I had an interesting conversation with my housemate over the weekend, as I discussed the fact that I was going out that evening to a night dedicated to the music I listened to in 2006. ‘You know those sad ex-90s kids who we used to see going to retro parties,’ he asked, ‘Is that us now?’ It seems apt, really. There’s never been a better time to acknowledge that you’re no longer young and stupid. As I settle comfortably into an age when I can definitely stand at the back of the room at any show with my arms crossed rather than actually make any sudden movements, all of the crazy sounds of my past are coming out of the woodwork. Many of them, like the mashup frenzies of the Bang Gang DJs, and even golden geese The Presets, are close to or have hit their ten year anniversary. Ten years. There were kids in the club last night who’d never heard ‘Ice Cream’. It was when this realisation dawned on me, that I had become a noughties tragic with my compass permanently hovering between 2005 and 2008, that I simultaneously became aware that I haven’t had a good dance like this in a long, long time. And coincidentally it was at the one-off reunion of a club night called ‘Wamp Wamp’.
What I always loved about ‘Wamp Wamp’, a throwdown of styles and sounds from DJs bold enough to look beyond America for inspiration, is that anything went. From the Baile Funk ghetto hustle of Bonde Do Role through to the ridiculous swagger of Clipse, the guys behind this party firmly believed that anything with a beat and a bassline could (and would) be mashed into something else. They went deep and then kept going, probably the reason that many Sydney and Melbourne kids heard M.I.A, Edu K and Yelle for the first time. From bling to barrios, rap to booty claps, it was all on. I distinclty remember hating Clipse the first time I heard them, and only rediscovering their music after hearing a track like ‘Wamp Wamo’ played utterly out of context. As performers, Malice (now a born-again Christian named – you guessed it – ‘No Malice’) and Pusha T were pretty disgusting. They loved talking about pushing kilos of cocaine up and down the coast and they had more synonyms for that shit than Kanye West had pastel polos. But here’s the great thing about Clipse, as opposed to T’s later solo career; you didn’t have to listen to what they were saying to enjoy them. Tight with The Neptunes pretty much from the word go – you’ll recall their fiery verse on Justin Timberlake’s breakout record, ‘Like I Love You’, the brothers benefitted from the hottest production in the game. ‘Wamp Wamp’, easily one of the most twisted grooves Pharrell cooked up in that era, just screamed ridiculous. It was so far removed from reality, with those steel drum samples and hundred-tone thwacks, that there was nothing to do but bounce from side to side and roll up to the dancefloor like a moron.
As I’ve mentioned in a recent piece on Anna Lunoe, while the Internet may have changed the varied ways in music is being discovered, DJs were our everything. I like to think that I was a pretty experimental kid when it comes to bands I liked, but walking into one of these night was like being hit in the face with a veritable mIRC wet salmon. Clipse tracks still have that effect now. ‘Wamp Wamp’ is brilliantly over-the-top, successfully larger than life, and has guaranteed Pusha T a platform for onomatopoetic exhortations over sparse beats for the rest of his natural life. So yeah, perhaps I am getting old if I’m looking back at Clipse misty-eyed when I thought they were more entertaining than they were entertainment. Maybe I just want to go up to the same people in another ten years and say ‘Wamp Wamp’ and know that they’ll come back at me with that absurd ‘What it do’ Maybe Pusha T just sold ten rocks while I was writing this and bought another all-black Gallardo.
Whatever. I can feel those drums and I can hear that snakecharmer synth.
Let’s dance like we’re not ageing.
Clipse – ‘Wamp Wamp (What It Do)’
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