Back to Mine with Neighbour

After hours grooving…








Cyber People – Polaris (Memory Records) 

This has to be the most motivating Italo single ever. The sheer amount of times I’ve danced around my apartment listening to this earns it the top spot. Especially good after a night of boring beats when you snare a couple pals back to yours for a nightcap. In fact the entire Memory Records catalog is really influential – great design too!  

Junior Boys – Bellona

Canadian dudes doing it right. Just hits all the right notes, swings with analog swagger and the vox are really melty. In light of how big house music has become again these guys seem way ahead when you realize this was 2004 when everyone was trying to smash each others faces open with electro house and breaks.

Max Tundra – Lysine 

This guy made the musical leap for me from my aching-to-be-indie-cool-but-not 17 year old self into my goofy raver normality. Really complex awesome pop music that fastidiously avoids cliche. Really inspirational cool shit. 

Aphex Twin – Tha (Selected Ambient Works 85-92)

Laying on the floor with my eyes closed near a fireplace in the middle of winter in Calgary, Alberta, Canada is what this song reminds me of. Trust me – put it on during a make-out session, or after an emotionally draining day, or when you just need a little space to open up in your head. It somehow reminds me that we’re mortal and part of some larger energetic system, and to just sometimes let your mind and heart wander back into the eternal flow.

The System – You’re In My System

Amazing Fairlight drum work, a fantastic music video featuring enviable dance moves, white-guy synth stylings, and up-to-the-minute (for early eighties) green screen effects. The musicality of the chord progression keeps it from crossing over into pure cheese, and there is no arguing with the synth programming. These dudes had it.
 

Boards of Canada – Roygbiv 

There’s another Canadian link with this one too. Obviously the name, but also, the brothers went to school in Calgary for a while (which is where I was born). I always thought that was cool, because it was just so obvious that their music was inspired by the National Film Board of Canada soundtracks we would have been shown in school. And also they just rule and their chord progressions actually make you feel stuff.

Art of Noise – Moments in Love

Just listen and be absorbed. A dub journey through analog sampling and musical exploration.

Linton Kwesi Johnson – Iron Bar Dub (LKJ in Dub)

The perfect blend of politics and music. Incendiary slices of poetry dubbed out and scored by Dennis Bovell. 

Jorge Ben Jor – Spirogyra Story

I’ve been really lucky to explore Brazilian music firsthand and Jorge Ben – Jor is king. He’s touched on every musical style, explored all sorts of avenues and always comes out sounding amazing. Leathery voice!!! I wanted to put “Take it Easy My Brother Charlie” but this one is personally connected to some rad moments there (thanks Joao e Gustavo!!).

Marina Van-Rooy – Sly One

This is what I wish the 90s revival was all about. Real songwriting, tons of personality in the programming, rad unironic imagery and mood, and a super sexy singer. Bonus rad music video in case you forgot how to dance cute, but nonchalant.


Neighbour Feat Piper Davis
Light Breaker EP
(Homebreakin Records)
Homebreakin Records proudly serve up a hot new single from Vancouver-based DJ and producer Neighbour, featuring the vocals of Piper Davis, and bolstered by a selection of top remixes from 6th Borough Project, Cyclist, Tad Wily and Enno Karr. Homebreakin Records and Punchout label co-boss Neighbour is known for his disco, deep house and analog flavours and is a prolific talent who really knows how to nail a groove. Here he enlists the local vocal services of Pampa star Piper Davis. Their single ‘Light Breaker’ is a slow motion disco-house chugger with steppy, arpeggiated synths driving it along. The louche drums are as lazy as the rippling melodies that light up the track, and oodles of sensuousness comes from the dreamy, icy vocals of Piper Davis. It’s a starry, expansive feeling track that will send hands in the air and as well as making you dance will have you singing along in no time.
First to remix – and he does so twice – is famed disco dons 6th Borough Project aka Craig Smith & Graeme Clark (The Revenge) who have worked together in the studio for almost a decade and very much define the output of labels like Instruments Of Rapture, Domino Records and Delusions Of Grandeur. Their first remix is a squelchy, go slow bit of organic funk with grinding drums and swathes of lovely reverb. Their second, which features as a digital exclusive, is a slightly flabbier, more melodic version littered with little keys and percussive effects that makes it all the more magical.
Next comes Mark Penner aka Cyclist, who has remixed and collaborated with some of modern disco’s greatest names. His version is full on cosmic, with celestial explosions of melody and big, slow, fat synth lines all dancing above churning, purposefully deep and groovy drums. Then Polish born, London based producer Tad Wily (Matt Kuderski) steps up following fine work on Gomma and Retrofit. His version is a darker, more insular affair that does clever things with the original vocal and packages it into more of a post punk, new wave groove with twanging guitars and rooted drums at the heart.
Lastly, South African born artist Enno Karr is a musician, composer and DJ residing in Calgary. His remix was the winner in a recent competition carried out by the label in association with Ableton Beat Camp and features here as another digital exclusive in the package. Karr’ s version is the most blissed up and chilled out, with soothing vocal intonations, cute melody stabs and a breezy pop-dance vibe that really strikes at your most sensitive emotions. This is a fulsome packaged stuff with all sorts of disco bombs that cannot fail to find their way into your affections.
Neighbour Feat Piper Davis – Light Breaker EP (Homebreakin Records) Out 17th February 2015