Last week, we brought you Imaabs and Tomas Urquieta’s Jam City Reworks project, a two track effort that sees the two Chilean producers take on signature tracks from the Night Slugs representative. The tracks fall somewhere in the nether region where ballroom, Jersey club and grime meet, distinguished by their raw sonics and non-linear rhythmic patterns. These characteristics put Imaabs and Urquieta in the same realm as the Her Records folk and Gang Fatale crew, despite living thousands of miles from the sound’s epicenter on America’s East Coast and London. It’s easy to get caught up in the fantastical idea that producers from outside of the Anglo/Euro world belong in an entirely different category than those who reside within Europe/America/Australia, but this stratification is rarely useful and often results in a regressive, bifurcated classification system. The fact that Imaabs and Urquieta are from Chile should be noted, but it shouldn’t define the artists involved.
That being said, artists who reside outside of dance music’s core can and do offer a different perspective on both production and consumption methods. After hearing Imaabs ingest and rearrange ballroom on his Baroque EP and various one-offs, we asked him to contribute to our guest mix series and he came up with the brilliant idea of highlighting the work of South American and Mexican producers. The following hour and ten minute mix both draws parallels and points out the contrasts between the work of Santiago’s Alpha Stronggah, Urquieta and others along with Astral Plane favorites Rushmore, Neana and Piri Piri. It’s both seamless and discombobulated; an impossibly smooth production that still manages to knock this listener off his feet with every subsequent listen. There are hints of kuduro, zouk and other Caribbean/West African styles, but the majority of the mix falls into the aforementioned ballroom/club/grime amalgam. Moving past geography, Imaabs points out a number of wildly talented producers (Paul Marmota, Inti Kunza) and previews a few special new collaborations. Track list after the jump.
The Astral Plane 