9/9/2023 0 Comments Dj kicks special request![]() ![]() The blends deftly dance between decades at will, with moments of sheer bravery such as the pause for breath when Intergalactic Quartet ‘ Delta Wave‘ completely strips away the kicks for a good three minutes. Yet you can feel the tangible shift in gear, a sense of pride in occasion, that the DJ goes through when asked to commit to a paid for platform. The relevance of the commercial mix CD is often thrown about in a landscape swollen with more hours of professional and enthusiast mixes than there are in a lifetime. From this point on we hit upon a vein less associated with the archive rave mixtape material of Special Request of old, but stepping into the Good Looking template through a series of VIP dub plates. One of the traditional DJ Kicks artist exclusives – the winter morning crispness of ‘ Vellichor‘ – shows how Woolford has torn down the expectations of Special Request over the last twelve months, with the project striding from the Dreamscape tape pack into a celebration of nineties electronica.Ī sudden pivot at the final third – not to dissimilar to the tale of two halves that made up the Special Request Fabriclive mix from 2017 – sees a reworking of the oft revisited FC Kahuna classic ‘ Hayling‘, re-envisioning it as a sunrise classic told through the medium of breathless drum and bass. You get soulful house – Alicia Myers ‘ Right Here, Right Now‘ – absolutely writhing funk – Virgo ‘ R U Hot Enough’ – and chilled out whimsy – Morgan Geist ‘ Lullaby‘ – finding themselves drifting into dance floor shakers and IDM classics from Krystal Klear, Speedy J, and µ-Ziq. This same free spirit runs throughout the DJ Kicks mix. A couple of mixes – one on progressive stalwart Renaissance, and another on the now defunct The Lab series – showcased an incredible ability to shoulder drop from out-there funk and secret weapons into aquatic ambient and chill, before twisting into classic house and techno with a sharp sidestep into on the pulse contemporary wares. Prior to the birth of the Special Request project – via a series of under the radar white label releases – the signs were there that Paul Woolford was doing things differently. Then ‘ Soul Music‘ dropped with a resounding ricochet, unashamedly revisiting classic rave and jungle, paving the way for a myriad of artists to roll out the breaks with a renaissance for evergreen genres electro, Sheffield bleep, IDM, and acid house following in its wake. Resistant to definition, refusing to be pigeonholed, it quickly dissolved and took long established boundaries with it. The epicentre of all of this was 2013’s ‘ Soul Music‘.Ĭreatively in a cul-de-sac, electronic music was starting to see the green shoots of innovation when “outsider house” started to weave its way into the spotlight. Look at the scene as it is now – trance and high energy dance is back with a new wave of artists, maligned genres breaks, progressive and tech-house are enjoying freedom from withering glares. However, it was his work as Special Request that shook a scene centred on a senselessly hyper-specific focus on genre and exclusionary gatekeeping crashing down. ![]() Starting out a career on one of the most forward thinking house music labels of the 90s – Leeds based 2020 Vision – he quickly demonstrated an ability to create top tier club bangers, with ‘ Erotic Discourse‘ being the most iconic. Paul Woolford is arguably as impactful an artist as the trio – Carl Craig, Claude Young, and Stacey Pullen – that he cites as inspiration for his entry in the DJ Kicks series. Tour de force that sees his DJ Kicks sit amongst the legends" "Special Request joins the dots between the past and the present in a ![]()
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