Hugo LX, Worldship Music & the Return of the Teflon Dons, Cee ElAssaad and more inside 5 Mag Issue 202, out now.
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Themes sometimes emerge when you’re working on an issue. For this issue, it feels like the theme that emerged was “discovery” – of yourself, of your work by others, and what it even means in the underground to be “discovered.” Who should you be making music for? Yourself? Your dancefloor? What would it matter if they never heard you – your best work, or your “real” work?
Strangely, a bunch of the people in this issue have worked together, and even appeared on the same V/A compilation at pivotal (though very different) points in their respective careers. It wasn’t planned. That kind of synergy just happens when you’re dealing with real life stories – when you’re grounded in the scene and looking at it over your shoulder rather than from high in the sky.
This issue turned out to be more than 100 pages, which if it isn’t our longest is really close to it.
We profile Hugo LX, deep house producer from France – one of our favorite producers and one of your favorite DJ’s producers to be sure. He’s released records on Balance, NDATL, Spinna’s WonderWax, People of Earth — basically everywhere you’d look first for good deep house music, rooted in soul.
We also recount the wonderful story of Worldship Music – a Los Angeles-based label run by Aaron Paar. Worldship released a handful of records in the late 1990s (including the first recording by vocalist Gregory Porter), went on hiatus for 18 years and found a whole new audience in the interim. Today those early records are considered among the best underground house records of the ’90s. But uniquely – Paar and Worldship have continued to dig up new tracks, and two of the records released in 2022 are the equal of those classic tracks and among the best underground house music tracks released this year.
As always, there’s more inside, and more listed below. Thanks for your support!
WHAT’S INSIDE 5 MAG #202:
🔴 “Everyone Is About To Feast on the Beast.” A who’s who of classic Chicago House Artists have launched a legal strike to reclaim their rights from Trax Records. A reckoning over the past has been a long time coming.
🔴 Rudiments: Worldship Music and the Return of the Teflon Dons. How Worldship Music became one of the best underground house labels in America – more than 20 years after calling it quits.
🔴 The Platinum Wave with Hugo LX. What you need to know about Hugo LX is that he’s making some of the best dance music in the world right now. 5 Mag’s cover story with the French producer and DJ with a new project and a new label, Doma Music. Photos by Marco Miraglia.
🔴 Cee ElAssaad: Evolve. Will Sumsuch meets Cee ElAssaad, Moroccan DJ and producer among a fresh crop of electronic artists from North Africa and the Middle East with a singular sound.
🔴 Being Jojo Baby. Subject of two documentaries, original club kid, artist and living art, Queen! host Jojo Baby is an icon. He could also use some help.
🔴 This Year’s Festival Season Was Brought To You By Mastercard. Ravenomics: Fans were gouged like mad for festival tickets and travel in the summer of 2022, taking on debt that will now be more difficult to pay off.
🔴 Kill All Scammers. Galaxy Brain: The pandemic breathed new life into some old-as-dirt music industry scams. Why do we keep falling for them?
🔴 The Everything Machine. Heavy Machinery: The cost is high, the learning curve is steep, but Akai’s MPC Key 61 could be your everything.
🔴 Lalaland. Screen Grab: AI-aided sampling that actually works, until the RIAA takes it down. Hands-on with LALAL.AI.
🔴 Smashing Apples. Unpluggable: Focal’s Bathys headphones are a cut above Apple’s top wireless HiFi noice-cancelling cans.
🔴 Spotify’s Dumbest Thing. Canceled after just 5 months, Car Thing was another multi-million dollar swindle Spotify chased instead of paying musicians fairly.
🔴 Music Reviews 202. Your home for longform reviews of deep house, soulful house, electro, techno, disco and underground electronic music, featuring records from Liquid Earth, Kevin Reynolds (Yoruba), Rico Casazza (Perimeter Junk), Byron The Aquarius (Heist), Qrauer (Nonostar Records), ZG (Scissor & Thread), Theo Parrish (DJ Kicks), Manuel Tur (Compost Records), Tee Mango (AnoAno), Ralph Kinsella (8D Industries), Toribio (Real Feel Records), Freudenthaler (Brombert Records) and Christopher Willits (Ghostly International).
🔴 In Rotation 202. Records we love and are playing the hell out of from Dave Angel (Something Happening Somewhere), Swoose (Feel My Bicep), Peter Schumann (Sound of Berlin), Andy Ash (Quintessentials), Westcoast Goddess (Aterral), Lakeshore Commission ft. Bluey (Z Records), The WildViolets, Brame & Hamo, Javarnanda (ZepTepi), Groovy D (Hot Haus Records), justindemus (Jujuka) and Samuel Lawrence (R Side Recordings).
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