Circus – 1: A large public entertainment, typically in an arena, featuring exhibitions of pageantry, feats of skill and daring, intersperced throughout with the slapstick antics of clowns.
2: A troupe of performers, especially a travelling troupe.
Circus Company released dOP‘s first album Greatest Hits last week, and it reminded me just how brilliant and diverse a label they are. Full of ‘reenergised house,’ and leftfield vocals the album is characteristic of the Parisien label, which seems to keep reinventing itself in various quirky guises over the last ten years. They describe their releases as “mostly house and techno, but influenced by jazz and funk,” and it’s easy to hear how the two former have twisted the two latter into the ‘boozecore‘ wonky yet charismatic Circus style.
Nicolas Sfintescu (one half of Nôze) started the label with Mathias Duchemin AKA Sety in 2000, having played on the party scene in Paris together for a long time prior to that. Despite signing artists from different genres all over the world a familiar distinctive Parisien-jazz-bar sound was quickly established and modernised into a form of techno, but much more brass-based than the equivalent from Berlin. Never shy of trying something new and unusual, to say the least, including Dave Aju’s 2008 album Open Wide, which was completely made up of samples he made with his own mouth – every single sound on the record. Aju (Marc Barrite)’s father was a jazz musician, and the Circus sound clearly has a strong jazz ancestry; for example Nicolas Sfintescu was a jazz musician before starting Nôze, and Nicolas Jaar often cites a love of jazz from childhood.
On the surface these quirky jokers seem to do everything by what looks like a laid-back happy coincidence, but they keep their fingers firmly on the pulse, uncovering new and unreleased artists at parties and through mutual friends. This year notable releases include Seth Troxler’s Each Step and Nicolas Jaar’s Marks/Angles EP, and they’re set to release Jaar’s first album Tre in January 2011.
A true extravaganza.
Deetron feat. Seth Troxler – Each Step
Noze – You Have To Dance
Nicolas Jaar – Marks
Thanks to Argentine Airdrop Records for a whole host of free loveliness today. They’ve been booking and producing greats since the label and agency were started in 2006, including launching the mighty Soul Clap (so glad to see Rock the Boat is included in the giveaway below), and we’ve had the pleasure of EPs from Sergio Santos, Tanner Ross and Franco Cinelli, as well as regular Airpod podcasts from the likes of Fritz & Lang, Crazy Larry, Martin Eyerer and Nicolas Jaar.
