Joy Orbison – Ellipsis

My 20s summed up in one record. A masterpiece of nostalgia and techno.

we just used to like... do our own thing. we just used to like... that sort of thing
its a jam... not sure if i was ready for the shed remix tho

A forbidden classic that's always a pleasure to play during DJ sets.

listening to head high remix on 33rpm is pretty cool.

Joy Orbison's certainly responsible for introducing a bunch of esoteric catch phrases into the dance music collective consciousness.

What's most likely to stick though? The twitchy paranoid ranting of "BB", the gravelly repurposed hip hop vocal sample calling out the words "Cocaine Powder" over a darkened dancefloor? Robbie Tronco's repurposed "Walk For Me" backed by bubbling acid house percolation and crashing cymbals? The apathetic "uhmmm" that comes in right before the cowbells go nuts on "Wade In"? The near pleading "begin to go weak" drop on "Faint" that makes everyone on the dancefloor stop what they're doing and go 'what the fuck' for a few brief seconds?

When push comes to shove, I think that it's "Ellipsis's" repackaging of a Source Direct interview from god knows when wins out as Orbison's most infectious use of sampling. Skittering around the edge of dancefloor consciousness for over a year, it was that ubiquitous "hear it everywhere, find it nowhere" song that could be responsible for a lot of the frothing frenzy over the resurgence of vinyl culture amongst other contemporaries (of course, now you can buy mp3s of Ellipsis on Hardwax's digital site, which maybe means that i'm talking out of my ass)

Is it poorly mastered? Maybe. My record is certainly quieter than a lot of others, hard to tell if it's intentional or not. But Orbison is creating a nostalgia for future generations - the song that immediately accesses something in you when you hear it played out in a club fifteen years in the future (if we last that long) - an endlessly rememberable anthem for today that looks back at the same time as looking ahead. Just, y'know, doing his own thing.