Friday, Jul. 06, 2012 | 06:44
Carl Craig - Dominas
I made a two-disc mix of songs that have made me who I am. Over the next few weeks (months) [years] I will attempt to explain each of these songs. I am quite sure I haven't covered every song that matters to me, but I have wedged most of them onto these two CDs.
In the spring of 1998 I got sick and had to withdraw from college. This was one of the CDs in my ten-disc changer as I drove home. It rained while this played, and I navigated the streets on the north side of Columbus, OH, while a female voice repeated this one word, looped into hypnotic repetition. Carl Craig layers it with synth chords and a plucked standup bass. A house beat enters after a squeal and the song carries me away.
I can't say with any certainty how I found this album, but after purchasing it I kept it in heavy rotation for much of the remainder of my college career. I return to it periodically when I want a peaceful, yet techno, space. The album, 'More Songs About Food And Revolutionary Art', mines a sound similar to Underworld's while still being based in Detroit. Probably that should be reversed, that Underworld mined the Detroit sound for their own ends.
I don't know what the broader implications of this song were. I don't know who it influenced or where music went because of this album. Years later I was excited to discover a Maurizio CD that included a remix of "Dominas". It pulls certain elements from the original while transforming the song into a Basic Channel tune. Call it a German translation. It doesn't hold the same allure for me as this does, though to be fair I haven't dissected the remix enough to know what happened to the original.
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I realize I got off-track from my analysis of this mix a couple years ago. Were I to make it today I might choose different songs. I might put them in a different order. I might re-think the project entirely.
Lately, I've been trying to determine the albums that have had the most influence on me. What releases built my appreciation for music? What led me in new directions? What broadened my horizons? I am musically omnivorous, possibly to a fault. My collection spans Cecil Taylor to Pere Ubu, Hall & Oates to Mastodon, Mozart to Ke$ha. How did I get these places?
