I would.

Surely the real reason they get the big names is that the CDs sell 10000 just cos of being part of the Fabric series. It is possible to brand stuff and not make them all look the same, I know that Eskimo stuff sells more where I work, but then maybe that's cos people can listen first and Eskimo have a higher good/bad ratio than Fabric.

I dunno, like are these Fabric CDs going to simply go on forever? It's kind of scary!

Having said that, having one name dominating utterly is unhealthy, but still, I'd rather some of this stuff has a truly universal distribution than not at all. It's possibly worth noting that the reason Fabric *has* become such a major player *and* that you're noticing it is that it is the one superclub brand that has actually managed to retain a fairly consistent level of quality. Fuck knows how many heavily branded Ministry Of Sound cds have been released over the years, certainly more than forty.

I guess it's a different way of marketing, with Eskimo stuff I personally find there's a real sense of excitement about the way each project is branded, and given a different theme, it's like everything is considered. Whereas with Fabric it's like, "now we have Ivan Smagghe, whom we know you also like". I think Vahid is a bit of an Eskimo nut perhaps, so maybe he'll step in at some stage!

I don't think all the best mixes are necessarily on Fabric either, there are probably 5 or 6 really good ones though. I just think it'd be kind of crap if in 3 years time it's like Fabric 56 etc. Can Fabric actually stay cool in this way for long?

eskimo is a boutique label - they can keep the quality control pretty damn high (and so far i've really only been let down by "death disco" (and maybe a bit by "serie noir 2" but only from the viewpoint of "adonis, PiL, die warzau and mr fingers again??"), everything else has been solid gold.

yeah, fabric is a superclub label, and while they're doing a super job of it, ronan is right that they often swerve off from their winning streaks into total crap - dj heather and joe ransom?? but that's what happens when you have a subscription duties to fulfill!!!

(see also fabric 5: pure science - did they decide to release a pure science artist album because somebody dropped out last minute?? or did they not have the time to clear licensing for a pure science mix??)

as for the question of "can fabric actually stay cool", even though i am a big fan of the early work (awesome volumes from craig richards, tony humphries, tyler stadius, james lavelle, deadly avenger and grooverider) their hit:miss ratio actually seems to be gradually ramping up from 1/2 to somewhere around 2/3 or 3/4 ... so who knows?

but you'd expect that, because

1) they've been in the promoting/mixtapes game much longer than either eskimo or fabric (and ronan is more right than we give him credit for in his comparison, because while it can get a bit lost in the shuffle, the eskimo recordings mixes are pretty much all promo material for the glimmer twins club activities)

2) they're damn fucking expensive!! big premium on quality!!

We have them playing on Wednesday which should be cool.

Keine Lust (Black Strobe mix

OK, now I like Black Strobe a lot.. and they certainly are an ILM favorite.. but may i vent?

WHY CAN'T ALL YOU BLACK STROBE WORSHIPPING FUCKERS APPRECIATE THAT, AS FUN AS THEY ARE, THEY ARE ULTIMATELY A FUCKING FRONT 242 RIP-OFF THROUGH AND THROUGH?

Ok, I'm better now.

-- donut debonair (do...), May 13th, 2005.

But... come on!

Anyway evidence..

Black Strobe "Chemical Sweet Girl" (original) vs. Front 242 "Motion"

There's still a strong Front 242 feel in their other stuff, but I don't think anyone's going out of their way not to acknowledge this. The entire angle by which people praise Black Strobe is that they've reinjected that Front 242/Nietzer Ebb/DAF vibe back into conventional, club-based dance music. The ongoing neglect that those groups receive generally could be saved by a good reissue policy I think.

I think we need an album from Black Strobe to do a proper quantative comparison; I certainly don't think you can dismiss them at this stage when they've been responsible for "Innerstrings (Volga Select Double Dub)", "Narcodancer", "Fitting Together", "The Abwehr Disco", the remixes of Tiefschwarz, Rammstein and Dave Clarke, and partially "The Unconditional Discipline of the Bastard Prince".

Probably more in love with this idea than with the music itself.

I mean, I'd take Black Strobe 10x over Front 242 today! I fell off the 242 wagon after 05:22:09:12 Off from 1993 or so.

For some reason at the time, Black Strobe made me feel like an EBM revival was just around the corner.. there were those Ivan Smagghe mixes around the same time as well that kind of hinted at it. The ~dark~ side of electro-house

https://soundcloud.com/arnaudrebotini

arnaud has been playing with his machines while in lockdown and posting the results (and some excellent remixes) on his soundcloud.

'digital lockdown' is very classic era cabs.