Visionary “Rap” EP by precocious 18-year-old duo Eric Davis (ELV) and Chuck Prater (Chuk Chu) from 1989. Imagine if Schoolly D had joined Native Tongues and made an early hiphouse EP produced by Larry Heard.

The story of Me & E took shape in Avalon Park in South Chicago, a vibrant, diverse, and politically active community with a rich musical culture. This was the fertile playground for producer Eric Davis (ELV) and lyricist Chuck Prater (Chuk Chu). The park itself was adjacent to Eric’s backyard and they would hop the fence to listen to music, drink beers, and freestyle, even in the middle of the notoriously cold Chicago winters. Eric’s dad, Arlington Davis Jr., was a jazz drummer who played in the legendary spiritual jazz group The Awakening in the ‘70s. Jazz ran deep in their family with proud connections to Miles Davis. Arlington would host weekly jam sessions at his home, and Chuck & Eric were in regular attendance. On those evenings, Eric and his brothers were able to take turns on the sticks alongside the veteran players, honing their fledgling chops. These experiences gave them the confidence to take music seriously, and start a group. Channeling his drumming skills through an array of synths and drum machines, Eric produced tracks in his bedroom, inspired by artists like The Art Of Noise, Kraftwerk, and New Order. Combining their atmospheric electronic elements with his jazz background, and beat-making skills, he created a distinct sound that still sounds fresh today. Chuck was listening to Hendrix,

Joplin, Public Enemy, MC Lyte, and Big Daddy Kane and developed a unique and uplifting lyrical flow. They met up after school almost every day to make music, and quickly produced the four songs that make up their Rap EP.

The music duo never lost touch, and continued to produce throughout the 90’s, forming Rich Boys, another rap group with their crew from Avalon Park. In 1995, Chuk Chu released a solo album, Memoirs of a Blue Light Special, focussing on a more sample based production style. Eric inspired by the house scene in Chicago, produced some ethereal and otherworldly electronic music, which Mixed Signals is compiling for future release. The Rap EP is just an introduction to the ongoing story of Me & E. Mixed

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New import label from Seance Centre & Smiling C, Toronto.

Eros’ Go For It is a fearlessly original take on Paradise Garage disco, mixed in a way that feels equally Mad Professor and Walter Gibbons.

The story of Eros begins in a high school in Vauxhall, New Jersey in the mid 70s when four kids began a friendship based around their mutual love of soul, funk, rock, disco, and bands like Earth, Wind & Fire and Funkadelic. Assanouan G’Bado, Fletcher Gaines, Bobby Jones and Mike Freeman started off jamming after school, playing occasional gigs in New York and honing in on an original sound. When the group graduated, Assanouan and Bobby went off to the service and Fletcher went to university.

Eros reunited in the late 70’s and began taking things more seriously, producing a set of songs with the intention of getting a deal with Motown. The morning after recording a full album’s worth of material, the group flew to Detroit hoping to sign a record deal. The legendary label was interested in the songs, but made them an offer that didn’t feel right for the group. The songs were shelved and Fletcher and Bobby moved on to new ventures.

Mike and Assanouan pursued a self-released single on their own DAP records, reinterpreting two of their Motown demos with drum machines and overdubs to fill in for their two missing bandmates. Go For It was their individual take on disco, and the new 1985 remake took the AOR-oriented demo version, and transformed it into a transcendent dance floor illusion, that, in an alternate universe, would have turned dancers at the Paradise Garage upside down. Similar to Stephen Encinas’ un-classic, the song mutates deftly at the half-way point, opening up into a stripped-down and dubbed-out denouement, adorned in cascading electronics and the soaring vocals of Barbara Green.

Go For It is the first of two releases from Eros on Mixed Signals, and pairs the group’s expanded electronic remake with the original Motown version, rescued from the last surviving demo cassette. Stay tuned for the unreleased demo album Motown missed out on, slated to come out later this year.

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New import label from Seance Centre & Smiling C, Toronto.

Reconnected is compiled from Harold Lucious’ addictive 1990 release Connections, a visionary mix of soulful house, New Jack Swing and RnB, an American predecessor of street soul.

Deeply connected to music from an early age, Harold started his music career in the early 70s at the age of 16. He sang in his first group, The Final Seconds, who pressed a 7” single in New York City in 1973. The group would go on to record a full album called Neo Cosmic Blues, but never had the chance to press it. They would continue to perform and write together throughout the 70’s and searched in vain for a label to work with.

During that time, Harold landed a guest spot on the legendary Brother Ahh record Move Ever Onward, set up by his manager who was Brother Ahh’s sibling. Harold is listed as having played koto, but really he provided background vocals. Throughout the 80’s, Harold worked at WBI radio programming talk shows. On air, he would act out modified scripts to Richard Wright novels like “The Outsider”.

Connections was his effort to finally release a record after years of recording and playing music. Experimenting with dance music he came up with an album that was inspired by his love of house music and RnB. He sold the record out of his backpack, ending up with boxes of copies that were eventually destroyed when he had to move from his long-time apartment in Brooklyn. Few of the original LP remain, and it has become almost impossible to find.

Reconnected is a remastered redux with four songs taken from the original LP, and pressed onto a loud 45rpm 12” for maximum dance-floor potential. Mixed Signals is honoured to introduce Harold’s music to a contemporary audience around the world.

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2021 repress

Under the pseudonyms 4 A.M. and Beat Per Bar, Lupos Sobre-Vega released two eccentric 12”s, of what, in retrospect, can be called vernacular house music. Both records are individualistic collisions of New Wave, Bass, Freestyle, Hi-NRG, Acid, and Sample House recorded in Sobre-Vega’s home studio in Orange County, Los Angeles. Using a Yamaha QX-5, Roland S-50, his mom's Roland Juno 60, EMU drum machines, and Yamaha DX-7, he put his nascent jazz chops to use and laid down the idiosyncratic dance tracks that he would self-release on his own label, House Hold Records, in 1988 and 1989 respectively. Although both 12”s were credited to groups, Sobre-Vega confirms that “the so-called band members were club friends. A couple were models and actors, or just plain good ol’ dancers. They were strategically picked by me, of course. So yeah, 4 A.M. and BEAT PER BAR are 300% me. There is no other.”

Despite working within the confines of dance music’s ready-made rhythms, Sobre-Vega’s sensitivity transcends the inarticulate 4/4 beat - vulnerable, idealistic and yearning. The timeless themes on the records reveal his youthful worries about money, intimacy, love and sex. Looking back at dance music history, it is luminaries such as Arthur Russell, Sylvester, Grace Jones, Theo Parrish, and Larry Heard, that stand out as enduring visionaries that transcended stylistic trends. Mixed Signals is proud to illuminate Sobre-Vega’s work in the constellation of dance music’s radical dreamers with this EP comprised of two songs from each his scarce and singular 12”s

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2021 repress

David Webb’s hypnotic and raw Elevate 12” from 1994 reveals an overlooked region in Detroit’s seemingly-endless musical landscape, linking the narcotic minimalism of Theo Parrish’s Ugly Edits with the uninhibited, spontaneous, and jazzy jamming found on J Dilla beat-tapes.

Raised in the musically fertile and adventurous atmosphere of Detroit, Webb got his start as a mobile DJ while in high school during the late 70’s. Captivated by the local boom of soul, funk and disco, he’d frequent the social clubs, soaking up sounds. His earliest experiments in mixing led him to form a DJ crew with his pal Paul Johnson. Paul enlisted a friend, Jeff Mills, pre-Underground Resistance, to join the trio and they called themselves Frequency Sounds. The three would play underground parties and college events for Michigan State students. Throughout the 80’s, Webb and his friends would play at the local clubs around town, like 431 East (now called Saint Andrews), where he played alongside Ken Collier and other Detroit legends. Each week he found new sounds at his local record shop Buy Rite Records on West 7 Mile, where he’d dig for Italo, New Wave, Disco and House, buying 12”s from labels like Prelude, Trax and Beggars’ Banquet on sight.

Webb’s earliest experiments with producing his own sounds started when he bought an Echoplex and ASR-X Drum Machine. During his sets he’d add live effects & rhythm to his favourite songs. This led to building a mini home studio where initially he would record all his songs overdubbing on two tape decks. Two of his earliest experiments, Elevate and Who Am I? Were self-released as a small- run promo 12” that he would hand out to his friends and local DJs. Webb quickly sold out and gave away the pressing, and he would often hear it played by DJs around town, but over time it drifted in the margins, as an obscure footnote in the history of Detroit Techno. Mixed Signals is proud to bring this important record back into circulation, seducing a whole new generation of DJs and dancers with Webb’s dark and silky pleasures.

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Wet Silk was a rare digression into house music by the legendary star-crossed duo of Lamar Thomas and Judy Taylor. For this sonic liaison, Thomas brought along his high school friend, disco impresario Patrick Adams to co-produce, and the resulting “Let Me Do You Baby” is a slow and seductive sunset soirée with champagne and caviare. The track is skillfully arranged with slippery 808 programming, serpentine guitar, and silky pads, all sliding around Thomas and Lamar’s playfully suggestive vocals. For the first 12” release of this hypnotic track, Mixed Signals have paired it with two other delicious Thom/Tay productions, the rare and dubby house mix of Shelly Pearse’s “If You Want My Love”, and the instrumental end-of-the-nighter “I’ll Be Waiting”.

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