Chrissy - Physical Release

  • A throwback rave album that emphasizes optimism over nostalgia for lost places.
  • Share
  • There are two types of lockdown albums: the introverted, let's-take-a-break-from-the-dance-floor records, and the bangers that desperately try to recreate the lost experience. Chrissy's new one on Hooversound lands firmly in the second category. If you only know Chrissy from his Nite Owl Diner and Cool Ranch releases, you might be surprised seeing his new album come out on SHERELLE and Naina's label Hooversound. But the Kansas native started out in jungle and was one of the key players in helping footwork bridge the Atlantic Ocean. He's a dance music polymath that can and will do anything (case in point: his one-genre-a-week-for-a-year mix series). Chrissy has nothing left to prove when it comes to all things 160 BPM. Physical Release is an ode to disappearing physical spaces in the dance music scene. Real estate pressure has gnawed at the scene's integrity in every corner of the world, and that was before Covid exacerbated the issue. The effect is especially felt in Chrissy's current home base of San Francisco, where The Stud (a storied gay venue and Chrissy's most recent residency) closed its doors in 2020. It's always tricky to broach this kind of loaded topic in dance music without coming across as heavy-handed. Typically, it’s the extra-musical content that does the trick: in this case, cheeky snippets bookending many of those tracks, some of the titles themselves and, to a certain extent, Edie Fake's artwork (inspired by his own Memory Palaces, a collection of drawings dedicated to lost LGBTQ spots in Chicago). Put aside the thematic content and the album sounds like a crash course through the early hardcore continuum, when jungle pressure was starting to seep through the unadulterated euphoria of earlier years. From the Reese-like bassline of opener "Lost In A Dream" to the brazen piano stabs that end the LP with "Lift Me Up," and all the hoovers in between ("Fantasy Pt 2" is the easy standout), it's as if Chrissy is playing hardcore bingo, then adding a modern production sheen. True to Hooversound fashion, breaks abound: they storm through "All The True Ravers"'s dive-bombing basslines and time-stretched vocals and nonchalantly parade through "Cuddle Puddle," while "Take Me Away (Again)" starts breezilyy before plunging into vicious amen choppage. This is the work of someone steeped in the scene, more homage than mere nostalgia. Melody is the central characteristic of all of Chrissy's work, and it courses through Physical Release, too. Take the intoxicating three-note bassline from "Bust-Free Guaranteed," frenetically modulated until it's burned into your brain, or the twinkling melody of "The Map Point" and its almost questioning intonation. Chrissy keeps it simple and catchy, because he knows that's where all the wistful dance floor memories and mythologizing come from in the first place. This is how the album's theme really seeps through, past the winking intros and outros. There is something almost scholarly about the historical evangelism at work here. You could almost think of it as Chrissy's rave praxis, a radiant optimism that tries to build anew rather than mourn what's been lost—then leads by example. It's no coincidence that Physical Spaces ends on its most unabashedly joyful banger: had it come out in 1992, "Lift Me Up" and its ecstatic piano house's YouTube comment section would be swarmed with middle-aged posters pining for the best nights of their lives, singing tales of ultra-potent garys and dawn epiphanies. This is all best summed up in "Rooftop Sunrise"'s unidentified opening sample about those places having "this potential energy that exists into the present, and that lets you know that people came before you and were, like, freaks before you." As exhilarating as it can be listening to this album at home, this collection of party-starters is just waiting for one thing: being banged out loud on the soundsystems of the spaces they were designed in homage to, to function as a loving transfer of energy between ravers past, present and future.
  • Tracklist
      01. Lost In A Dream 02. The Map Point 03. All The True Ravers 04. Fantasy Pt 2 (Bolt Cutters & A Jenny) 05. Virgin Warehouse Location 06. Bust-Free Guaranteed 07. Feel The Spirit Move You 08. Rooftop Sunrise 09. Cuddle Puddle (Step Into My World) 10. Take Me Away (Again) 11. Lift Me Up
RA