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Music

Savile Found a Record That "Always Fucks People Up"

The Last Record: Chicago-based producer and DJ Savile selected tunes from Olin, Gigi Masin and more.
Photo courtesy of the artist.

Whether it's for playing out at a club or listening at home, DJs and producers typically have an encyclopedic hoard of music, new and old. In The Last Record, they tell us about the last three songs or albums they've purchased, and why these were important additions to their music collection.

This week, we spoke to Savile. Last month, Honey Soundsystem's Jason Kendig selected one of Savile's recent releases for The Last Record. Savile is a Chicago-based producer, DJ and Smartbar resident. He'll next play Interstellar, Smartbar's New Year's Eve party, and support Tensnake as part of the Tomorrow Never Knows festival. Here, he shared some of his most recent finds, including what he describes as "hamster wheel techno."

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Olin - "Foist"

Olin is the current talent booker at Smartbar. He just started a new label called Boundary Monument. It's kind of like a mapping term. This track is called, "Foist." It's the b-side and it's a very trippy techno track with a bubbling rhythm that makes it a little bit hard to find the particular beginning of the phrasing. It makes it particularly effective for what I like to call "hamster wheel techno" sections of the DJ set where your goal is to disorient and kind of wash away with the meaning of time. It's really excellent. The whole record is pretty impeccably produced.

Gigi Masin - "Music For Chameleons"

Gigi Masin is from Venice, Italy and he released a couple of records in the mid 80s that were kind of missed by everyone, for the most part, except for the local scene. He got a cult following and Music for Memory compiled a compilation of unreleased material a couple of years ago.

One of the buyers at Gramaphone, a guy named Adam, pulled a bunch of ambient records and more left-field stuff for me one time while I was at the store. One of the records was released by Music for Memory. I previously remembered going to Music for Memory's Bandcamp and seeing Gigi Masin's name. And then I noticed that Odd Fantastic–an agency in Berlin that I am a fan of and that Marea (The Black Madonna) was a part of–were doing an event with him. It all just seemed too coincidental that his name popped up three times in a couple of weeks, so I went back to the record. It was one of those delightful surprises when it's way, way better than you expected. I've almost exclusively been listening to that record on loop for the last month, actually.

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It varies from ambient to softer pop. This particular track is ambient and has some kind of guitar synth sound in it that's beautifully processed. The whole thing is like a giant meditation. I've been playing these kind of beatless, long, open-ended ambient tracks on top of other things in the beginning of sets, and this one in particular is just beautifully written. It sounds completely like it could have been written yesterday or 20 years ago. It's awesome.

Dominowe - "Dark Valley ( Core Tribe )"

Gqom Oh! releases music from all of these South African artists, from Durban specifically, making this music called gqom. The name comes from the sound a rock makes when it hits a tile floor, which is just too good for words. And they've got this whole culture built around taxis that have huge speaker systems playing these songs. That's how they get famous in townships in South Africa.

It's an insane story, but the music itself is like really cold, super rhythmic, very dark. It kind of reminds me of early dubstep. It's super, super rhythmic. It's all made on Fruity Loops. I've been playing it since April and it always fucks people up because it's totally outside the scope of traditional dance floor stuff, but at the same time, rooted with the same drums and very clear computer programming. It's super hot.