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$17.99 CD
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VIRGO FOUR
Resurrection
(Rush Hour)
 "Sex"
"Boing"
Rush Hour's reissue of Chicago house veterans Virgo Four's first two EPs on a 1989 LP simply titled Virgo was a banner release last year, a document shining light on one of the most important yet overlooked dance music innovators of its era. It seems that Virgo was just a teaser for the real prize, as they've followed that up with something that just seems too good to be true: Resurrection, a 15-track CD compiling previously unreleased cuts dating from 1984 to 1990, assembled, mixed and mastered in 2010, and sounding like a Rosetta stone of dark, gritty dance experimentation. As much as I love the aforementioned Virgo reissue, this set (I'm not gonna front, I bit my lower lip and splurged on the limited edition 5LP box, which is currently out of stock) has been in constant rotation in my home, on my iPod, at the shop... it is, quite simply, astonishing.
What I love so much about this set compared to the Virgo album is how much more weird, dark, and loose this stuff is; most of these tracks were finished but shelved due to record label indifference and ignorance, and a few play out as recorded experiments or demos, but even those exude a vibe of worth that just blows me away. Eric Lewis and Merwyn Sanders exude a raw, gritty sweat and propulsion that equals the magic conjured by Martin Rev and Alan Vega in Suicide's first two albums, combined with the deft jazz touch of someone like Larry "Mr Fingers" Heard. This collection tones down much of the "take me higher," hands-in-the-air righteousness of some classic house recordings, though, and it's precisely that late-night, introspective quality that makes this set more timeless to these ears than the previous album's reissue. There are so many tangents you can tie to these recordings -- the way "Crayon Box" and "Boing" foreshadow the bleep-and-thump of early Warp Records classics like "Tricky Disco" and "LFO," or the tongue-in-cheek "It's a Crime," which somehow manages to combine the theatrics of both Alan Vega and Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys with surprising aplomb. "The Mop" swirls and slaps around like classic Mr Fingers tracks like "Beyond the Clouds" or "Washing Machine," while the stone-cold classic "Sex" and the bedroom jam "Forever Yours" display a mix of subtle humor, melancholic introspection, and near-uncomfortable sincerity currently rocked by folks like Dam-Funk. It's pretty clear, too, that most of these jams were performed live to tape; this is definitely the sound of machines breathing, not some heavily sequenced gridwork, and that real-time funk is the key ingredient to most of the magic of these tracks. This set plays like a hazy fever dream, your heartbeat keeping time as your head throbs and your ass moves.
This is, in my book, one of the best and most important reissues to come out in 2011, and pretty much one of the best house albums ever released, filled with equal parts heart, soul, brain, and brawn. Anyone interested in house, IDM, early Warp, the synth-heavy boogie-funk of Dam and Tony Cook, and just plain old good dance music needs to hear this ASAP. It's absolutely essential. [IQ]
Order CD by Texting "omcdvirgoresurrection" to 767825 |
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