Available on: Planet Mu 12”
Stream the entire EP here
Planet Mu have taken it upon themselves this year to provide music from the Chicago juke and footwork scenes, the majority of which is only available to listeners outside the US via Youtube clips or mp3 sites, with properly distributed physical releases. A compilation is in the pipeline, along with albums by key footwork artists DJ Rashad and DJ Nate, who here precedes his long-player with a six-track EP for the label.
Footwork is dance music in its purest form – a key part of footwork events is the dance battles between rival crews – but the first thing that strikes you about Hatas Our Motivation isn’t how danceable it is, but how weird it is. The 808 drums have such little space between them that they’re almost on top of each other, forming claustrophobic, alien textures which are swamped and weighed down by the looped vocals. The individual elements of these DJ Nate tracks don’t compliment each other, they practically fight each other, resulting in incredible anti-harmonious moments where they gloriously clang together.
Hatas Our Motivation also feels completely free of self-consciousness, which maybe goes too far on the Evanescence sampling ‘See into my Eyes’, but gives a refreshing, raw quality to the helium grime-recalling ‘Ima Burn Him’ and the demonic ‘We Can Work This Out’. Pretty much essential for those interested in the stranger side of juke – let’s hope DJ Elmoe recieves similar treatment in the future.
Tom Lea
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