If I had to nominate just one DJ to represent everything Chicago stands for as a city, a people and a musical sanctuary, that DJ would be Frique. Let me explain for those from out of town, because they only way you could disagree with this statement is if you’ve never been here for even a weekender:
If Frique isn’t DJing at your party, then he’s most likely on your dancefloor. If he isn’t on your dancefloor, he’s most likely playing or getting down somewhere else. He’ll play a big room, a small room, even a room that isn’t a room, and nobody will leave the building feeling he or she has been cheated. In a couple of decades and counting, they never have.
Most of our heroes will let us down. They’ll move away, fall off, become bitter or play progressive trance (which is more or less the same thing). But it’s very difficult for me to imagine the Chicago scene without Frique in it. They’re so symbiotic the music and the scene and the city and the DJ that I literally cannot imagine it without him.
Frique has been picking up steam as a producer in the last few years, and this release is my favorite record from Farris Wheel in awhile. As the name implies, both tracks are disco-heavy; and as the presence of Frique implies, they’re heavy on the feelgood vibe too. “Love Is…” stretches for nearly 7 minutes of orchestra hits, tastefully edited strings and a woodpecker drilling into a bongo. “Take Ten” throws down some sparse beats beneath the cut-up vocal stabs and rude horns. They’re both very well done; the only complaint is that two tracks from this man are simply not enough.
[…] I had to nominate just one DJ to represent everything Chicago stands for as a city,” we once wrote, “that DJ would be Frique.” But as of late, Chicago’s Frique has been flexing his […]