Influences: Lipelis

I first heard this one pretty late, it was early 2012 and i was in LA for the first time and it was my friend Lisa who was listening to some Gaslamp Killer’s mix or comp and it was there, and i was like “what’s that?” and since then it really reminds me of the city and that first time i’ve been there. When i saw Gaslamp Killer having a dinner at Simachev Bar which is my main place to play and hang out in Moscow, the only thing i decided to say was “thanks for that Joe Pass song, man” and he said how he loves it and that he’s got like 4 copies of it or so. I also managed to buy original 1969 pressing which is not crazy rare but i just really wanted to have it and it’s one of the oldest records in my collection now. The music touches me so much emotionally that it could almost make me cry sometimes and Joe is playing solo pretty much thru the whole track, and that’s the thing i really miss in contemporary music these days and in dance music in particular.

As well as many other people who grown up in post-soviet Russia i’ve been listening to this in my childhood. In my grandma’s old flat turntable was on a closet, so i had to stand on a chair to put the record on or change a side and one of the records i listened most, besides some audio books with fairytales, was this one. Two records by this band were pretty much the only examples of soviet instrumental space-disco and been pressed and sold in crazy amounts back in early 80-s.

My older brother used to DJ in late 90’s in my hometown and so there was one pair of turntables in the city so at the time everybody played cassettes instead of records (don’t ask me how they been mixing, i have no clue) so we had all those cassettes at home, like “Thunderdome” gabber comps or one called “This is Jungle” or “Massive Dance/Rave Music” and so on. This track was featured on a cassette compilation called “Reactivate Classics” which was my personal favourite back then and also i was a huge Prodigy fan so it somehow appealed to me.
Other tracks there were DHS – House of God and CLS – Can You Feel It, stuff like this, so i got introduced to early rave music thru that tape not knowing any history behind it.

This is one my all-time favourites, since i first heard in 2005 on a CD my friend gave me, i think it was a Sonar compilation. Also there were LCD Soundsystem and Roisin Murphy, so pretty good list of artists, especially for back then. I was (and still am) fascinated by the craziness of this one, even now not too much people could manage to fit so many different elements in one track. There’s a lot more Maurice Fulton productions that i love and that influenced me, but this is probably the one that is most powerful.

I have a huge influence in soviet music, and it all started when my friends who you might know as Holkin & The Papers started to play me some soviet stuff which i never saw in a context of a dancefloor and i realised how much stuff been made in USSR and that living here we have a way better chance to explore it and bring to the world. So on one of the first digging days with them i found this one and cover is two girls, one in glasses and with a guitar, so you don’t actually expect anything electronic there, but when i put a needle on it i was shocked, ring mod sounds in the intro of this song + Roland tr808 some synth solos and children choir in the end, could it be any better?

I discovered this one while i was living in my hometown and had not too much knowledge about old music and i was fascinated by its proto-house bass and how it combines with all the screams, crazy samples, large toms and the whole arrengement is not what you usually hear in dance music in mid 2000’s.

I decided to include this one because i wanted to have something from Carl Craig in the list, his stuff made a big impact on me at some point, but again, it’s pretty hard to choose the one. This is also a Telex song which was one of my first discoveries in retro music and also it’s a track that inspired A Number of Names to make Sharevari, which considered one of the first detroit techno tracks, so it’s a good one to mention.

This is one of my favourite acid tracks ever, and i’m a huge a 303 guy to be honest. It’s been played by my friend Ilya around 2005 and the way it builds up, starting pretty groovy going thru deeper breakdown to a complete dance madness with a siren-like sound just drove me crazy and still does. I’ve been playing it regularly since even in my most “disco” times.