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Selected Rhythm Tracks 1988​-​1994 Volume II

by L.G. Mair, Jr.

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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    *NO SALES OUTSIDE THE UK*

    Non UK residents, please purchase from:
    www.rushhour.nl/record/vinyl/selected-rhythm-tracks-1988-1994-volume-ii or any other fine retailers.

    Remastered for 180g heavyweight vinyl (2LP) and digital at Bonati Mastering in Brooklyn with sleeve artwork by the internationally acclaimed book designer Luke Bird. Never available on vinyl before.

    shipping out on or around February 14, 2023

    Includes unlimited streaming of Selected Rhythm Tracks 1988-1994 Volume II via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days

      £22.50 GBP or more 

     

1.
Rhythm Track 03:21
2.
The Escape 03:03
3.
4.
5.
6.
Nu Yeery II 05:30
7.
Rhythm Track 02:57
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Out of Time 02:53
13.
Winefride XL 04:14
14.
Shaman II 03:31
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.

about

As the resident bass player for renowned Manhattan comedy club Catch A Rising Star, Lloyd George Mair, Jr. worked alongside a host of iconic entertainers and comedians from the past 50 years inc. Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Andy Kaufman, Billy Crystal, Eddie Murphy, Larry David, Chris Rock and plenty more. This was a creatively vibrant and socially dynamic period in New York’s history marked by the unique meeting and synthesis of post-disco, post-punk and early hip-hop; shaped by a hybrid party culture in which cross-cultural music scenes (Afrika Bambaata, Anita Sarko) collided with artistic ones (Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat) as well as intellectual spheres (Sylvère Lotringer, Antonio Negri) on NYC’s dance floors (Danceteria, Mudd Club), offering unique social and sonic possibilities of interaction, openness and exchange.

As the 1980s progressed, together with increasingly tough Reaganomics, the crack epidemic, real estate inflation, demographic shifts and musicians and clubs catering to increasingly segregated audiences, the synergistic elements that first set the scene apart weakened severely from 1984 onwards. However, thanks to a dedicated underground, the forward-looking sensibilities of Mair, Jr. found an audience, gripping the imaginations of a select group of collaborators and peers from the so-called ‘cassette culture’ movement.

These were not simply ‘demos’, but fully realised art projects primarily traded with other like-minded artists around the world. All kinds of folk found this a simpatico space to make music, think aloud, drift in and out of focus.

Mair, Jr. started recording a dizzying array of home-baked cassettes, most of which remained unreleased or traded internationally. Captivated by the promise of possibility, his sound totally embraced the plastic potential of MIDI and digital, in all their unreal perfection. The sound of placeless, dream-like environments: movie sets, photo shoots, videogame backdrops. Dense webs of flickering neon, laser-strafed minimalism and thick saw-wave synths.

This expansive second volume of rarities is drawn from Mair, Jr’s ‘Selected Rhythm Tracks 1988-1994’, a hidden archive of introverted electro-minimalist songwriting culled from over 30 years of private and unreleased cassettes. There's the boogie of the opening ‘Rhythm Track’, rendered in such perfect hi-res, it approximates digi-Motown via sci-fi Library Music soundtracks. ‘The Escape’ strings the most plastic of trumpets over an avant-funk stroll that’s so laidback you feel like it must be hiding something. The Afro-tropicalia of ‘Winefride XL’ is a beatific series of polyrhythmic kalimba lines that you can imagine gathering and drifting over and over again, like tides. There’s a distinct cinematic quality in Mair, Jr’s sequencing, and most of all on the outro to the blissful sweet-sour synth spirals of ‘Winefride LIV’, which sounds like Angelo Badalamenti scoring Perry Henzell instead of David Lynch.

Available for the first time on vinyl and produced in cooperation with the artist’s estate for chOOn!!, a label specialising in obscure, archival and forgotten releases.

credits

released February 3, 2023

CHN009
Originally recorded, engineered, programmed and mixed by L.G. Mair, Jr.
Track 11:
Originally published on cassette by Alternate Media Tapes – ALMED217 from 1994
Track 15:
Originally published on cassette by Dasein – C.O.6 from 1993
Track 21:
Originally published on cassette by Cat Killer – CAT-no.50 from 1993
Licensed under permission from Wilma Mair.
Special thanks to Wilma Mair, Matthias Lang, Lord Litter, Thomas Gerlach, Cedrik Fermont & Wendi Mair
Mastered by Josh Bonati at Bonati Mastering (Brooklyn, NY, USA)
Design by Luke Bird
Digital edition contains two exclusive bonus tracks

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L.G. Mair, Jr. New York, New York

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