Your own echo

The other day I opened the mailbox and was geeked to find an advance promo of Edan's new Echo Party CD. I admire a lot of Edan's previous releases both as a rapper (Primitive Plus, Beauty & the Beat) and DJ (Fast Rap, Sound of the Funky Drummer, his radio show), but this is something else altogether.

Echo Party is a 29-minute mastermix of dozens or maybe hundreds of late 70s/early 80s lo-fi disco and disco rap tracks drawn from the catalogs of labels like P&P, Paul Winley, Chocolate Star, Sound of New York, etc. Apparently Edan got access to everything licensed by Traffic and, in some cases, multi-tracks.

He then proceeded to freak the shit out of everything, with liberal use of vintage echo, sampler, keyboards, and a lot of stuff I wouldn't know to recognize. (Every song and effect he used and what he did with them is described in the liner notes to the full CD release-- I suspect I could spend a long time nerding out on those notes.) My head hurts just visualizing the work that went into this.

I usually hate mastermixes and cut-and-paste records-- even Double Dee & Steinski's lessons really have never moved me-- but this is mind-blowing. It's so vast, so detailed and weird that it makes me feel like a really shitty, lazy DJ.

Stones Throw has pre-orders on limited-press vinyl with custom sleeves by Edan. According to their site, CDs are already sold out. I really, really recommend it.