Rarely do you come across a dance music record that can benefit from footnotes. This is one. This is the “Afterhours Edition” of Fresh Meat’s return to the fore of your crate and public consciousness via their long-running When Bad People Cook Good Food V/A series.
With somewhere around 100 releases, Afterhours was one of the seminal Chicago labels – probably one of the best from 1999 to 2001, right in that millennial groove before the bottom fell out. Ralphi Rosario released some of his last great underground records on Afterhours; it helped along the careers of Ron Carroll, Jay-J and Johnny Fiasco and released comps by Colette & Heather before they landed on Om.
All three tracks here appeared in their original iteration on Afterhours, and all of the remixers (except young Garrett David who may have been a zygote at that point in time) were frequent flyers too. “Studio Nova” was Mazi of Fresh Meat’s alias for fuzzy disco-inspired jams, with “The Reason We Took It Underground” being probably his most popular record under that name (it was also recently given a re-rub via DJ Dan’s In Stereo).
And that ends the infinite jest of notes meant to introduce one of the nicest surprises to show up at the office this month. DJ Jes‘ “Genuine Flo” still has that barn-burning disco bump that stands out amid all of the “disco house” tracks of the era that can still be spun. Garrett David’s remix preserves that Chic Org-like sweaty strum and the faintest trace of a Latin swing in a late night mix that lives up to the name and brand “Afterhours.”
“The Reason We Took It Underground” is here in remastered and then re-imagined forms, with M0ZA1K giving way to three digital-only mixes from Afterhours alumni David Duriez.
