> Chanced on this via review in recent Wire of the Shangaan electro comp,
> which is crazy good BTW. The recordings are selling in 10s of 1000s in South
> Africa, which is huge for that market.
Yeah that Shangaan album is great, definitely one of my favourites of the year.
As for similarities, I've also been liking this juke stuff, similar in the ultra-tempo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgAEpmlOGbw
Matt Ingram, aka Woebot, has said Shangaan and Juke have been so exciting because they show there are still new things under the musical sun... When just about everything seems to be retro looking in some way or other. (http://cybore.me/?p=2104)
Andrew Nosnitsky's Wire review of another juke release, DJ Roc's 'Crack Capone', points out that juke has jumped from its Chicago context as functional dance music and has a lot of fans among the bedroom listening avant electronic crowd (ie people like me)...:
"If this aesthetic sounds daunting, it should – but only to the neophyte. For lifelong Chicagoans this is simply the current iteration of a long marinating local music scene tracing back some 20 years. And that’s where these records, along with Planet Mu’s DJ Nate collection from earlier this year, leave much to be desired. Apart from cursory and still somewhat arbitrary label compilation downloads, we’ve yet to see anything close to an exhaustive history of Juke presented outside of the city. This matters. While much of the Mu roster is made up of auteurs and lone geniuses, the Juke scene is community driven. New DJs and sounds emerge under the tutelage of their predecessors, and the increasing pace and complexity is as much a response to demands from the dance community as an influence on it (indeed most DJs and producers were once dancers themselves). As the dancing at regular clashes such as Da War Zone, where crews of dancers faceoff against each other, gets faster and more labyrinthine, the music is forced to respond, and vice versa. By presenting these artists alone Planet Mu is severing the genre from both its footwork present and its roots in slower, more traditional House. Perhaps this disconnect works in the label’s favour, creating the illusion of artful or even psychedelic intent. But this is utilitarian music for dancing, plain and simple."
Mike Beggs