DJ Nate - Hatas Our Motivation

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Ant on Thu 29 Jul, 2010.

No doubt you've all heard about Footwork > The latest underground dance craze from Chicago which is keeping young people out of crime and involves some quite incredible high -speed dance moves where they're choosing to have dance-offs rather than shoot each other (apparently). The sound is a sort of evolution from ghetto house/ booty/ ghetto tech. the foundations of which were laid down by the likes of DJ FUNK, Deeon, Slugo etc. The footwork tracks on this EP are fairly typical of what I've heard on Youtube with hyper-syncopated rhythms, manipulated R&B samples and a sort of primitive and innocent production aesthetic that I enjoy. The samples used are entertaining and reference the dance battles with snippets like 'Make 'em run'. It's strange music that uses vocals like percussion hits and has weird time signatures but really does make sense when you see guys dancing to it like here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3bnZuZGvIQ

*Planet Mu's priority new artist for 2010.
*DJ Nate, born Nathan Clark, grew up in the westside of Chicago, he’s 20 years old and started making footwork tracks 5 years ago.

*Footwork tracks are instrumental tracks made for Footwurking, or Jukin'; a dance style that’s local to Chicago that kids use to let off steam and compete with each other, a distant relative of the breakdance style of uprocking crossed with foot moves that have their roots in Jazz dancing.

*The Footwork sound has its roots in Chicago House, and the influence and speeds of the pioneering ghetto house label 'Dance
Mania' is clear: the tough sentiments and hip hop influence is all there, but the fast linear hypnotic 4x4 sound of those records has been re-calibrated and given an ultra syncopated treatment to test dancers.

*These tracks have a unique drama and a pressure that is unique to footwork but reminiscent of the edited drum syncopation of
jungle and also hip hop cutting in DJ battles.

*For ‘Hatas Our Motivation’, Nate’s first ever worldwide release beyond small edition cdrs and tracks posted on youtube,
he uses the basic palette of samples from pop and hip hop, pitched, layered and triggered into unusual edits, usually with a
repeated phrase used to spur on the dancing. This hypnotizing effect, combined with sparse 808 drum patterns, often with busy
fills, relentless triplets and off-kilter accents, is used to create very different variations in his sound. ‘Hatas Our
Motivation’ is six tracks from Nate’s archives. We think there is plenty here to get your head around or just enjoy if
you’re already familiar with a few of the tracks here.

*Opening with the grimey ‘Hatas Our Motivation’ leading into the more soulful ‘Ima Burn Him’ which drops to half speed but adds double speed drum fills and a hypnotic vocal sample, to the murky and chopped to hell ‘We Can Work This Out’ with its pitched up vocals reminiscent of old rave tracks, and the robotic half speed hip hop vibe of ‘Back Down’, this is a taster before the album drops.