Masters At Work

Prologue: an international affair

The story of this compilation can only begin with the classic "once upon a time". Because the double box set celebrating the tenth anniversary of Masters At Work by Little Louie Vega and Kenny Dope Gonzales is the story of house music itself. The genesis and evolution of a movement of disc jockeys who, from the neighborhoods of New York, defined a new global sound, writing one of the most important chapters in the history of dance music and music as a whole.

There is, in fact, a very specific geography that made the tracks chosen by Vega and Gonzales infinitely epochal, gathering together the memory of an unrepeatable era. It's a fascinating map, touching precise points on the international clubbing scene, one where Italy stands out as a privileged outpost, with Naples at the forefront. Specifically, Angels of Love, and more obliquely the memorable Question Mark!. More than parties, or "festini" as they're fondly remembered, everything the AOL created and represented is intrinsically tied to Masters At Work and to much of the movements gathered across these two volumes, wisely split into two five-year spans that cut in half the most fascinating decade in dance music.

If the Romagna riviera was the natural cradle of Italo-disco, the city of Naples welcomed the crew captained by the duo with open arms, in nights upon nights that influenced not only producers and musicians, but also choreographers, marketing experts, flyer designers and public relations figures tied to the microcosm of the discotheque, as clubs "used to be" called not so long ago. According to what Mix Mag wrote back then, the house promoters of this scene were second only to Pushka. Suffice it to say that in 1995, at the peak of his career and in a real state of grace, Little Louie Vega chose the Circe lido in Licola, the AOL's summer residency, to celebrate his thirtieth birthday, throwing a mega-rave with guests David Morales and Barbara Tucker, where most of the tracks featured here exploded on the console.

The MAW sound

Little Louie Vega is barely more than a kid when his older sisters manage to sneak him into the legendary Paradise Garage: behind the console, Larry Levan is commanding the adoring crowd like a Pope at mass. Young Louie's life will never be the same.

Slightly younger, Kenny Dope Gonzales has a father and an uncle who play jazz, but they raised him in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood, just around the corner from where Afrika Bambaataa used to set up his stereo on the sidewalk to raise hell with his crew. Puerto Rico and multiracial America, salsa and clubs open till five in the morning: Louie and Kenny grow up steeped in the same ferment of sounds, characters and odd jobs done in the city's best record shops in order to get their hands on the raw material, the black gold of every music obsessive: vinyl. From the inevitable meeting between the two, which happened through mutual friends when the more established DJ Louie needed a hand editing his own remixes in the studio, the grandly named but entirely fitting Masters At Work project was born.

Just a matter of time, really, given both the period - the Eighties - and the geography - New York, probably the only place on earth capable of generating such vibrations. The vision of the two masters at work is a precious primer on the history of house: wrapped like a glove around garage origins, moving through powerful choral evolutions and a sophisticated take on "Nuyorican soul" (as their better-known and more celebrated side project is named), and not neglecting the rich array of dub and acid-jazz detours, MAW let echoes of New Orleans and the drums of mother Africa surface, alongside the angelic yet predatory voices of India, Martha Wash and Barbara Tucker, and the chance to re-clothe Tito Puente in new light, bringing distant 1956 back to life through the mischievous idiom of Big Apple clubs. And then there's Lisa Stanfield, Chic, Simply Red, Ce Ce Peniston and celebrity backing vocalist Trey Lorenz: everything gets shaken up and served with a natural class that proves timeless. Garage-house of the highest order, the technicians would say. Flashes of pure discotheque poetry, the dreamers would add.

Sonically we're right at the thematic heart of the Nineties, yet MAW flatly refuse to rely on the typical baggy, cardboard-thin presets of the popular Roland keyboards, opting instead for meticulous production work that filters and layers a wide range of acoustic and digital samples: the keystone of their sound is already all there. Sensual, snappy, imposing yet relaxed - pick whichever adjectives you like - the fact remains that the two artists bend their lavish language to every single nuance the genre and context have to offer. And they do so without ever betraying the essence of their creativity: even considering the sheer scale of these two collections, and the sheer variety of contributions made especially at the mixing and remastering stage, the guiding hand, the direction that the MAW signature gives to each and every one of its creations, comes through clearly, handled with loving clarity and a heavy dose of soulfulness that shines through even in the most languid, pulsing moments of the batch.

The stamp left by the MAW imprint means respect and firmness, care for the original melodic lines and real precision in building a sonic bed that complements their essence, deploying basslines and hi-hats tailored to each individual track. It's high-end tailoring work, which the duo have lavished on their craft since the very start of their career, back at the commercial peak of garage, before drawing on their own Puerto Rican roots to build a complex soul-Caribbean hybrid. Far removed from the aggressive approach of European mixers, who are far more inclined to rework the beat and twist the original conception of a track, the two operate like expert make-up artists, masters at highlighting and enhancing what's already there, giving tracks the length and structure needed for the dancefloor while still rewarding the expressive substance underneath.

A short listening guide

Don't mistake the decision to release a double collection, each made up of four CDs and devoted to a specific five-year span (even though the first actually covers six years), for an act of megalomania from an established duo. Granted, Vega and Dope could easily afford such a gesture more than most, but with the "Tenth Anniversary Collection" the two retrace, in a very personal yet careful way, an adventure that up to that point had been scattered across wildly ephemeral EPs and obscure mixes, organizing it into broad thematic strands and highlighting its universal appeal, its omnivorous nature.

How to tackle such a mammoth listen without panicking? Take it slow, and let your heart, or your curiosity about the tracklist, guide you. House music, after all, is above all a feeling to be experienced viscerally, both in its joyously euphoric, communal side and in its more introspective moments, far removed from the noise of the dancefloor.

Across all these hours of music, there really is something here for every taste. Case in point: put on "Love & Happiness", the opening track of the first disc, subtitled "Vocals", and you'll instantly find yourself wrapped in an unexpected human warmth, silky beats and elegant Latin arrangements. The rhythm spins, the body warms up, the rum sits in the ice, and yet a stately melodic melancholy hangs in the air, which, combined with the progressive refinement of the disco-mix format, gives the track a quality suited to attentive listening. On the same disc, Marc Anthony and Martha Wash stretch their vocal cords to ease you straight into the heart of the MAW philosophy. The cards are on the table, the turntable spins like a rollercoaster, so you might as well get lost in the chaos and let yourself be cradled by the sonic threads of some of the most soulful voices around.

But the second disc, titled "Dubs And MAW Vocals", is already finding ways to deconstruct everything achieved just moments before: here are the famous Tito Puente dis-assemblies ("Ran Kan Kan" and "Para los Umbreros"), Alison Limerick and Chris Cuevas locked inside a neighborhood garage ("Gettin' It Right" and "Hip Hop" respectively), and the blue-eyed soul contingent of Lisa Stansfield and Mick Hucknall taking on American dancefloors.

Want to explore MAW's harder-edged side instead? With chapters three and four, described as "Beats And Loops" and "Tools And Grooves" respectively, the duo lay out the actual tools of their trade, still dripping with grime and sweat. This is a substantial chunk of the collection made up almost entirely of instrumentals, moving between techno ideas, dub specters and testosterone-fueled hip-hop accents.

It's often in the most authorial moments, the ones where Vega and Dope step up in person on the decks and at the mic, that they chart new territory in which to deploy a saxophone ("Moonshine"), afrobeat convolutions ("Urban Species"), acid-tinged chimes ("Our Mute Horn") and clear tributes to the African-American ballroom vogue scene ("the celebrated "The Ha Dance", the queer sensuality of "Freaky", a hair's breadth from certain Madonna whispers). Key tracks? The unforgettable nervous energy of the sampledelic anthem "Deep Inside" and the aggressive nocturnal march of "Justa Lil' Dope", the latter an obsessive industrial beat that could pass for Coil, were it not for those chopped-up hip-hop vocal fragments slicing through the track like steel blades.

It's with the second box set, however, collecting tracks from 1996 to 2000, that MAW nail some of their most celebrated chapters; on Cd 01, Luther Vandross, Ultra Nate and London's Incognito kick things up a gear over buttery soul tendencies, r&b flourishes and touches of acid-jazz dipped in small-orchestra instrumentation for bursts of exotica. It will nonetheless be the ever-present India, salsa icon and Vega's own wife, who provides one of the guiding stars of MAW's entire discography with the sprawling "To Be In Love": to this day one of the most classically pure and recognizable house vocal performances of its era - the single version was even accompanied by a famous video, showing MAW not just as underground stalwarts but as skilled pop communicators too:

On Cd 02, a sweet bachata-paced ride from George Benson introduces the collection's most introspective, pastoral and often warmly acoustic chapter, giving the duo a chance to play the role of unexpectedly respectful re-arrangers - though it must be said that "MAW Expensive", originally by Fela Kuti, is a genuine gem, with that driving pulse of hand drums and acoustic guitar.

Truly fascinating is the shadowy ambient-dub ride unwound over the fourteen minutes of Roni Size/Reprazent's "Watching Windows", deliberately set in contrast with the famous house riff of "You Can Do It Baby" on the following track. The beat is still there, though, especially at the start of the explosive bassline of "Dancing In Outer Space", with its cosmic synth-psychedelic explorations worthy of a Sun Ra.

But MAW immediately double down on Cd 03, flaunting an almost arrogant stylistic wealth that refuses to know any bounds; the raucous Jocelyn Brown screams like a madwoman on the propulsive "It's Alright, I Feel It!", while the unreleased "Bangin'" is an endless, entirely instrumental tribal romp, pounding away like sticks against an iron railing.

Soon we zigzag on through the ethnic downtempo of "Brazilian Beat", with Lilliana's warm vocals, a nod to the Y2K electro-samba trends of Smoke City, Da Lata and Bebel Gilberto.

In the midst of all this, the inevitable Daft Punk, with a dehydrated remix of the already fairly skeletal "Around The World", and British r&b girl group Eternal, help paint the listener a picture that's sonically bizarre yet truthful, a mirror of various late-Nineties trends that probably no one at the time would ever have thought to mix together.

That innate savoir faire and thoroughly non-ideological mongrel taste finds a fitting close of the circle on the final Cd 04; it wasn't at all cool, back then, to acknowledge the existence of the Spice Girls beyond the then-fashionable label of "commercial", but MAW's omnivorous ears don't miss the fact that "I Want You Back", the solo single by ex-member Melanie B alongside the legendary Missy Elliott, is objectively a monster tune, and the resulting remix, all lounge flourishes, pays it the respect it deserves.

With "Desire" and "Spirit (MAW Mix)" they keep treading around the glossy, luxury-ad French touch aesthetic of Modjo and Étienne de Crécy, proving their ability to stay on point right up to the dawn of the 2000s. Closing it all out is the nostalgic disco-funk lap of "Runaway", once again courtesy of Nuyorican Soul, a genuine tribute to the origins of remix history, right where it all began, in New York: the decks of pioneers Walter Gibbons and Tom Moulton.

This certainly won't be the end of the phenomenon commonly understood as house; the arrival of DFA, the cerebral scores of Herbert and Dj Sprinkles, the brash Edm of Guetta, the technicolor electro of Hot Chip and Friendly Fires, the chart-topping phenomena of Uk-house, the endless disco music revivals and countless other trends will keep listeners busy well into the start of the new millennium.

It's a safe bet that the story of the 4/4 beat still has a long way to go. But the "Tenth Anniversary Collection" is there to remind us what the Nineties were. Because history can be made with kindness too, and a healthy dose of open-mindedness never hurts.

Ride the wave of great music

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28/08/2022