John Tejada - 7th City Reissues

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  • Between 1998 and 2002, Los Angeles' John Tejada recorded five EPs for Daniel Bell's 7th City label. Now, a decade later, Tejada's own Palette label gives the remastered tracks their first digital airing. I don't have the vinyl with me to compare, but all five EPs certainly sound gorgeous—Tejada's signature analog warmth shines through, and the dynamic range stands in stark contrast to the dominant compression of today's records. Just listen to "You Think of Everything," off 1998's The Blue Dawn EP, or "When Shadows Start Falling," from the following year's To Lead a Secret Life, and try to find a record from the current decade that breathes in quite the same way. Tejada's no minimalist, but there's a wonderful coherence to his sounds—he sticks to a handful of synths and drum machines on any given track, and each one stakes out its place in the audio spectrum. Whether he's pursuing a dubby meditation on a single chord or flickeringly chromatic electro-funk, a fluid sensibility prevails. All five EPs—an hour and 40 minutes in total—are worthwhile. 1998's "Beaming Red Oscillator" is a highlight, with dry Basic Channel pads answered by glowing augmented chords, like a supersonic flight from Berlin to Detroit. "When Shadows Start Falling" is another that positively jumps out of the speakers, the soft stacked chords merely a foil for spring-loaded bass and hi-hats. "To Lead a Secret Life," from the same EP, couldn't be more different: it's all metallic percussion and brooding bass fog, of a piece with the kind of oblique, abstract funk that both Ricardo Villalobos and Isolée were making around the same time. At multiple points, you'll find yourself marveling at how fresh it all sounds. So much current house music is trying to emulate various moments from the '90s, but the various iterations often end up sounding more like each other than they do the real thing. Tejada's music isn't trying to be anything but itself, and you can hear it. He's got a knack for folding together samples with machines in a way like few others—"Planes and Trains" begins as something that's almost filter disco, but then he piles those rich chords on top and fills the background with tiny squiggles and carefully tuned percussion, and it couldn't be anyone else. If you buy just one of these, it's safe to say you should make it the Planes and Trains EP. Every track's a corker: there's the quickstep funk of the aforementioned title track, and the brooding "Overlapping Behavior," which occupies a sweet spot somewhere between Recloose and Morgan Geist. And then there's "Timebomb (VIP Remix)," which improves upon the previous year's guitar-flecked "Timebomb" with cracking 909 snares and the gooiest fusion of synths and samples imaginable. Like most of Tejada's 7th City tracks from this period, it's ten BPM faster than today's going rate, but it doesn't sacrifice depth for power. It sounds like it was designed to blow the Panorama Bar's shutters wide open—never mind that they hadn't been built yet. In a word: timeless.
  • Tracklist
      The Blue Dawn 01. Beaming Red Oscillator 02. You Think Of Everything 03. Reach The Pedals 04. The Blue Dawn 05. Beaming Red (Oscillator Remix) To Lead A Secret Life 01. When Shadows Start Falling 02. Crosswired 03. Inspired At 606 04. To Lead A Secret Life Significant Numbers 01. Significant Numbers 02. String Theory 03. A World Below 04. Shadow Breaks The Scene Timebomb 01. Timebomb 02. Impediment 03. The Immovable Fact Planes and Trains 01. Timebomb (VIP Remix) 02. Planes And Trains 03. Overlapping Behavior
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