I Exist Because of You

Henrik Schwarz's version of 'Amampondo - I Exist Because of You' is out on Innervisions this week. It was definitely (for me) the highlight of his live set at Pogo two weekends ago. It's a filthy peak time tribal jazz-fueled house monster, which would not look too out of place in a techno set.

So who are these Amampondo folk then ? Well, they stem from Cape Town back in the late 70's. A 6-piece percussion outfit (one on vocals, the rest on drums & precussion), these guys have had the honour to play at Nelson Mandela’s 7oth birthday at Wembley and at the 1996 Olympic games.

The flip side is a stripped down version from Dixon, who in his inimitable style keeps it simple, but still quite deep and hypnotic.

It's Henrik's version for me though :)

4.5/5

Pigon

I was dancing away in a club a while back, and this tune came on and it took me away on a total trip. It was really really warm deep techno. I hadn't heard anything like it ever before.

I (eventually) found the track on Beatport, it's from 2002 (Rennie Foster - Monochasm) and I started to think, jeez you can't find techno like this anymore, just a perfectly simple beat, an evolving deep synth drone with some atmospheric synth stabs on top.

So I went on a bit of a trip of my hard drive to see what I had on a similar vein. I didn't have much luck, but I rediscovered some tracks that I had forgotten about from the likes of Superpitcher, Deetron and a few others that I had overlooked when I got them. I realised wow this techno has real warmth and soul in it.

The guys who played the track were Pigon (Efdemin and Rndm), and their stuff seems to be on a similar vein, according to their myspace, they're "always looking for the perfect simple loop with subtle variatons to the single instruments".

But what I loved the most was how much into the music these guys were. They weren't even talking to each other, as if talking was forbidden. They just kept pulling records out and mixing them, one after the other, for hours, in their own little world of music and if you let yourself go, you could enter as well.

And what is the most interesting, is that everytime I hear the track it brings me back to when those two guys were spinning their hearts out on the decks.

A little inspiration on a cloudy Irish day :)