- A road trip from LA to Toronto in an old Lincoln becomes the source material for an LP of bumping beats that touch on vintage Chicago house and Detroit techno.
- In late 2020, Tony Price found himself stuck in Los Angeles, unable to fly back to his native Toronto because of Covid-19 restrictions. But he found another way. A former radio DJ Price knew was selling their 1981 Lincoln Continental Mark VI, so he bought the car, intending to drive back to Canada in style. He found a bag of cassette tapes—homemade mixes and radio show recordings from the late '80s replete with motorik Detroit techno, thumping Chicago house and advertisements for products that only exist in memory—stashed in the trunk. The tapes and the old car made a perfect match, and Price played the cassettes constantly during the long drive from California to Ontario.
After his road trip, Price scoured the tapes for samples, pulling together what would become his new album, Mark VI. Named after that '81 Lincoln, the LP slathers propulsive club jams with the saturated warmth of decaying tape. Much like 86'd, Price's previous dance music excursion, Mark VI is all dilated pupils and toothy grins. But where 86'd was full of wild-eyed takes on electro, house, and 80s synth pop, Mark VI finds its center by toning down the chaos. It comes off more as a loving tribute to the dance floors of yore than a collection of genre exercises.
For the most part, Price's compositions feel like irreverent takes on Detroit techno. Songs like "Phreak" and "Aerosol" glide with the metronomic pulse of blinking lights on vintage sequencers, but Price forgoes the bleak atmosphere of some of the genre's classics. Instead, he imbues his works with humor, peppering in touch-tone phone beeps or quivering synth lines that bring to mind the goofy motion-activated ghosts used as Halloween decorations. Price tempers the Cybotron-indebted churn of "Supra" by adding cheesy slap bass, and uses a shouting vocal sample to drive the squelching synth blasts of "Prime" firmly into hi-NRG territory.
Mark VI really shines when Price tries his hand at funkier sounds. The chunky groove of "Power Hour," cobbled together from a thunderous kick, drunken tom fills and a stuttering 909 hi-hat, wraps itself around a vocal clipped to sound like "power" or "hour." It plays like a less laser-focused version of Robert Hood's Floorplan project, though just as hypnotic. "L'Escorte" is an infectious bit of roller rink disco, its melodic bassline and handclaps zippered together every so often with a tasteful tambourine. "Learning From Las Vegas" is a soft-focus house jam that combines the psychedelic synthesizers of early Legowelt with the never-ending sax solos of 95 North's "(Get Your) Mind Together."
As the album comes to an end, the booming drums give way to frayed bits of melody and moments trimmed from those '80s radio ads. There's a loose driving theme that ties Mark VI together, present mostly in the traffic sounds that underpin several songs. The closing tracks, especially the free-jazz collage of "House Of Information," feel like the end of a long trip, that woozy feeling you get when you come to that first complete stop after a seemingly endless drive. Though the final sax peals fade into the distance, "House Oxf Information" doesn't carry a feeling of finality. It serves as less of a comedown than a recharge—a respooling before heading back out for the next journey.
Tracklist01. Night Time Mind
02. Learning From Las Vegas
03. L'Escorte
04. Aerosol
05. Power Hour
06. Mark IV
07. Prime
08. Valentino
09. 115 BPM
10. Phreak
11. Supra
12. Turbo (Dub)
13. 132 BPM
14. City TV
15. Corporate Graphic
16. House Of Information