Foodman finally did it. After years of watching Youtube videos of the club, listening to mixes from the club, smoking cigs in front of the club, and carefully eyeing those who enter, trying to understand what compels them, Foodman finally ponied up the $5 cover and entered the club. For those accustomed the erratic midi squiggles of “En Mizoku,” “Hot Rice,” and “Cloudworks” this tape will shock and potentially even offend your “post-club” sensibilities, but maintaining a critical distance is only fun for so long, eventually you’ve gotta make the jump, close the gap etc. trust in the Foodman to guide you safely across the threshold to the club.
All this is to say “IkeIke” goes hard. The first two tracks come in hot with bass beats, metallic rattles, and swooshes that would not sound out of place on a Janus release. This is the introduction; the club saying hello, throwing down the gauntlet. It’s intimidating but it does not intimidate Foodman, who responds with a pair of songs that showcase a streamline version of the midi diddling we have all come to know and love. On “Foot,” Foodman takes the pounding bass of the first two songs and pares it down, burying it in the mix and inverting the mood with a playful groove built around a pitched up and looped whistle and some hollow drum sounds. Track 4, “Erekutoro” is Foodman flouting the club entirely, eschewing the bass, replacing it with 2:45min of syncopated blips, coughs, squishes and a pleasantly irritating high frequency buzz.
Mutually impressed and exhausted, the club and Foodman team up for a pair of “chillout” tracks that while hot as hell, smolder more than they burn. Incorporating the club’s danceable sensibility with a whole array of Foodman’s strange sounds that slide under, coil around, and pierce through the groove, “Osoi” and its sequel anchor and condense the various ideas at play on the tape into a solid and contained form before the party really starts.
Tracks 6 & 7 are movers and shakers that reinvigorate the club and compel even the most reluctant among us to move. “Wrok,” a somewhat subdued affair, is a warm-up, if you will, for the dancers. A chance for them to stretch their legs get the blood flowing and test out some moves before the torrent of snares, bass hits, and pops that follow with “Arigato Men,” a certified juke banger. The night has really just begun. The club is really just starting to fill and everybody, I mean everybody, is going buck. There are probably like at least five or six footwork battles going on, and at least a few characters few standing as close to the speakers as possible wil’in out in their own way. The club is sped up and the people are feeling it. Foodman is at the DJ booth smirking, right index hovering above his computer, waiting for the moment to do something holy.
The last song on IKEIKE is similar to the first in that it is club music pure and simple, but unlike “Beats,” “Kitekudasai” is not the sound of the club flexing on Foodman. Not at all. Foodman owns this. Foodman and the club have fused and there is no more “competition,” there is no more critical distance, there is no more “post-” there is just a sweaty mass of people losing their collective shit to the brilliance that is Foodman.
The streets were hungry and Foodman had just what they needed. Let’s hope we get another meal soon.
“IkeIke” is available now on brand new LA based postgeography.