- "I am Bill Brewster, record collector, writer, DJ, bon vivant, eminence grise, bon viveur, chargé d'affaires, idiot savant, idiot," reads the dance music vet's Twitter profile—and if we're not sure about those last few descriptors, we can confirm the first three. A player on the London scene for decades, Brewster has an impeccable résumé: he was one of fabric's original residents, co-author of the seminal history of record-spinning, Last Night A DJ Saved My Life (along with Frank Broughton, his partner at DJHistory.com), and longtime resident-in-chief of the beloved Lowlife parties. In other words, he knows his shit.
Nightshift is Brewster's second outing in LateNightTales' After Dark series—actually, it's the second of the series, period. Like the first, it's an ode to the kind of loose-limbed abandon that only comes towards the end of a long night out. For Brewster, that means languid, often dubby grooves, the kind of music you can dance to when you just can't dance any more.
Some of the cuts—Day Outside's Madchester-tinged "Faraway Sensation," for instance, or "A Cabala Sky," a previously unreleased collaboration between Robert Fripp and The Grid—will be new to pretty much everyone. Others, like Mugwump's "Boutade" (a slow-burner that Brewster once named "the best dance track of the noughties") and Good Guy Mikesh & Filburt's stunning remix of the Blaxploited Orchestra's "Pursuit," are better known, at least to connoisseurs of leftfield club music. As you might expect, Brewster included plenty of phenomenal exclusives, too. Mang Dynasty, a collaboration between Brewster and the always reliable Ray Mang, contributes the jaunty "After Dark," all synthesized woodblocks and echoed percussion. Fernando delivers a stripped-down and funky remix of Detachments' "The Flowers That Fell."
Nightshift is stuffed with great tunes, but the real joy is Brewster's sequencing. He builds the set with a studied patience, its pleasures coming more as subtle hills than obvious peaks and valleys. It's also brimming with unexpected yet fruitful transitions. The smoothly loping disco-funk of 1977's "Soul Machine" by The Salsoul Invention (France's answer to the Salsoul Orchestra, apparently) segues neatly, if improbably, into Neurotic Drum Band's goofy ode to automaton love, "Neurotic Erotic Adventure." Later, As One's cosmic broken-beat jam "Music Is An Open Sky" glides into the squiggly, minimalist chug of "Not Yet Not Yet" by Crowdpleaser & St. Plomb featuring Emilie Nana. That, in turn, flows into The Emperor Machine's brand of retro-futuristic synth-funk (specifically, his take on Paqua's "Groove Train").
Connections and transitions like these aren't obvious to most people, but for Brewster, who's been plying this territory for years, they're second nature. He ends the mix with a cratedigger special, General Lee's 1980 psych-soul scorcher "Magic"—a rather appropriate finish to a mesmerizing session. With mixes like this, Brewster may have to think about erasing that "idiot" bit from his Twitter profile.
トラックリスト01. Typesun - Last Home (DJ Nature Remix)
02. The Blaxploited Orchestra - The Pursuit (Good Guy Mikesh & Filburt Remix)
03. The Gino Fontaine- Revnorev
04. The Salsoul Invention - Soul Machine
05. Neurotic Drum Band - Neurotic Erotic Adventure
06. Day Outside - Faraway Sensation
07. Mugwump - Boutade (Miseri Dub)
08. Hubbabubbaklubb - Mopedbart
09. As One - Music Is An Open Sky
10. Crowdpleaser & ST Plomb feat. Emilie Nana - Not Yet Not Yet
11. Paqua - Late Train (Emperor Machine Special Extended Version)
12. The Grid/Robert Fripp - A Cabala Sky
13. Asadinho - Haiku
14. Justus Köhncke - Tell Me
15. Daniele Patucchi - People Come In (Mang Dynasty's edit)
16. Mang Dynasty - After Dark
17. The Detachments - The Flowers That Fell (Fernando Remix)
18. General Lee - Magic