DFA Compilation #2 (DFA)
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So it’s a little weird that the label’s bands come off so cynical about success. Their Williamsburg scenemates the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and TV on the Radio are a few rungs higher on the music-biz ladder already and don’t seem to be sweating it. Maybe this don’t-give-a-fuck detachment is actually one of the team’s marketing strategies. DFA’s singles are released only on vinyl (though promo copies go out on CD), so the turntable impaired have to wait–sometimes for more than a year–until the label decides to compile them on CD. The second collection of DFA vinyl, a triple-disc package imaginatively titled DFA Compilation #2, is due on November 2.
With the exception of a few records by the delay-pedal-happy squeaky-noise group Black Dice, the DFA catalog is steeped in dance music’s history and happy to allude to it–though the allusions often seem intended to declare the artists’ distance from their sources. And when DFA bands bring words into play they almost always repudiate the hedonism of the dance floor, suggesting that the good time a mighty groove promises may be an illusion or at best a meaningless lifestyle accessory. Dance music has mocked its own premises before (Cristina’s “Disco Clone” and Hot Chocolate’s “Mindless Boogie” were fine disco records that snickered at the subculture that spawned them), but rarely with such violence.
Gavin Russom, who works at DFA’s Plantain Studios, made this spring’s “El Monte” 12-inch (it’s also reissued on the new anthology) with Delia Gonzalez, one of his partners from a performance group called the Fancy Pantz School of Dance. A fluttering analog-synthesizer instrumental, it maintains the illusion that the drums are just about to kick in for over 14 minutes. (They don’t.) Gonzalez and Russom also have a new, beat-driven single, “Casual Friday,” which appears on Compilation #2 credited to Black Leotard Front: “I was leaving the office / I took off my dress,” they chant vacantly, while a couple of backup vocalists follow tentatively behind, trying to echo the lines but matching neither the rhythm nor the pitch.
