Upon first listen to the pitch burnt sixty BPM warble of an unrecognizable auto tuned vocal, I can only surmise it is agonizing the phrase “freak to u.” It becomes more clear than murky that the original article has become something entirely different. As an emcee, you can’t help be obsessed by semiotics, language and interpretation. As an eccentric, you can’t help be obsessed by constantly being misinterpreted. Its in those excruitiatingly stretched out minutes, the record is dragged with anti skate shackles on presumably a technic 1200 or a rustic yellow sports walkman. You begin to realize the words and meaning have changed and mutated. This reappropriating and recontextualizing aided by the most banal of things; time.

Whether or not this is the official soundtrack for urban longing depends on your points of references I guess. Taking time into consideration, we can reference Matthew Fuller’s classic lists as used in his excellent analysis of UK pirate radio in the nineties. Four decades of RNB. Turntables or tape decks. Pitch Control. At a bare minimum both have similarities in terms of what might be best described as a music called ‘drag.’ Drag is far from having a wide cultural effect at least for now. But it exists in its own temporal warp acted upon by the here and now to be something wholly different. Though its impossible to imagine it without the events that transpired prior. Just as breakbeat, jungle and dubstep utilized the same alchemical elements to create a lifestyle that lasted arguably at least ten years in terms of validity, drag could certainly plausibly follow suit.

Then again you’d have to have to imagine what a party would be like centered around four hours of rhythm and blues weighted down to a deliberate and prodding pace. I’d imagine it might it might appeal to a room full of heroin addicts staring at the ceiling watching their lives melt and nod away. And that might be the most romantic way to describe it. Which brings me to potentially a nightmarish conclusion that drag music is the living embodiment of existential acceptance and/or the discerning junkie jams of choice.

By stripping and burning away the sheen and the production what is left is a shambling ghost rife with ugly nostalgia and rotting memories. Its indescribably hurt filled and mournful. It’s the bare trudge and the bitter playback of words and lyrics twisted by format and the hand behind the controls. Whether “Freak to you” now sounds like the plea of a starving timber wolf panting for some sort of warm flesh in the midst of the tundra or “Easy Street” is now reimagined as spat through clenched teeth watching your retirement fade away in the vapor is generally left up to the listener.

It’s always been the defense of mine when speaking about recontextualization; copyright and sampling that rules are often way too idealistic and opportunistic in nature. In these pocket autonomous zones that have warped into existence causing rifts in space and time, they’ve always started out basic and feral. And it’s on that cusp where fetishists and bored debutantes might collide. After all they may as well be one and the same. It’s interesting to note that dance music has always been the most resistant to this autonomy. A subculture baked and cooked into the brains of over a decade of listeners who may or may not have had their first psychedelic or narcotic experience in a dirty warehouse in the pitch black. Listening to the bare minimum of a drum machine and a Roland 303 cycling the same pattern over and over affected by oscillation and black market pharmaceuticals. Rooted in the authortative and draconian systematic of beats per minute and fragilely held together solely by that measure of time. And might I add, marginalized by such math, galvanizing its population into genres, cliques, and crews.

With rave nostalgia in full swing and internet groups reminiscing about the ‘where are they nows’, it seems like as good a time as any to come to grips with what happened in your own way. Some people want to relive the past by attending various revivals and staring at photographs of moments that now so very warped and faded in memory. They want to sit back and tell stories of how great it was. I can tell you stories. You’ve heard them all before. They are all mostly bad. They are all mostly idiotic. They are all mostly things I do not wish to relive unless they are morbidly amusing.

But they sound like this if I were to transcribe them to audio. The promise of escape from the inescapable. Trapped in sewage and sludge, fighting for a reason to keep breathing. A six am after party cross legged on the floor shifted in and out between waking and dream state like windshield wipers silently scraping across your eyelids. Moments passing like bad frame rates, jittering and wrapped in cellophane, moderately aware that your vision is now completely peripheral. Staring down the barrel of a long dark tunnel and stumbling around in a puddle of mud, shit, and collapsed bodies undulating on themselves. Telling myself, these are so the times of my life. That’s what the commercial says. This is what I want to be. I’m going to be a dj. I’m going to make money following my dreams and paint by numbers, one 32 count intro and one 64 count breakdown at a time.

That to me is the essence of drag city. The ecstasy hangover of a decade taken and personified in a genre. A cracked out sunday and a fried eagle mind. Who does it cater to, quite possibly a select few. But more importantly, its what it inspires and the synchronicity that speaks from out the void using puppet language to mouth clarity into seemingly shallow words.

Things die. Things can be reborn. They can never be the same as what they were and there is a solace to that. To see things grow old and wither away hanging onto to some semblance of sediment. A family, a dream, an old photo, a favorite song, and a memory. A list acted upon by human hands always has a completely unexpected outcome. Or at least it should. If it doesn’t then maybe the formula needs to be rethought and the tougher questions need to be answered. Like what the hell are you doing holding on to those things in the first place.

I’m sure one day, we can lay the groundwork to bring to you the ultimate slow music party. And people will come from far and wide to sit cross legged on the floor wrapped in a large blanket until five in the morning. And we will decree the rise and the fall and mark the years on the calendar. We will publish ourselves a coffee table retrospective that will litter the condos of well to do graphic designers and college professors. And we’ll occasionally over a moderately expensive bottle of red wine and an exotic epicurean delight wax poetic wafting the glass in swirls in the air.

You know, quite unlike the nineties. Somehow now I’m ok with that if it happens. Because this time, its about more of what I want than what I can get or where I can fit. Until then, we have a little party going on here and we are at full capacity.

entro mc “drag city (demo)”

You can follow Brendan Telzrow to learn more about drag on twitter here

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