TRIBAL America

BS.Dos., Sep 29, 2004

When I think back to the time I first got into Tribal records I can remember at the time House music was really beginning to kick off as far as the masses were concerned and was becoming (increasingly) more and more mainstream, which for me spelt the end of a two or three year period of House music being still relatively underground Artists were crossing over into the (UK) charts with increased regularity, which for me just seemed to sanitize the House scene in general as most of the people who were now hearing House music for the first time were experiencing, what I considered to be, a waterdown version of the real thing. If you wanted the real thing deep, stripped down minimal grooves with an evil bottom end but without all the screaming higher! higher! divas which were punctuated by ludicrously long breakdowns every five minutes then Tribal offered the perfect vinyl sanctuary.

With hindsight it would be easy to knock the label as being, perhaps, a little to camp but at the time the Gay scene was still very much a dominant force in cutting edge underground House music. Personally, I still consider Tribal USA Records to be one of the most important, groundbreaking and devilishly entertainingly House labels to date. Their output always seemed to be touched by the (production) hand of God in some way and was always of a consistantly high quality. The demise of the label was a sad day but I still cheerish the momories and the vinyl.

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