Instant House / HAMSI Boubeker

Details about two newly released reissue projects I worked on earlier in the year.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately and some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken + some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

Today is Bandcamp Friday, the day when Bandcamp waives its processing fees, allowing the musicians and labels who use the service to take home 100% of their sales. Usually, I try to have a list of recommended purchases ready for Bandcamp Friday. However, it’s been a bit of a week. Luckily though, a couple of reissue projects I worked on earlier in the year went on pre-order or sale today, so instead, I’m going to share a bit of info about them with you.

Instant House, Lost Horizons (Isle of Jura)

Context: For this release, I interviewed Joaquin "Joe" Claussell and wrote up an interview to support the record in consultation with Kevin from Isle of Jura.

Before he co-founded the legendary Sunday afternoon event Body & Soul with fellow New York DJs Danny Krivit and Francois Kevorkian in 1996, Joaquin "Joe" Claussell was the driving force behind Instant House, an eclectic production outfit who released a series of uplifting deep house records, several of which were spun by David Mancuso at the 90s iteration of his influential Loft parties.

In 1993, Instant House released their deepest single, Lost Horizons, through Jungle Sounds Recordings. The A-side, ‘Lost Horizons (The Mind Travel Saturday Night Sunday Morning Mix)’ is a seventeen-minute and twenty-second sojourn into the vibrant club sounds of early 90s NYC. Driven by a Latin-accented man-machine beat that marches into infinity, it comes backed by two shorter mixes, ‘Lost Horizons’ and ‘Lost Horizons (Percussion Bonus)’. Twenty-nine years later, Isle of Jura presents an official vinyl and digital reissue of this slow-burning deep cut.

The Instant House story begins in the late 80s at Dance Tracks, an East Village record store established by the businessman, DJ, and graphic designer Stan Hatzakis. Patronised by New York trendsetters like Frankie Knuckles and Larry Levan, Dance Tracks was considered one of the world's best underground dance music retailers.

During the winter of 1991, Stan got together with one of his best customers, Tony Confusione, to make music. A wall street guy by day and a keyboardist by night, Tony was also a serious DJ. Not long after their first recording sessions, they invited another Dance Tracks fixture, Joaquin "Joe" Claussell, to join them in Tony’s state-of-the-art home studio in Long Island. He brought a vibrant, percussive edge to the sample-based tracks Stan and Tony were cooking up. Emboldened, the three DJs began recording together as Instant House. That year, they released the Dance Trax EP.

In 1992, after Instant House had dropped two certified classics, 'Over' and 'Awade', for Jungle Sounds Records, Stan exited the group and sold Dance Tracks to Joe and his business partner, Stefan Prescott. Following Stan's departure, Joe and Tony headed into the studio for a special recording session. “I just remember how powerful the connection was while we were making that record,” explains Joe, recalling the creation of ‘Lost Horizons (The Mind Travel Saturday Night Sunday Morning Mix)’. “It was a very spiritual encounter in the studio.”

While laying out the drum patterns, sound effects, and arrangement, Joe explained the vibe to Tony, who played the lush cosmic chords and an effortless keyboard saxophone line over the top. “That was Tony completely feeling himself,” Joe reflects. “He performed majestically.”

After the release of the Lost Horizons 12”, Joe received a phone call from Cisco International Corp. A plane flight later, he was sitting in their label offices in Tokyo, talking to a senior record executive who wanted to introduce Lost Horizons to Japan. “What they were primarily doing at the time was pressing classical records - we’re talking thousand dollar plus classical reissues - and they wanted to license and distribute Lost Horizons,” Joe remembers. Three years later, Joe and Tony released 'Asking Forgiveness', their final 12” as Instant House, before parting ways with full hearts.

In the context of his career as a DJ, remixer, and producer, Joe is known for long songs and compositions. As Lost Horizons illustrates, he’s carried that impulse with him since his foundational days. “When I produce, I don’t believe in the beginning or endpoint of anything,” Joe explains. “I really despise the rules. To me, that’s not true to the art of creation. I just believe there is a flow in creation. When we were making music in the 90s, we were restricted by format, but that record could have gone on forever.”

The Instant House Lost Horizons 12” is housed in a full-sleeve jacket by Bradley Pinkerton based on the original release design. You can pre-order a copy on Bandcamp here.

HAMSI Boubeker, Le Chant Des Profondeurs (Frederiksberg Records)

Context: For this release, Andreas from Frederiksberg Records supplied me with a set of notes drafted up by Marie-Christine Prévost. I spent a bit of time rewriting, editing and sequencing them and voilà, here we are.

Since he began his career as a painter in the late eighties, the Brussels-based multidisciplinary artist HAMSI Boubeker has become known worldwide for bright, colourful and warm paintings. Artworks that convey the folklore and culture of his homeland Kabylia, a mountainous coastal region in northern Algeria, as seen through his eyes as a child. However, before he began exhibiting his life-affirming canvases in art centres, galleries and museums across Europe and North Africa, HAMSI's first love was folkloric music. 

Between 1979 and 1988, he released a series of beautiful singles and albums, most notably Le Chant Des Profondeurs (The Song of the Depths), originally released on LP in 1988. Three and a half decades after it was originally released, Frederiksberg Records is happy to present the first official reissue of Le Chant Des Profondeurs. A heady concoction of Kabylia region Berber traditional music, “drinking songs, Irish music, Breton folk music and jazz,” the eight songs  HAMSI presents on Le Chant Des Profondeurs draw deeply from the Kabyle traditions the women in his family have kept alive for generations.

“It was necessary to produce this album, to make my music and the messages in the lyrics travel so that people discover all humans are alike,” HAMSI explains. “Les Chant Des Profondeurs is an ode to freedom, peace and brotherhood.”

A musician, storyteller, painter, writer and poet, HAMSI Boubeker was born on April 22nd 1952, in Bejaia, a small Mediterranean port city in Kabylia. Growing up during The Algerian War in a family of eleven children, he found solace in polyphonic singing and the multiculturalism of Bejaia. In 1963, after Algeria won independence from France, HAMSI became a chorister at the Bejaia music conservatory. He studied popular Kabyle, Andalusian and Arabic songs before heading to Algiers to further his education. In the Algerian capital, he learned to play the guitar, joined a youth choir, and perfected his yearningly romantic singing style.  

After completing his studies and mandatory military service, HAMSI became an assistant to the renowned Algerian writer, anthropologist and linguist Mouloud Mammeri. While he was working for Mouloud, they travelled around the country collecting ancient folkloric songs, some of which would later inspire HAMSI's music. He also taught French in Algiers until 1979, when he travelled to Paris to record his first singles, ‘Afus Deg Gfus’ and ‘Listiamar’ for the Azwaw label. That year, he also visited Belgium for the first time and was immediately taken by how charming and welcoming the country was.

In 1980, he relocated there permanently, settling in Brussels. Five years later, HAMSI recorded his debut album Chante Les Berbères de Kabylie (Songs of The Berbers of Kabylia) and began to appear on numerous national radio and television programs. In the process, he helped introduce Belgium to his home country’s beautiful and melancholic folkloric music, winning acclaim in the local press along the way.

Having experienced The Algerian War firsthand growing up, HAMSI became involved in the anti-racism movement in Schaerbeek, a multicultural Brussels neighbourhood. It was an era when extreme right-wing groups were very active in Belgium. Against that backdrop, HAMSI became involved in activism and regularly performed at concerts in protest against war, nuclear weapons and racism. In his words, “My songs are weapons that don’t kill but bring life.”

In 1988, HAMSI released his second album, Le Chant Des Profondeurs. That same year, he began his career as a painter, exhibiting for the first time in 1989 at Brussels’ Charlier Museum. In the decades since, HAMSI has also written children’s books, poetry and art catalogues and helped organise international solidarity projects, using his creativity to fight for peace and a better world. In 2008, he was commissioned to decorate the Lemonnier Metro underground tram station in Brussels and made an Officer of the Order of the Crown by the Kingdom of Belgium for his artistic and humanitarian work. 

Fourteen years on, HAMSI continues to share his messages of peace, harmony, and tolerance as a painter, writer, poet, musician, and storyteller.  In 2022, he has been preparing for a new art project titled Les Mains de l' 'Hope, which on completion, will make the Lemonnier Metro underground the only tram station in the world dedicated to peace.

Le Chant Des Profondeurs is available for digital purchase through the Frederiksberg Records Bandcamp page here.

FIN