6/10

https://soundcloud.com/honeysoundsystem/hnypot-366-physical-therapys-car-culture-remissions

Of his Car Culture persona, Physical Therapy says:

"Car Culture is, like, ambient—in quotes. It’s chillout, Balearic, not reliant on drums. It’s not drum-driven"

(saw this in article posted to HNY Soundsystem Twitter in response to the mix posted -
https://twitter.com/NicholasBoyd/status/1258067953251160065 -
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0hgak1bt5asnhhd/MXU-Z52%20Love%20Injection%20Nov19.pdf?dl=0 - )

[So I Google 'Balearic']

Balearic beat records vary between house or Italo house and deep house influenced sounds and a slower R&B-influenced (under 119bpm) beat consisting of bass drum, snare, and hi-hats (often produced with a Roland TR-909 drum machine) programmed in certain laid-back, swing-beat patterns; plus soul, Latin, African, funk, and dub affectations; and production techniques borrowed from other styles of dance music that were popular at the time. Vocals were sometimes present, but much of the music was instrumental. The sounds of acoustic instruments such as guitar and piano were sometimes incorporated into Balearic beat. Having been primarily associated with a particular percussion pattern that eventually fell out of vogue, the style eventually faded from prominence, and its repertoire was subsumed by the more general "chill out" and "downtempo" genres.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balearic_beat

[Wiki reference list has article by Bill Brewster:
https://web.archive.org/web/20111205211104/http://djhistory.com/features/in-search-of-balearic ]

"These days you can’t move for clubs advertising themselves as Balearic. It’s almost as ubiquitous as minimal house. So what does it mean now? Is it a genre of music and does it have anything to do with Alfredo?....In the 1980s, before the arrival of house music, almost all club DJs played an eclectic range of music that might incorporate disco, funk, soul, rare groove, go-go, electro, hip hop and even the occasional comedy record (and some would argue that comedy records are the epitome of Balearic). Nobody billed these DJs as Balearic; a) because the term did not yet exist and; b) because everybody played in this style.,,,What house created was both a template – a hegemony – but also because of its all-consuming power, it created a small but vocal opposition. The reason many DJs used [Baleriac] as a shorthand term to describe their style was a simple way of differentiating them from everyone else. It was a way of saying, ‘We don’t only play house’"

"The ‘theory’ behind Balearic is that any record could be made to work on a dancefloor provided it had the right feel...So the new Balearic – or The New Balearic, should I say – is both a myth and a reality. It’s a myth in as much as there is no specific genre of Balearic as there is for, say, house or happy hardcore or even hardbag. But it’s also a reality, an alternative reality, admittedly, in which records from any genre can be Balearic if someone has the chutzpah – or the stupidity – to claim so."

OR

"...that time and place has long passed and for most of them the style they championed was not necessarily an ethos or lifestyle, but simple expediency. 'We have to play Talk Talk, we have to play Belgian beat, we have to play rock, we have to play reggae, because we have to fill the space of so many hours.'

“My personal view on Balearic is that it was a moment in time namely a few Ibizan clubs from 1986-88 and Alfredo’s personal taste. In 1988 all the records spun at Future and Shoom were direct steals from his sets. It was when the UK DJs tried playing their own pop records on drugs that it went wrong (I stand at the front of the guilty queue myself) although it was fun at the time.”
~~

Getting back to physical therapy, the Balearic ethos that "any record could be made to work on a dancefloor provided it had the right feel" is what draws me so much to him, how he can meld it all together w/ technical chops, but has that chutzpah, to the point of having personas. this was my first Car Culture persona listen. It was a fine .... playlist. The soundclips were cute -- the soundclip of the boy ranting about Madonna got a chuckle -- has it always been so Vogue to trash madonna? Would that clip be in there if not for 'madonna free zone'? Is the juvenile trashing the joke? Hm! ---- The part with Happiness Runs did feel good but it did not feel earned. The whole mix felt good, because it was made of good parts. But, it seems like what the idea of Balearic gets at is that it takes any anything goes approach (no need for 4 on the floor or w/e, or limiting to a genre) but makes it seem natural or greater than the sum of parts., without relying on beat / drums to underly. (???) well, that's going to be the definition that I stick with, because it seems like the word means what you want it to mean.

Anyway, I learned a new word today, and listened to a relaxing but kinda forgettable mix.