Quadzilla Is Spinning.8

Time again to get a move on! This month’s “spin” list is dedicated to house and dance tunes from the 2000s (2009 – 2020), with the lone exception going way back to 1988. There is another track that dates back to 1997 (“Make The World Go Round”), however my featured version is a deep dish house mix from 2009. I will tell you that this particular list is a rather punishing 45 minute workout. It is also interesting to listen to how Dance music evolved between the first featured track from 1988 and the last track from 2020, with the former labeled as electronic/dance compared to straight Dance.

“Let Me Love You for Tonight” (1988) is a song written by Jerry Ferrer, produced by Bob and Jerry Ferrer, featuring American singer, Kariya. It was released as an EP with five different mixes of the song: House Radio version, hip hop radio version, hip hop club version, radical hip hop version, and my featured version, house club. The multiple version format for releases for a song is fairly common, especially with electronic, dance, and house artists/producers. The song was a success across the US and European club scene during 1988 and also in the UK when it was re-released in 1989. On its release, Billboard described the track as having a “Latin/pop rhythmic bed” and an “aggravated female vocal.” Hmm, I guess that’s one wat to describe someone’s voice! When it was re-released in the UK, a British journalist for the Reading Evening Post had this to say: “’Let Me Love You Tonight’ is a rare specimen indeed. A house tune without that God-awful jangling piano bit that seems to find its way into almost every ‘black’ song you hear these days. Kariya has that distinctive housey (sic) feel, but the difference here is frighteningly contagious.” Ah, the 80s!

Not only was this song a “one-hit-wonder,” but there is precious little info available on the singer Kariya, although my search did pull up the scoop on Käärijä, aka, Jere Mikael Phöyhönen, a Finnish rapper, singer and songwriter. If you are curious, check out “Sex=Money” from his 2024 album, People’s Champion. It’s an E cut, but unless you speak Finnish, you won’t be offended!

The third track, “Bloodlines,” is by British house music DJ and producer, Daley Padley, also known as Hot Since 82 (one of the better monikers out there, especially when you consider that he was born in 1982!), who has been releasing music under that name since 2011. Originally from South Yorkshire, Padley entered the electronic music scene at a young age, beginning to frequent area nightclubs at the age of 14. His DJ education started at 17, playing 12-13 hour sets each Sunday at a local club under his birth name. His residency soon became a top “afterparty” destination for clubbers in the area. Padley launched his own imprint, Knee Deep in Sound, in 2014, hoping to release music from up-and-coming artists with an underground “vinyl” sound. He has toured in Europe and North America and has headlined many of the world’s leading electronic music festivals, including Creamfields and WMC. In 2017, he introduced his ‘Even Deeper’ concept to the public, a concept in which he explores countries and cultures, known and unknown places, while touring there. The first three episodes were shot in Mexico and Japan, and in 2019 he released another installment, Even Deeper Brazil, exploring dance culture and more in Brazil. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9gJRMa_UIw

The extended version single, “King Kong” (track #5), is by Icarus, a British band from London that specializes in electronic drum and bass with elements of experimental jazz and rich instrumentation. They formed in 1997 with cousins Ollie Bown and Sam Britton, and their music has been described by Kieran Hebden (an English electronic musician known as Four Tet), as “really beautiful and also quite kind of evil.” Hebden included an Icarus track, “Benevolent Incubator,” on his 2005 Late Night Tales compilation, as a payback for Icarus’s remix of the Four Tet track, “My Angels Rock Back and Forth,” on the 2004 EP of the same name. In 2002, Icarus founded the independent label Not Applicable, which became a collective project with other improvising musicians. They have been less active since 2008 when Bown relocated to Australia, working on other musical projects, but still producing music together as Icarus.

In 2012, Icarus released an experimental “album in 1,000 variations” called Fake Fish Distribution, which used parametric software techniques to allow the band to make 1,000 distinct versions of the record, with elements varying such as the rhythmic patterns of the drums, effects parameters or the order of progression through the tracks. Sound Cloud has a “version 500 sampler.” Let’s just say, this will not be everyone’s jam, but I’ll let you be the judge of that: https://soundcloud.com/icaruselectronic/fake-fish-distribution-version/sets .

Enjoy the music. Enjoy the workout!

Los Angeles 2025