FoundationKL.org

Welcome to Oneshots, where the FKL team take you on a global journey into the diverse sounds of the planetary foundation. DJs featured here play or have played a pivotal role in their various countries as cultural markers.

Claudy Philius; promoter, artist manager,and one of the originators of the Montreal warehouse music scenes has been there. But for a moment, he was here in KL; answering plenty of questions about Deep House.

It turned out, in order to understand the ‘deep’ bit – he brought me through some history…

He was there when house slowly fled outwards from Chicago and eventually dominated every gay club in North America back in the 1980s right up to the early 1990s. When DJs Francois Kevorkian, Frankie Knuckles, Tony Humphries, Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzales Frankie Knuckles, Larry Levan, Tee Scoot, and Ron Hardy would hold captivated sessions on the radio and club interiors.

The progression of house eventually led itself into Detroit and emerged back out as the cybotronesque Techno sound pushed by Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saundersen. Claudy was also there. In fact, a whole bunch of people were there.

And it was this original community of punters that saw how their comforting, soulful sounds of their sexualities, culture, language, and uniqueness slowly encroached the commercial arena. They then had enough.

They went deeper underground.

The term ‘deep’ in Deep House doesn’t constitute solely the emotional state of the sub-genre, or a technical state like ‘progressive’. Instead, its an identifier that marks itself as the original-as-Chicago warehouse sound, untarnished by pop-desperate generations, and preserves the ideologies from the original movement. As an emotional marker, ‘deep’ also represents a soulfulness of spiritual proportions, inspired by the African-American gospel energies, and a certain ‘fierceness’ stemming from gay pride and diva extravagance.

Here’s an interesting experimental documentary that explores the Deep House culture:

Deep House : Chapter 1

[youtube lVbe8AK6_58]

Deep House : Chapter 2

[youtube g9EffXJ2Gdo]

I’m sure that doesn’t cover half of the thoughts behind ‘deep’, but I think its best to demonstrate:

Claudy also represents Tony Desypris, and has very kindly provided us his mix for us to feature on our 1st Oneshots here on FKL.

This excellent mix brings the listener through a sensual trip blending between the Chicago divine and the sultry and sophisticated. A real beautiful mix for chill and optimistic listening.

According to Claudy, Tony’s a real old-schooler and has very very few publicity pictures of himself. But Claudy has very kindly provided us a club flyer featuring him at a recent gig (thats a picture of his son):

FoundationKl.org is proud to present:

Tony Desypris – EarthCanBeJustLikeHeaven

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD ‘EarthCanBeJustLikeHeaven’ (Right-click -> Save as)

or use our nifty player:

[ed: Claudy and Tony have popped back just to add some additional pointers. The correction of the Chicago DJ's on the 3rd paragraph. Additionally, note that the 1st 20 minutes of the mix is attributed to DJ B'ugo]

[ed2: Claudy and Tony have come back yet again to confirm that the set is ALL Tony's - there is no DJ B'ugo in this set - please move along ]