Five Tracks: Dave Maclean

On Monday, October 20, Dave Maclean's new vinyl imprint Kick + Clap Records drops its first release, Neil Landstrumm's Knights of Shame EP. Why a viny

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Complex Original

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On Monday, October 20, Dave Maclean's new vinyl imprint Kick + Clap Records drops its first release, Neil Landstrumm's Knights of Shame EP. Why a vinyl imprint in 2014? Maclean's a DJ and record collector, and wants Kick + Clap to reflect his broad tastes, bringing the excitement he feels for dancefloor music to the masses. What better way to celebrate that than Maclean digging through songs that he grew up vibing to on vinyl? This week's Five Tracks picks up on a number of key elements that make Maclean who he is as a DJ, artist, and now label head.

Spiral Tribe - "Forward The Revolution"

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This is from the Spiral Tribe EP. I bought this when it came out in 1992. I was 12 at the time and was coming out of my Beatles phase where I listened to almost nothing but them for about five years. I'd started skateboarding and getting into modern music—thrash metal, hip-hop, dance. My eyes and mind had opened. I'd track down tracks from skate videos and that got me into bands like Public Enemy and Bomb the Bass. That kind of led me to this EP. A sort of proto-jungle amen-break banger that I still love to this day.  

Richie Havens - "Going Back to My Roots"

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I had FPI Project's "Rich in Paradise" and loved the piano sample, but it wasn't until a few years later that I bought a re-issue 12" of this and it's not left my record bag since.  Just a huge record that i'll never tire of.

Public Enemy - "Public Enemy No. 1"

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I mentioned getting into Public Enemy through watching American skate videos. I persuaded my mum to take me to a record shop to track them down. Fear of a Black Planet was just out so I got that on cassette tape. I blew my tiny mind. A few years later in the mid-'90s i got really into '80s hip-hop and this is one of those records that summed up hip-hop of that era to me.  A funky, stone cold, hardcore hip-hop track that I still play out. That Fred Wesley sample is just so iconic and timeless... "Blow your Mind" indeed.

Green Velvet - "Flash (Paul Johnson Remix)"

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I could have picked any Relief remix of this, or indeed the original track. I bought the double EP release of all the Relief remixes when it came out on Ministry Records in the UK. I'd been into a lot of hardcore, both English breakbeat stuff and mad super fast German and New York stuff, and this seemed to have that energy, but it was at a BPM that seemed a bit more sensible to me at the time! It was my introduction to what is still my favorite house label—the mighty Relief Records—and this particularly forward thinking, nutty Chicago house sound in general.

Anandra Shankar - "Streets of Calcutta"

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I was given an album called Blue Juice on Blue Note records for Christmas by my brother in 1996. I was DJing a lot by this point and playing all sorts of music, new and old. Every track on this was a killer and it was really my introduction to serious crate digging. "Streets of Calcutta" was the stand out track. That mad synth at the start and those drums coming in over the top. I couldn't believe how ahead of its time it was and it made me want to discover more about the roots of synthesizer music.  

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