This fall I was contacted by Kalle from Yore with news about the new Andy Vaz album "Straight Vacationing." I liked this album quite a bit, played a track on my radio show, and then was distracted by other music coming through the promo feed*
Then, the other day Mr. Vaz e-mailed me out of the blue to ask me about how I felt about the record. I'm enough of a fanboy to still get a charge out of talking to artists I admire, but his e-mail prompted me to go back and listen to the record again. And I think that it's definitely an album with a lot of depth, and a unique take on Detroit-influenced techno. The lead track is called "Detroit In Me," after all. Over the past couple years in Europe, using Detroit as a marketing come-on has become more common -- often from producers whose music has little to do with Detroit Techno. 'Detroit' as an empty signifier apparently has some sort of cachet, but anyone who actually cares about Detroit and it's music should be offended by it. Too many people worked too hard for too long in Detroit to make something special, and slapping 'Detroit' on your music because you want some of the cool to rub off is dishonest and Insulting. That's not what Andy Vaz is about. If you listen to "Detroit In Me" you can definitely get a Detroit vibe, but there's something idiosyncratic and unusual about how Vaz puts the track together. There's so many different elements -- a burbling acid line, deep house piano, and the sustained jazzy chords, the vocal sample -- that get woven together. A lesser producer would end up with a busy, incoherent mess, but in Vaz's hands, it all hangs together. And it's well worth looking for the download release for the remixes by Alton Miller, Rick Wade, Patrice Scott, and others (mostly people who Vaz has released records by on Yore) solidify the authentic connection Vaz has to the Detroit music scene. But this is not some sort of slavish imitation of the stylistic identifiers of Detroit music. Vaz is full of musical ideas, and doesn't limit himself to the safe bounds of techno or deep house. What makes this record good is the way he is able to balance and overlap many elements in each track, and get them to mesh into something organic, warm, and always dancey. Yes, Vaz loves Detroit, and with his label Yore he's sought out some of Detroit's best musicians to release new music. But he's also has his own musical ideas, and the way he blends his influences with them is what keeps "Straight Vacationing" vital and interesting.
