Dark Entries House | Deep House 8 Items

Dark Entries is again presenting an essential classic: the Chicago house anthem Essence of a Dream, by Risqué III. K’Alexi Shelby’s illustrious career has included releases on legendary labels such as Trax, DJ International, and Transmat, as well as collaborations with high profile artists such as Marshall Jefferson and Pet Shop Boys. But his musical journey began at the young age of 12, when he befriended Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles while frequenting the Music Box and Warehouse. In high school, he began to write songs and hone his poetic craft. “I recognized I had a gift to say what I was thinking. I would study Prince and Marvin Gaye, figure out what they meant and put my spin on it. The power of the word. I was writing love notes for all my boys in high school and making a killing. I would know what to say and what they should do.” In 1987, Shelby’s first solo release, Risqué III’s “Essence of a Dream” b/w “Risqué Madness,” was to be cemented in Chicago dance history. He was accompanied in the studio by his cousin and production mentor, Mr. Lee. The track’s effortlessly propulsive house rhythms (courtesy of the Roland Tr-727, Tr-707, and Tr-909), salsa-inflected bassline, and oneiric strings fuse magnificently with K’Alexi’s steamy, Prince-esque verse. Due to tight studio schedule times, his vocals were almost omitted. Says Shelby: “The session was coming to an end and I said I wanted to put the vocals on there. They said, ‘We got no time unless you can get your vocals right in one take’. I said, ‘Let it rip’ and went into the vocal booth...they just stood there with their mouths open. The look on their faces was priceless.” The B-side’s “Risqué Madness” is a tribute to Ron Hardy, DJ at the Music Box and one of K’Alexi’s formative influences. The track opens with Shelby’s processed voice announcing "I'd like to talk to you about escape. Let me take you away, away to a place where rhythm is life, and life is a never ending sound." This introduction captures how he felt dancing to disco every week at the Music Box. Hardy was known for playing an edit of Kikrokos’ “Life is a Jungle,” in which he looped the track’s lysergic breakdown. Shelby utilizes the same delirious loop but builds upon it with additional percussion, melodies, samples from Hardy favorite “Let No Man Put Asunder” by First Choice, and manipulated vocals taken from The Madam’s “The Sensuous Black Woman”, a recording used often in early Chicago house DJ sets and recordings. Both sides of this record perfectly reflect the spirit of Chicago house music. 'Essence of a Dream' has been remastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. The sleeve was designed by Eloise Leigh, and features a never-before-seen photo of a teenage Shelby taken at his high school, with a bold font evoking 80’s house music covers. Also included is a postcard with lyrics, an additional photo from the same session as the cover artwork, and liner notes from Shelby.

We are proud to welcome Fear-E for his Dark Entries debut Grey Skies In A Dear Green Place. Fear-E is the moniker of Scott McKay a Glasgow based DJ and producer. Scott has already made a name for himself as one of Glasgow’s most technically-gifted and diverse selectors over the past decade. Then a slew of releases on the home-grown Dixon Avenue Basement Jams and Super Rhythm Trax introduced Fear-E, equally skilled studio operator, to the world. Grey Skies In A Dear Green Place contains six club-ready tracks to “smash sound systems and illuminate sweaty warehouses.” The title is a reference to a nickname that Glasgow has, coming from Cumbric, means 'green hollow' or (dear) 'green place'. Layering cut-up vocals with warm thumping beats, Scott creates a stripped-back yet deeply jackin’ vibe. Call these tracks what you will, “acid attacks”, “club destroyers”, “pickle ticklers?!” All songs have been mastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. For the cover, Scott commissioned legendary Detroit illustrator Alan Oldham, who’s artwork has graced established an identity for Transmat and DJAX-UP-BEATS, to create a futuristic portrait of Glasgow in black & white and with green kryptonite flourishes by Eloise Leigh.

Photonz is the alias of Marco Rodrigues a DJ, producer and driving force of Lisbon's underground scene. For little over a decade now, he's been crafting his own deeply personal style of Portuguese house and techno for labels such as Créme Organization, 20:20 Vision, Don't Be Afraid, Skylax, Unknown To The Unknown and his own One Eyed Jacks. As a DJ, Photonz grew a reputation for deep crates and intensely euphoric sets and in 2017, together with Violet (co-founder at his Radio Quantica) and Lisbon's own Rabbit Hole collective, he started the now infamous Mina parties - a monthly, sex-positive, queer and intersectional-feminist techno party aimed at using the dissociative potential of intense raving to create a temporary space of suspension away from patriarchal expectations.

Etheric Body Music is Photonz’s debut 6-track EP for Dark Entries and a simultaneous reference to hermeticism and EBM (Electronic Body Music). Marco loves that “aesthetic when 80s industrial and EBM bands split up and start to make trance in the early 90s and all the ritual magick pushes them to zen stuff and they do ecstasy.” There's this concept in theosophy and hermetic philosophy of the Etheric Body, which is an energy body superimposed and connected to the physical body, similar to the acupuncture idea of an energetic body. That idea manifests itself as six primal club cuts, which also channel early techno, Drexciyan rhythms, balearic & old school jack. Raw arpeggiated synth lines and bass blast jut against metallic stabs and highly percussive shakedowns to create mournful atmospheric warped house. All songs have been mastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The vinyl comes housed in a psychedelic jacket with snakey green and purple velvet in an electric acid spewing weird biological alien energy form designed by Eloise Leigh.

Contemporary producer E. Myers has self released four limited edition white label 12”s since 2015, whilst managing to remain low profile. Whoever they are, we guess they’re huge fans of late 1980s Chicago House, Shep Pettibone, Colourbox and most of our reissues. So much that they asked us to re-release their second 12” ‘Hate / Love’ from 2016 backed with new remix of “Hate” made for Dark Entries. “Love” kicks off the A-side “beats out a wood-cut tattoo of tuff drums rubbed with balloon-squeak synths to sound like Gesloten Cirkel meets Helena Hauff,” said Boomkat. “Hate” is a dreamy house number that ultilzes a Roland TR-707 drum machine with a rounded bassline, horns and strings that lift it into the stratosphere. For the new remix of “Hate” Myers subtly shifts the pace and deepens the groove, stretching out the song to over 7 minutes of dubbed out New Beat phantasia. All songs have been remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The 12” is housed in a die cut disco jacket that features an original design by Eloise Leigh.

Disco legend Sylvester comes to Dark Entries with Private Recordings: August 1970, an intimate collection of vintage jazz, blues, and gospel. While Sylvester is best known for his chart-topping collaborations with producer Patrick Cowley, such as “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),” this release reveals his passion for the sounds of the 30s and 40s. In 1970 a 22-year-old Sylvester had moved to San Francisco and found himself involved with the Cockettes, the infamous psychedelic performance art troupe. Among this milieu was Peter Mintun, a pianist and record collector living in a commune devoted to retro culture. According to Mintun, “We were like hippies who lived in the twenties. We lived in a house that didn’t have anything modern in it. Nothing in it was made after World War II.” Mintun and Sylvester bonded over their love of Black singers of yore and were allotted a slot during Cockettes performances reviving the music of the Prohibition Era. One afternoon, Sylvester and Mintun recorded a number of their shared favorites using a high-end microphone a friend had acquired. Private Recordings features 9 songs from this session, including standards like “Stormy Weather,” “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and “God Bless the Child.” Sylvester’s unmistakable falsetto brings depth and a dash of camp to these familiar tunes. The recordings are casual and intimate, even capturing banter between Sylvester and Mintun; their brief rendition of “When My Dreamboat Comes Home” has the duo working out a melody in real time. In addition to their sonic explorations of decades past, Sylvester and Mintun also staged photographic shoots in vintage couture. Private Recordings comes with a 16-page booklet on firm cardstock featuring images from these never-before-seen shoots as well as liner notes from Mintun detailing his friendship with Sylvester and their experiences recording. All this is housed in a metallic silver sleeve designed by Eloise Leigh featuring a 1920’s Art Deco aesthetic. The record will be released on September 6th which would have been Sylvester’s 76th birthday, and all proceeds from Private Recordings will go to the two charities that Sylvester left his royalties after his death: Project Open Hand and PRC (formerly Aids Emergency Fund). This essential release documents the earliest known recordings from one of disco’s greatest talents.

Doc Sleep returns to Dark Entries with Cloud Sight Fade, an album of ethereal house and techno. Doc Sleep is the alias of DJ and producer Melissa Maristuen. Following 2023’s Birds, her ambient and IDM-leaning debut album, Cloud Sight Fade shows Doc drawing on her years of queer clubbing to bring us seven diverse tracks sitting between muscular New York house, Berlin twilight techno, and funky West-coast breakbeats. Production began in the Bay Area and was completed in Berlin; Maristuen says that this work became a love letter to the West Coast’s magnificent natural landscape, the light of the Pacific sunrise. While draped in dreamlike textures and melodies, this is also a record about embodiment and the memories that live within our corporeal forms. The powerful grooves on the breakbeat-inflected “Lemon Zest” and the propulsive “Cloud Sight Fade” remind us that dance music is for bodies dancing. Meanwhile, tracks like the sparkling album-closer “Enchanted Static” or the brooding groover “Water Sign” plunge us deeper into hypnotic depths. On Cloud Sight Fade, Doc Sleep guides us through slumber and wakefulness, in and out of our bodies, with the mastery of a seasoned DJ and clubgoer.

Photonz is the alias of Marco Rodrigues a DJ, producer and driving force of Lisbon's underground scene. For little over a decade now, he's been crafting his own deeply personal style of Portuguese house and techno. As a DJ, Photonz grew a reputation for deep crates and intensely euphoric sets and in 2017, together with Violet (co-founder at his Radio Quantica) and Lisbon's own Rabbit Hole collective, he started the now infamous Mina parties - a monthly, sex-positive, queer and intersectional-feminist techno party aimed at using the dissociative potential of intense raving to create a temporary space of suspension away from patriarchal expectations.

'Nuit' is Photonz’s debut album and a simultaneous reference the Egyptian Goddess of the Stars or Night. Marco was really swept away by the concept of ‘freedom of form under the night sky’, the accepting embrace of Nuit. Ancestral, but also socially advanced and utopian; a deification of the night time. These ideas manifest themselves as eleven songs spread across two LPs that wax and wane like the moon. Photonz channels early techno, Drexciyan rhythms, balearic & atmospheric house; layering sounds, creating moments. All songs have been mastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The vinyl comes housed in a royal blue and neon yellow jacket with duality/birth symbolism and trance-hieroglyphs designed by Eloise Leigh. Each copy includes a glow-in-the-dark sticker and a postcard with notes.