Derrick Carter |
Derrick Carter is one of the most popular DJs who update classic Chicago house. When he took the decks at 3:30 am at Rise last Friday night/Saturday morning, the club was full of girls and guys, slender and chic, many of them from the fashion world, and of all colors. It was a house-music crowd to the core.
And he moved them this way and that, playing many of his own remixes in a set that featured the jazz side of house, slick and boppy, in a vein that he and his record label, OM, have established as an American version of what in Paris (where the style was invented) is called “lounge” or “Hôtel Costes” (after the 1st Arrondissement designer hotel and bar). Then about 5 am, he ratcheted his jazzy sound way way up, to a phat, hard beat more typical of Chicago house as it has developed during the past decade. Those who might have chosen to sit out the first, loungy set now took to the floor — and were kept there by Carter’s non-stop, sweetly bluesy beat.
This was house music as it should be, rhythm and syncopation, with free-form electronic melodies riding high and some woozy, having-fun vocals dropped in or underneath. Included in his set (and epitomizing his vision) was “Swallow,” a track done by My Robot Friend, acid at its most chemical, but remixed by Carter and using the now famous lines “girl . . . boy . . . girl . . . boy . . . girl boy girl girl boy boy girl girl boy girl” to illuminate and celebrate the dance floor’s multi-sexual presence. The music bopped and chopped much as the words do, and the 200 or so dancers found themselves dipping shoulders at one another, kicking knees and snapping their elbows, heads bobbing the way the music bobbed.
Even in his hard-beat set, Carter never resorted to the big-beat, shock-and-awe throws that now dominate the clubs. His was a subtler, more slippery house music, closer to the genre’s roots in jazz and soul, yet as fierce as shock-and-awe house — maybe even fiercer.
