Pearsall presents There & Back 003: March, Super Rhythm Trax 2014-2023
A little tribute to one of my favorite labels of recent year’s, Jerome Hill’s peerless Super Rhythm Trax! Featuring a whole bunch of retro-flavored chunky, funky, quirky, acid, house and techno.
One of my favorite producers of all time is London’s Jerome Hill; in fact I’m such a fanboy that I’ve already done two tribute mixes to his own (prodigious!) output (Full Metal Jacking and The Further Adventures of Count Jackula), as well as a tribute mix to his most excellent retro-styled label, Super Rhythm Trax (Super Rhythmic Facts), so for the third mix in my There & Back mix series, I decided that it was time to do yet another Super Rhythm Trax tribute, because, well, the label has put out tons of cool tracks, and I wanted to listen to them while walking around.
Sometimes you don’t need a more complicated reason than that!
With this mix I literally pulled out my whole Super Rhythm Trax collection (and it’s a big one) and organized it roughly into three piles and then used that to make a mix that has three sections:
Funkier, chunky, bleepy house stuff
Proper late 80’s acid house revival – smell the Vicks Vaporub!
Jacked-up, intense, house with a techno edge
As with the other mixes in the series, this was done in one take, because, ah, I can’t be bothered to do it multiple times any more.
I wanted to do a proper survey of the label’s output, so as well as two tracks from Mr Hill himself, there’s also tracks from a wide range of producers, including the sadly departed Andreas Gehm from Cologne, Glasgow’s Fear-E, American multi-genre chameleon Chrissy, Venezuela’s Cardopusher, Type-303 from Denmark, Berlin-based Luca Lozano, Michigan’s Jared Wilson, and Londoners like Dexorcist, Dance System, and Masc (I don’t know where the others are from, sorry).
I think it’s a good and fun mix, and I hope you enjoy it!
YOU’VE BEEN A DJ FOR 30 YEARS, HOW DIFFERENT IS THE SCENE NOW FROM WHEN YOU STARTED?
Being able to have thousands of tunes in your pocket at every gig is a pretty massive thing, as DJs can be a lot more flexible on the night. Infact I’d follow that through and say it’s maybe contributed to a lot of people ‘jumping ship’ or just playing whatever genres they think will fit, whereas in the ‘old days’ you’d have to pick your 50 to 70 best bets and stand by them. If you weren’t going down well you’d have to double down and hopefully people would get it after a while.
I lived in Brazil 2005ish and once went to play this club somewhere in Mato Grosso. It became apparent I’d been booked for my ‘gringo’ status and not because they liked (or knew) what I played.
The DJ before me was playing really laidback hotel lobby house stuff to a very ‘showy’ crowd. A very un Techno place. I had a bag of fairly obtuse techno records, Green Velvet’s ‘Flash’ would have been the most friendly thing in that bag. I went on and exhausted anything remotely housey within 15 minutes then proceeded to die for another hour and 45 minutes as people looked over at me bemused and annoyed wondering what the f**k I was doing.
LAST YEAR YOU DROPPED AN ALBUM FOR HYPERCOLOUR CALLED ‘FLOW MECHANICS’ – TELL US ABOUT THAT. IS THE TITLE SOMETHING TO DO WITH A WIDER CONCEPT OR JUST A NEAT TITLE?
The title was a reference to the mechanics behind a track that enables it to flow. Or something like that. Just finding that groove and letting it flow. In fact, forget all that. Let’s just say it was a neat title. I almost called it Crude Appraisal but ended up using that on my last EP for Super Rhythm Trax instead.
Also, here’s a recent dj mix of his on Berlin’s Hoer:
