Hailing from an era still ripe with optimism, Nate Tinsley's sole EP on Music Station, under the moniker Nathaniel X Project, is one of the dopest 12"s of the 1990's. Embodying the now fading dreams of a whole generation of club children, the veritable political program was everything deep house strove to be: aspirational, socially-involved, visceral dance music with raw sincerity and unashamed soul. "Gotta Get Over," "Free Yourself" and "Get Up" are special, benchmarks eluding to a temporality and circumstance as much as enviable equipment and technique. Deep organ pads, sagely arrangement and supremely swinging rhythm patterns form the backbone of Tinsley's now legendary explications on the eternal truth of the underground club gospel---these songs work, and continue to resonate with us; behind the cliches lies the shining light of a naked, nearly extinct sincerity. Whole folk cultures have been built on these words. Deep house music was one of them. So much more than the "love and happiness" dribble, Nathaniel X Project's EP sounded and spoke confidently for a whole society getting off outside the stale and jaded mainstream, when "underground" meant something more than another pre-ordained lifestyle choice sanctioned under the ever present gods of exchange. Forever under its sway and adherents since its original release, Slow to Speak have licensed and reissued this masterpiece in its full splendor, a pinnacle of the NY/NJ house sound and beyond. "Oh my people, We've gotta get over, Before we go under." If ever we've needed Mr. Tinsley's words and this music, it is now.
More

Repress More

Reflection shows us that our image of happiness is thoroughly colored by the time to which the course of our own existence has assigned us. The kind of happiness that could arouse envy in us exists only in the air we have breathed, among people we could have talked to, women who could have given themselves to us. In other words, our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. The same applies to our view of the past, which is the concern of history. The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply."
Walter Benjamin Self-determination, greatness, eternity. Make your reality and it becomes you. Put your heart and soul into what you love and others will recognize your sincerity, seek you out and reward your brilliance: from this comes greatness and glory, infinite and undeniable---a fraternity of the eternal. And yet with each successive epoch, the present greatness of our moment, our time, disintegrates and disperse---becomes the mere stepping stone, the quintessential prerequisite to a future heralded anew as "the great epoch of our time." We fight a impossible war for historical cultural supremacy, and we do so blindly and selfishly, determined to achieve that greatness that we know has not yet settled down with one generation immovable throughout time. Secretly we pity these past fetes of culture, assured that ours is the time, the moment of greatness, importance and ultimate historical worth. So our art morphs from what was once practiced at first as a matter matter of self-fulfillment, personal necessity and fraternal interchange & enjoyment to one of vein self-service & epic self-deceipt. When we continue to ignore the fact that art is no longer a social endeavor---that it no longer participates in and affects the real social changes occurring around us, it's vitality inextricably tied to our historical standing---and allow it to remain autonomous from the very real material conditions that, in no small measure, make up the entirety of our current existence, we willingly clear the path to our own irrelevance, soon to be remembered, at very best, as a shimmering piece of antiquity typical of the old world, one that once held a vital and vivacious beauty in it's moment, but nay, no longer, sentenced to the dungeon of the specialists of the past.
But, it is too late...for WE will soon become THEY... More

One of the most evasive titles of the Prescription/Balance catalog, Chez Damier & Stacey Pullen's "Forever Monna" evinces the futurism of the most forward leaning deep house music, purging itself of any relics of disco sentimentality in the sacred quest of that prophecy of infinite, intangible beauty hidden within the patchwork of electronic production. Originally released in apparently minuscule numbers on Serious Grooves in 1993, this remarkable instrumental track was re-released two years later on Ballance, a fine example of these two Detroit pioneers' tireless effort to claim a piece of that brave new world from the unyielding clutches of Techno. Slinky synth loops. eerie chord frames and a brilliantly simple low-end punctuation coalesce in the uncertain, unidentifiable prospect of soul music stripped of any links to the past or present, an inexplicably funky rendition of a deep house slow mounting contagion, infecting fatally the recollections of Parliament/Funkadelic bass-licks and warm organ progressions with a bleak, somehow comforting landscape of fresh alien-esque soul. Previously unattainable without an eighty-dollar plus price-tag, "Forever Monna" joins the growing army of CORE reissues seeking to popularize an often horded and unattainable circle of essential dance music classics, pieces of stunning vision and incomparable genius that should be accessible to more than just a few pockets capable of shelving out the capital for what is rightfully the universal property of electronic musical sublimity. More

Dream states of lust and lucidity, Slow To Speak's latest reissue of house music's halcyon years comes courtesy of Mood II Swing's visionary Lem Springsteen. Originally released on the Eightball sublabel Empire State Records in 1994, these excursionary landmarks saw Springsteen bid farewell to his usual club-saturated exercises in queeny house euphoria for a hallucinatory breach into a secret realm of desire, where the whispers of a long-forgotten hunger meld with the floating synth-work of a true practitioner of the sacred art of club music. This is the soundtrack to the chill-out room of your unconscious's kaleidoscopic sex dream, the sweet synth lines of Springsteen's ritual music still floating in your mind as you awake, alas, a little too soon. Fear not: this Dyonisian masterpiece is once more available thanks to the good spirits at Dope Jams, who remind you, "Whatever the eye sees and covets, let the hand grasp!" Not without asking (or paying) first, of course. More

Dream states of lust and lucidity, Slow To Speak's latest reissue of house music's halcyon years comes courtesy of Mood II Swing's visionary Lem Springsteen. Originally released on the Eightball sublabel Empire State Records in 1994, these excursionary landmarks saw Springsteen bid farewell to his usual club-saturated exercises in queeny house euphoria for a hallucinatory breach into a secret realm of desire, where the whispers of a long-forgotten hunger meld with the floating synth-work of a true practitioner of the sacred art of club music. This is the soundtrack to the chill-out room of your unconscious's kaleidoscopic sex dream, the sweet synth lines of Springsteen's ritual music still floating in your mind as you awake, alas, a little too soon. Fear not: this Dyonisian masterpiece is once more available thanks to the good spirits at Dope Jams, who remind you, "Whatever the eye sees and covets, let the hand grasp!" Not without asking (or paying) first, of course. More

Brand new music!!! This latest offering of unreleased gems played at Dope Jams' monthly parties features fresh and all-original tracks from some of NY's finest practitioners of electronic music. "Winter Sampler 2013 #1" opens with the jerky, post-punk nodding funk of "Emperor," from the promising and much hyped Brooklyn outfit Beige, an imminent anthem perched somewhere between house, techno and psychedelic pop---and superseding of all of it with its sheer scope, ambition and originality. Nifty, intuitive synth-work, extremely catchy vocals and a piercing lyrical wit filter through torrents of heavy tape delay and speed-dosed drum machines to form the perfect musical lament of post-modern futility. Next, Francis Englehardt, one half of Slow To Speak/Dope Jams, offers up his latest in a spaciously unfurled series of heady and challenging techno experimentations for the post-appocalyptic generation yet to be. "Leveling" forges a clearly singular and solitary aesthetic out of personal loss, pain and ultimate redemption---truly personal music that tests the limits and transcends the simple utility of mere body music. The sampler is rounded off with the first contribution to vinyl from newcomer Genoa, featuring the aptly titled "New Way," a well-freaked peak-time workout that recalls the energy and vibe of early 1990's vocal-sample laden house without getting bogged down in the stone-forming mediocrity of the lost-and-gone medusa's gaze. All and all, an EP of very much forward-leaning music that swells the ranks of groundbreaking new contributions to the field.
More

Ethereal, haunted deep house music from beyond the grave, spirit-channeling from the deepest recesses of electro-spiritual obscurity. The Slow To Speak label presents its latest offering---a residual of the holy-era of the NY underground continuum, conjuring the ritual and pomp of the new electronic goth without abandoning its undeniable roots in the techno/deep house story. Dark-matter melodies interlock in an ever off-centering orbit of sparse percussive return, while the distorted exhortations of some wandering intergalactic phantasm whisper menacingly just beneath the surface. Trance-inducing, strangely unsettling and ultimately transcendent---further evidence that electronic music can transport its listeners into the fertile pastures of the sublime like any other high art. CLEAR VINYL Pressing with Japanese Obi. More

2XLP! A culmination of over 35 years combined experience, Classic House Grooves: Dope Jams utilizes the classic deep house sound of America?s cultural epicenter & infuses it with an uncompromising artistic militancy that screams through the mix?s full-forced party-rocking fervor. Featuring seminal work from Kerri Chandler, Mood II Swing & Chris Brann, as well as highlights from the likes of DJ Pierre, Johnny Dangerous and many more, Dope Jams? ode to King Street sets aside the delicate programming niceties of restraint & conservative listening in favor of all out party warfare, setting the correct context for the label?s brilliant output & using the music to it?s maximum effect. Classic House Grooves: Dope Jams is the definitive collection of King Street Sound?s monumental contributions?a testament to what NYC once was, and what it can be once more. More

Curators and residents 'slow to speak' offer here 3 summer scorchers. Drowned in the prophetic purple sweat exuded from the ever chipping concrete walls at the infamous Dope Jams, "Summer Sampler 2012 #1" picks up where the first two installment left off....in a sex induced haze! Summer Sampler 2012 #1" features the never before released slow to speak re-arrangement of Mark Imperial's acid sleaze classic "She Ain't Nuthin But A Hoe," it's re-written form an ode to the tireless work put in night after night by one of Dope Jams most treasured employees. It is backed with the fever induced hallucinatory beats of Master Ace & Kool Keith for the embarkment of an evening that will surely result in much 'cleanup' cum morning. A small but by no ways comprehensive window into the aural aesthetic of "LIFE," this release is meant to be played and played out, not within the confines of the stringent, stiff predictable banality of peak-time mega-club, but by actual people, at actual parties, a colorful and tangible cry for the still breathing domain of animate life, love and play. More