American Intelligence: A Primer on Theo Parrish

Chances are you already know about Theo Parrish: you’ll know about his legendary Ugly Edits, you’ll know about the expansive palette he brings to his solo material, you’ll know about the notoriously diverse DJ sets, and you’ll probably also know he’s got a reputation for having one of dance music’s loosest tongues. With new album, American Intelligence, being released next week on his own Sound Signature imprint, it’s a perfect time to remind those in the know about how grand of a man he is, and to educate those who’re still in the dark about said greatness.

Born in Washington, raised in Chicago and based in Detroit, Parrish is an artist and selector dedicated to subverting expectation. His house material isn’t straight up foot-stompers and his techier output isn’t heads-down mindless hedonism; his lengthy sets are masterclasses in the manipulation of black dance music, EQ heavy workouts that educate, entertain and inform; he’s outspoken and critically engaged. For Parrish, the music he makes, the music he plays, the music he talks about isn’t something to be passively engaged in dark rooms late at night and early in the morning – this is work that needs to be engaged with and appreciated seriously.

Below are eight essential Theo Parrish artifacts: a concise collection of sound sculptures, diving-bell-deep jams, discordant disco edits and dreamy, disorientating remixes.

DJ DIFFIDENT

Now that everyone’s a DJ, or least someone who once commandeered someone else’s Spotify Premium account at a grubby house party and believes that an hour spent playing 30 seconds of tracks to a dwindling kitchen crowd is DJing, it takes a lot to stand out. One thing that helps is having a rapacious attitude towards deep exploration, a desire to dig deeper than anyone else, to throw curveballs willy-nilly – to, basically, be a fucking DJ and not just a bedroom bod with Serato and a decent broadband connection.

Theo Parrish knows how to DJ and he wants you to know it. Check out his Boiler Room set below for a snapshot of a selector who seemingly, and in the surprisingly most non-selfish way possible, plays for himself. It’s 45 minutes of detours and diversions, none of which feel frustrating – it’s intelligently entwined, emotionally interconnected, record nerd stuff that comes from the heart rather than the Discogs-obssessed head. Discussing young producers/DJs being throw into headlining slots after months behind the decks he wanted to know a few things:

“Can you mix? Can you play for longer than an hour? Are you playing records? Can you play the way the records are meant to be played? Are you Djing?”

Here’s Parrish walking the walk after talking that talk:

Now that his legendary Plastic People residency has come to an end, UK clubbers will have to make the most of his appearances. In the meantime, gorge on his semi-regular NTS shows here, and enjoy a suitably eclectic, expectedly brilliant recent live set from Philadelphia here. Full marks for the inclusion of Gary’s Gang’s luminous, luscious, ever-welcome and underplayed “Let’s Lovedance Tonight”.

He’s also really good at EQ-ing. So good in fact that it’ll put you off ever doing that cutting-the-bass-for-far-too-long-and-fucking-about-with-the-phaser-every-two-songs-thing you do that you think sounds great. It’s for your own benefit.

THE UGLY EDITOR

The disco re-edit scene is prone to unnecessary elongation for maximum beard stroking; a good edit – say, Tom Moulton’s incandescent reworking of Lou Rawls’ “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine“, or the Black Cock reworking of “You Got the Stuff” by Bill Withers, is something magic, an elastic untangling of a record, a reimagining of nightclub nirvana. Bad ones are leaden, plodding, over-done affairs that put dancers off and only appeal to the Carhartt jacket and designer stubble dad crew. Happily, Theo Parrish avoids the obvious traps, the dully extended breakdowns, the endless codas, the bongo-slapping pointless additions, in favour of something more acidic, something rawer, something imbued with additional funk and grit.

Take this version of GQ’s seminal smooth roller “Lies”, for example:

The original – deployed to stunning effect in James Murphy and Pat Mahoney’s oddly-influential boogie masterclass Fabriclive 36 – is short and sweet, a succinct tale of a love lost over a gaudily chunky bassline. Parrish takes the skeleton of the original and bulks it out, roughs it up, and turns it into a pleading cry for epistemological help. Parrish has an innate understanding of the pleasure that comes with repetition, endlessly replaying the phrase “I’ve got to know why” until reason and sense have been subsumed by a desire to escape into the dance floor.

Edits, arguably, are about a form of eking out moments of ecstasy into minutes of the stuff; giving the listener the best bits of a record over and over, switching up the pace and position of the cut when necessary. Parrish’s reworking of Harold and the Bluenote’s “The Love I Lost” – although not as obviously explosive as Tom Moulton’s edit, which might just be the greatest record ever made – is a seductive pumper, a continual climb to climax.

REMIXING AND THE ART OF RECONFIGURATION

For most producers, a remix assignment is an excuse to spend the advance on Kronenbourg, skunk or coke before opening Fruity Loops in bed the morning after and slapping kick_drum_01.wav under the original, thinking of a pointlessly long name and emailing the half-baked product back to the label. Some people are open about this: DJ Harvey’s confessed to me that he’ll produce a remix worthy of the fee he receives for it. Others take it a bit more seriously, treating the project with loving care, crafting something that actually engages with the original material, something that seeks to bring out what was hidden within, something that enlarges and expands that kernel of quality, resulting in a remix that stands alone – something that Parrish does. Let’s look at two shining examples of his remix output, a pair of tracks that do what good remixes should.

How do you take a track that’ll probably never, ever sound tired and make it even better? Well, if you’re Theo Parrish you take out its most recognisable feature and replace it with something that sounds like a Casio that’s on the brink of binning. And it sounds better than ever. This is the remix as new composition, something that asks the listener, as all good remixes should do, to consider their relationship to the original. It’s about as far away from a Shapeshifters refix as you can get.

Here’s Parrish in excelsior, Parrish defiantly and definitely taking a track apart from the inside and building it in his own image. Play this back to back with the original – LCD Soundsystem’s most cosmically funky moment ever, the highlight of their best record, their only release that dropped the stuffy indie dude at the dance schtick and fully went for disco credibility – and you’d be hard pressed to spot the similarities. This is a remix as a statement of intent. And it works.

SOLITARY FLIGHT: PARRISH AS PRODUCER

We’ve established that he can edit, remix, compile and play. But can he make his own records? Of course he can. Let’s end this overview by looking at the man’s individual output.

An obvious choice here, but obvious isn’t bad is it? Fish and chips are obvious. Sunny holidays are obvious. “Is it All Over My Face?” by Loose Joints is obvious. “Solitary Flight” is a timeless stunner, a record that can be pulled out in pretty much any situation and still sound fresh as ever. Elegiac, stirring, rich and deep. When they finally get round to installing a house section in the Smithsonian, “Solitary Flight” will stand shoulder to shoulder with “Can You Feel It”, “Show Me Love’” and “Move Your Body”.

“Footowork”, American Intelligence‘s teaser track, originally featured on the prohibitively expensive 12″ he released in collaboration with skate scamps Palace and the achingly hip lads over at Trilogy Tapes, is typically inventive, and has got us salivating for the album itself.

What we’ve presented above is just a snapshot of the master’s treasure chest of sublime material. In a scene that’s always on the verge of becoming hermetic, homogeneous and haughty, there’s a desperate need for more people like Theo Parrish, more people unafraid of taking risks for artistic reward. As a remixer he’s instinctive, as a DJ he’s informative and as a thinker and theoriser of what dance music is and why we continue to make the pilgrimage to clubs weekend after weekend he’s fearlessly intelligent.

American Intelligence is released on Sound Signature on November 17th.