(House, Deep House) Johnick - You Know How We Dew (BBE Music [BBE207ACD]) - 2012, MP3 (image+.cue), VBR V1 kbps

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                          █                    - d e e p h o u s e -

                                                          23.09.2012

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              .
     artist   : Johnick
     title    . You Know How We Dew...
     type     : Mixed Compilation
     year     . 2012
     genre    : House
     subgenre . Deep House
     label    : BBE Music
     cat      . BBE207ACD
     URL      : [url=http://www.bbemusic.com]http://www.bbemusic.com[/url]
              .
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              .
     encoder  . LAME 3.98
     quality  : VBRkbps / 44.1 kHz / Joint Stereo
     source   . 2CD
              .
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     CD One

     101.Johnick - City Rhythm                                         6:53
     102.Johnick - You Know How We Dew                                 6:04
     103.Johnick - Play The World                                      7:54
     104.Johnick - The Captain                                         7:16
     105.Johnick - All That Kissin'                                    7:28
     106.Johnick - Major Sea                                           5:03
     107.Johnick - A Breath Of Fresh Air                               9:12
     108.Johnick - C'mon Give It Up                                    5:52
     109.Johnick - Bone Up                                             6:26
     110.Johnick - Wild Kingdom                                        7:29
     111.Johnick - Johnick Planet                                      5:40

     CD Two

     201.Johnick - The Blow                                            5:04
     202.Johnick - The Dance                                           8:19
     203.Johnick - Open Up Your Eyes                                   6:30
     204.Johnick - Red Hook Groove                                     6:13
     205.Johnick - Home Storm                                          6:27
     206.Johnick - Heat                                                6:06
     207.Johnick - Much Love                                           5:46
     208.Johnick - Light                                               6:43
     209.Johnick - Good Time                                           6:45
     210.Johnick - Smoke                                               6:52
     211.Johnick - Don't Stop                                          7:33

     148:32 min  246.37 Mb

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     For most people, especially outsiders, the story of New York is the story
     of Manhattan. But there are many other stories. There are the breakers and
     DJs that created hip hop in the Bronx. There's the Wu Tang Clan over in
     Staten Island or the deep roots of jazz in Queens, where everyone from
     Louis Armstrong to John Coltrane lived. And in Brooklyn, just over the
     bridge from downtown Manhattan, lived a pair of Italian-American DJs,
     Johnny 'D' De Mairo and Nicky Palermo Jr, aka Johnick.

     Brooklyn is an important part of the duo's story and many of their closest
     friends come from the land across the Brooklyn Bridge, whether it's Kenny
     Dope from Sunset Park or Todd Terry in Coney Island. "I always felt that
     even from going to school in Manhattan in the early 80s, a lot of the
     people there didn't have deep roots", explains Johnny D. "My family is
     three or four generations in Brooklyn. When you went to Brooklyn, up until
     recently, and you went to an Italian area, those homes were pretty much
     built for Italians and they'd lived there for years. But in Manhattan,
     people would come from all over the world and settle, so in Brooklyn there
     were a lot more roots you could trace back. I liked that about it."

     Johnny D and Nicky were both teenage DJs operating in Brooklyn at teen
     parties, block parties and various mobile gigs in the borough and beyond.
     Johnny began DJing at 12. "I was always obsessed with music and once I
     realised the turntables and mixer was how you put things together I really
     felt I would be good. In my head I always have medleys of two or three
     things going on at once, so I was very interested to see how it all worked,
     whether it was a double track or a phase or whatever. I thought it was
     incredible what you could do. So I was very interested in understanding the
     art of DJing."

     The pair first met in their early teens. "We lived two blocks away from
     each other but didn't really know each other even though we both knew many
     of the same people", explains Nicky. "In our neighbourhood, there were lots
     of hang out places and many DJs and we all used to go to each others block
     parties and that's where I first really started talking to and hanging out
     with John. We used to go to each others houses all the time and DJ (as we
     both had equipment) and just listen to the new records that he or I had."

     "I lived at 162 President Street and he lived at 252 President Street",
     adds Johnny. "Nicky still lives there. We used to hang out at this place
     called Phil's Country Store. I knew of him, because my cousin was in his
     class, but in 1982 I think he started DJing and we started talking to each
     other. Then we started doing gigs together. We'd turn each on to music and
     things like that."

     They make a good team. Johnny is your typical in-your-face New Yorker,
     effusive, enthusiastic and with the drive of a souped-up Hummer, while
     Nicky is more happy to stay in the background. By his own confession,
     Johnny lacks patience, so it would frequently be Nicky who put the SP1200
     through its paces in the studio or did the lion's share of the programming.
     "Production was just the natural progression for us", explains Nicky.

     They got their studio start through Kenny 'Dope' Gonzalez. "It all came
     about from hanging with Kenny", confesses Johnny. "He was creating
     incredible magic in his bedroom. It was really raw and he was really being
     ghetto. His stuff was incredible sounding. In 1992, he said, "Why don't you
     get a drum machine and sampler and I'll teach you how to do it." So Kenny
     taught me how to use the stuff and then I taught Nicky." Adds Nicky: "Kenny
     showed Johnny the basics, Johnny showed me the basics and there it was.
     And, to be safe, I took many notes on a yellow pad. It also didn't hurt
     that we used to go to Kenny's house often and the Bass Hit Studio often to
     watch many Masters At Work sessions."

     While Nicky would be happy to programme the drums from scratch, Johnny
     would look for a loop to speed up the process. Johnny: "My brain was
     working a lot faster than most engineers so I'd lose interest in making
     records, because I want it to be fast." The arrangement worked well,
     though. By the early 1990s, Johnny had moved to Atlantic Records from his
     original job at Vince Pellegrino's SIN promotions company, so was working
     during the day (Johnny's incredible contact book never did them any harm
     either). "Nicky was much more patient on the production side. So I'd come
     home and add my parts to what he'd been programming while I was at work. It
     was beginning to be a little crazy. I wanted to get more into remixing but
     we never really had the proper setup in our house."

     "I have always been proud of the records that we have made. It comes from
     the love that we both have for all kinds of music. I always consider our
     tracks a tribute to what was before, but with a modern twist. We worked in
     various ways. Johnny or I would come up with an idea and we'd just build on
     it from there Sometimes I'd have drums and a groove, he would add a hook
     and we'd mix it together. Sometimes I'd have the whole thing ready but I
     couldn't mix it down because I had listened to it so much, so Johnny would
     do the final pass. There were even occasions when I'd give him a demo and
     he'd just put it out like that, missed punches, bad EQ and all! The way we
     work is very different: live, rough, and raw; not over-produced or
     polished. It makes us and our sound very unique."

     Much of the work, of course, came out on Johnny's own label, Henry Street,
     although one of their best productions, under the name The Faces
     'Everything I Got', came out just before the label began. That record, with
     its judicious use of old disco samples, set a template for the style of
     music the pair preferred: disco house. Their music had a raw quality,
     helped by Kenny's training on the SP1200 and a love of their raw
     Chicago-style tracks produced by peers like Terry Hunter and Maurice
     Joshua. It was not just disco samples, but disco methods they drew on for
     inspiration. As per the analogue era of production, they would run tracks
     live and work the desk as the track played, rather than pre-programming as
     is the modern norm. "We used to do our records live and do live mutes. So
     if there was a fuck up, we'd either do it again, or we'd leave it in."

     In fact, their productions were instrumental in restating disco's position
     at the centre of house music history; as Frankie Knuckles stated of house:
     "Disco's revenge". Indirectly or otherwise, they provided the blueprint for
     a lot of the early French Touch scene (check out any of the Daft Punk early
     productions of Cheek's 'Venus' for evidence).

     Their biggest tune came out in 1995 on Johnny's Henry Street. Based on
     First Choice's 'The Player', it dramatically lengthens and teases out the
     samples with gentle filtering and some thunderous drum programming, before
     letting the strings fly. Like much of their output, it still stands tall
     today. "When I sampled the parts for it, I didn't have a CD player with
     pitch control", chuckles Nicky. "That is why the record is so slow in
     speed: I had no choice. Nonetheless, it has been played at its normal speed
     @ 119.5 BPM to be exact and at +6 on the pitch controls by everybody. I
     still get calls about it to this day." Licensed to various compilations, it
     still sounds as fresh today as on its original release.

     Half the fun of listening to Johnick's music expansively laid out on this
     pair of CDs is sample spotting. They're all over the tracks, of course.
     Test out your disco chops and see how many you can get. And while you're
     doing it, rejoice in the sound of Brooklyn: fresh house from the raw 1990s.

     enjoy!

     remember to support Johnick.

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        shoutouts to the groups that love the music they promote..

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     If you're down with the deep house music, music with feeling..
     music that makes you groove no matter where you are.. and you
     think you can add to this feeling.. then drop us a line d_h@inbox.lv
     keep the feeling real. .∙· d e e p h o u s e  2 0 1 2 ·∙.

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