Washing Machine

We are now deep into the lull period between Christmas Day and New Year's Day, where it could be any day of the week and it doesn't really matter much which day it is. Apologies to those who are back at work- I appreciate it matters to you. For clarification's sake it is apparently Thursday. This is the best bit of Christmas for me, the day itself done with but the holiday very much in full effect. To celebrate, here's the distinctly unseasonal sounds of Mr. Fingers aka Larry Heard in 1986 with a record that brought forth a genuinely new sound into the world...

Washing Machine

Washing Machine came out as a 12", a double A-side paired with the legendary Can You Feel It? Early house music, a sound that changed the world and the way (many) people heard music. Using a drum machine and a keyboard, FX and delays, Heard creates a record that has depth, real emotional pull and the sensation of one's head being inside the titular white good appliance, a giddy, spinning sensation. Off kilter, acid squelch. Electronic psychedelia from Chicago thirty eight years ago. 

It's difficult for artists who create a technical and artistic revolution. What do you do next? Larry Heard has kept his fingers in the acid house pie, and added in new age, hip hop, four- four house, techno, cosmic house, jazz and r 'n' b to his music over the ensuing decades. 

In 2016 he went full melodic trippy, acid techno with Inner/ Outer Acid and on 2018's Cerebral Hemispheres an album that showed contained everything Larry Heard could do. On Electron he transplanted mid- 1970s Tangerine Dream to 21st century Chicago and found the motherlode, again. 

Electron

Machines

This record was made in 1986. Life in 1986, it goes without saying was very different, to life in 2020. A lot can change in thirty four years. Technology is the most obvious change. To a sixteen year old in 1986 the ability to carry around in your pocket a computer that doubles up as a camera, video recorder, telephone, music player and music/ photo library was the stuff of science fiction. In 1986 Mr Fingers (Larry Heard) was twenty six, a drummer who in 1984 had begun to make his own music when he bought a drum machine and a synthesiser. A few days later the story goes, he had recorded a trio of tracks that would form three of the foundation stones of house music- Mystery Of Love, Can You Feel It? and Washing Machine. Larry made this music using nothing but a Roland Juno 60 synth, a Roland TR 909 and two cassette recorders, playing the track live in one take and recording it on one tape, then bouncing it back and layering another element on top. Firstly, there's no way to my ears this track sounds like it's thirty four years old. Secondly, music in 1986 with the same time distance would have been made in 1952 and there's no way that anything recorded in 1952 sounded like the future in 1986, never mind then still sounding contemporary or even futuristic in 2020. Thirdly, this music was recorded onto cassette decks, a technology now virtually obsolete for home recording. He wasn't even using a multi- track recorder, something you can load onto even the simplest laptop or tablet. 

Washing Machine is an acidic squiggle bassline, a clattering, jacking machine drum beat, hi- hats hissing away and stop- start dynamics. The Detroit producers, the Bellville Three, were doing something similar in Detroit and made a big deal out of their music being both techno and soul, that the machines might be doing the work but it was humans controlling them. This was music for the real, sweaty, flesh and blood, human business of dancing combined with the mechanical sounds that came from Europe (Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, Yello, New Order) and the noises from the industries that were already dying out in, the crashing sounds of the car plants and the factories. 

Washing Machine

Inner Acid

Earlier this year Mr. Fingers released an album called Cerebral Hemispheres, his first for 25 years. It contains 18 songs spread across 2 cds/multiple pieces of vinyl, and in some ways is an expanded version of the Outer Acid e.p. from 2017, but it also tries to summarise the various branches of electronic music Larry Heard has been responsible for and played with since the 1980s- deep house, jazzy dinner table house, bossa nova, even some bluesy guitar. It also veers off into darker places- some delicious acid tinged techno with some fairly unhinged sounds and minimal rhythms twisting inside and out. On the first disc (of the cd) it jumps from one style to another and then back again, a little unable to decide where it wants to go. On the second disc it finds a more consistent sound and tone, the acid and techno grooves becoming more dominant wit hthe odd diversion into dub. This one is a delight, the soundtrack to a long journey at dusk.

Inner Acid

Electron

This new track from Mr. Fingers, ahead of a new album this year, sets the heart racing a bit. He put an e.p. out at the end of 2016 called Outer Acid which I loved, especially the techno/sci fi track Qwazars. Electron is a lush riot of warm synth sounds, pulses and drum machines.

Qwazars

Larry Heard aka Fingers Inc. and Mr Fingers doesn't really have anything to prove. His mid 80s house music tunes practically define the scene- Can You Feel It?, Mystery Of Love and Washing Machine. Last year he put out a four track ep in his Mr Fingers guise that showed he still knows where to find it, using undeniably 'classic' sounds but updated. The standout was Qwazars, a circling, pulsing synth riff with a sense of awe and wonder. Music that floats.