MIAMI SPICE
Danny Howells's new mix-CD captures the flavor of his Terrace gigs
At 34, Danny Howells can be counted among those star DJs - Sasha, John Digweed, Deep Dish - facing a mid-30s crisis: bored with the straight-line, hand-raising prog-house that has dominated mega-clubs for the last few years, looking for something different to at least entertain themselves. Sasha found solace in laptop DJing. Digweed changed up his sound once again. Deep Dish is rediscovering rock remixes and guitar samples. And Howells is digging into the recent past.
The Brit's latest mix-CD, Global Underground #027 - Miami, is a rare top-shelf DJ compilation that doesn't break next summer's dance-floor hits today. In fact, it has nary a pre-release (the dance industry's version of product placement) in the bunch. Howells took a chance by letting his favorite music from the last few years dictate the sound of the journey, rather than relying on soon-to-be-released super-club hits fed to him by vinyl labels. The point, for him, was to be true to the series' theme - to capture the spirit and flavor of his quarterly gigs at the Terrace in Miami club Space, not to peddle singles and "break" tracks.
"It's got quite a spiritual feeling," Howells says of the open-air Terrace. "Last year, it was like God was doing the light show. When I was playing these uplifting tracks, the sun would shine down, and when I was playing dark tracks, clouds would form and open up rain."
Global Underground has made a small industry of the urban myth that its compilations are recorded live in the cities represented on each cover. Even the label admits this isn't the case; the discs are usually put together in a chosen DJ's bedroom studio. Still, there's almost always a pre-release party in the metropolis du jour, paired with the requisite press days, during which the jocks swear the music was inspired by Moscow or San Francisco or Buenos Aires. Dance writers all dutifully take notes, but the sound of each CD is always less about the locale and more about the dance-floor flavors of the month. That might have changed with Howells, who seems to genuinely be repping a home away from home.
"I can really find that the vibe in the club does sort of come back into me," he says. "They're peaking off and making lots of noise that feeds me and makes you feel you can go in any direction - take it to a more challenging area and take it back up. That's what makes a really, really good night."
The first disc is simply gorgeous. A glorious female voice rides the tech-house bliss of Tomas Barfot's "Light Shine," and the Sneaker Pimps' circa-'97 "Post Modern Sleaze" gets dusted off for a static-free zap of circuit bending. "That's pure sunshine," he says of the first CD on Miami. "That's how I interpret the Terrace." The second disc starts nice but quickly gets dark, driving, and mischievous (Mateo Murphy's "Latin Lover")
Published: 03/31/2005
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