Slow To Speak in New York

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  • For years, Paul Nickerson and Francis Englehardt's Celebrate Life parties were one of New York's best kept secrets. Held in their tiny Dope Jams record store, the events were thrillingly raw, fog-drenched affairs outfitted with pristine sound, prestigious guest DJs and an illegal bar run out of their dungeon-like basement. Although their approach to customer service during the day left them with a reputation as caustic house evangelists, behind the decks everything seemed to click into place and the chemistry was irresistible. With the store now closed, priced out of its rapidly-gentrifying neighborhood, the duo has relocated the parties to the Good Room, a newer venue in Brooklyn. Only six months old, it has quickly established itself as a bastion of high-quality house music, with Andrés, Joey Anderson and DJ Sprinkles all having played. In typical Celebrate Life style, the party was announced on their web page with breathless hype. "Music unites, or so the saying goes, and yet only a few times in history has this saying actually proved to be true," they began, before promising to never look back, only forward, and to free dance music from the stranglehold of corporate conformity which has recently plagued it. This type of rhetoric is typical of Nickerson and Englehardt, but I wondered how their vision would hold up in a venue not completely under their command. As they warmed up the night (there was no opener) their focus rested squarely on NYC house rarities; mellow, liquid grooves unfurled amidst a cloud of pungent Nag Champa. The duo were in their element as early arrivals made their way to the floor, effortlessly establishing a rapport with the slowly-growing audience. Suddenly at 1 AM, as if snapped out of a dream, they abruptly switched to a thunderous, eight-minute section of furiously beat-juggled acid. The warm introduction had officially ended, and for the next two hours they rode seamlessly between heavier Chicago fare, disco classics like Evelyn "Champagne" King's "I'm In Love" and David Joseph's "You Can't Hide (Your Love From Me)" and occasional modern cuts. Although the atmosphere was celebratory, the venue's frenetically strobing spotlights were painfully blinding and the sound was being pushed into searingly bright zones. The lushness and lawlessness of their Dope Jams parties was replaced by an increasingly assaultive feeling, and while the music was uniformly great, it was difficult to square their decidedly reverent selections with their almost-militant manifesto. Nonetheless, the duo oozed personality and vision, their many contradictions part of their charm.
RA