FOUK / THE PHENOMENAL HANDCLAP BAND / ARCHIL & LEON / 79.5 - TUNE IT OUT

We just say Fouk. For Daniel Leseman & Junktion (Hans Peeman), successful producers on their own merits and friends since childhood, a collaboration was inevitable. Their house sound infused with disco and a lot of funk has been proven to be very infectious. After the infamous Detroit Swindle signed them to their Heist imprint and released the booming Kill Frenzy EP their name was established firmly to a broad and quickly growing audience. The result was requests for DJ sets across Europe, the America’s & Australia with personal highlights including Glastonbury, LoveBox, Concrete Paris, Output New York, Club Space Miami, Claire and De Marktkantine in Amsterdam. Their first vinyl release as Fouk, on their own Outplay Records was met with great enthusiasm, the brilliant reactions to ‘Stuff Your Dad Liked’ and ‘Cat Lady’ propelled Fouk and Outplay firmly into the scene as the ‘one to watch’. Since then they’ve released EP’s on Room With A View, The House of Disco and Razor-n-Tape and made a string of strong remixes for the likes of Kraak & Smaak, Smoove & Turrell, Groove Armada, The Brand New Heavies, Luke Million, Joey Negro and Mayer Hawthorne. After releasing ‘Release The Kraken EP’ featuring Thumpasaurus on The House of Disco, ‘Truffles EP’ on Heist Recordings in 2019 and two EP’s on their own Outplay offshoot ’24 Carrot’ they return again on Heist in 2021 with ‘Blue Steel EP’. Continuing to build on the sound they have evolved throughout the years with a new impulse of creativity. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

The Phenomenal Handclap Band is a tight-knit aggregation of musicians and artists from Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. At the center of it is Daniel Collás, the Witch Doctor, and Sean Marquand, the Medicine Man; who, after years of searching and contemplation, through live performance and the manipulation of recorded music, have finally succeeded in assembling the personification of their holy vision: Patrick Wood, Nicholas Movshon, Luke O'Malley, Laura Marin, Quinn Luke, and Joan Tick, enhanced by the remarkable talents of Aurelio Valle, Carol C, Jaleel Bunton, Bart Davenport, Jon Spencer, and Lady Tigra, among carefully chosen others. Together they have crafted a sound that is equal parts anthemic, dancefloor-oriented and orchestral, borrowing elements from progressive rock, disco, electro, and psychedelia. The Phenomenal Handclap Band started when Collás and Marquand, two New York underground club DJs, became restless with the concept of playing other people's music. Both had also been involved in the thriving nightlife scene, and had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of esoteric music ranging from Brazilian soul to vintage psych-rock, so becoming producers seemed to be the next logical step. After working with a wide range of artists, from veteran soul acts to up-and-coming rock n' rollers, the duo set their sights on The Phenomenal Handclap Band, a supergroup comprised of various luminaries of the indie rock and underground soul scenes. The resulting self-titled debut is the harmonious culmination of numerous diverse musical backgrounds, as well as a testament to Collás’ and Marquand’s singular musical vision. The album begins with the meditative strains of the epic "Journey to Serra da Estrela" which erupts into a driving synthesized force, and foreshadows the arrival of "Testimony", in which Jaleel Bunton (TV on the Radio) provides a fiery psychedelic guitar backdrop for Aurelio Valle's (Calla) voodoo incantations. Carol C (Sí Se) lends her considerable vocal talents to "You'll Disappear", a cosmic disco floor-filler that sets the stage for The Lady Tigra's (L'Trimm) jump-rope rhymes on the soon-to-be classic summer jam, "15 to 20". Live, The Phenomenal Handclap Band is distilled to an eight-member powerhouse, an eye-popping spectacle that overwhelms the senses. It pulses with a savage rhythm section that provides the ultimate foil for cascading guitars and electrified washes of organ and synthesizers. Their delirious sermonizing whips crowds into a charismatic frenzy. Needless to say, their live shows are more akin to a spiritual church revival than an actual rock show. The Phenomenal Handclap Band’s self-titled debut album is being released by the acclaimed Brooklyn indie label Friendly Fire Recordings on June 23, 2009. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

Attempting to pigeonhole 79.5 into something as narrow as a single genre would be an ill advised, if not impossible task. The New York City band sounds like someone spinning a radio dial with such passionate intensity that all the stations blend together into a single, transcendent, almost spiritual force. It’s disco to the beat of modern house; it’s a Supremes cover of a Cardi B banger; it’s Roland Kirk playing jazz through one saxophone, funk through another, and the most earwormy pop tune the 1970’s could muster through a third. It’s an experience—one so effecting that with only a self-released 12” single in circulation, 79.5 had been written up twice in The New Yorker on the merit of their live sets alone. Their debut album Predictions is produced by Leon Michels and was recorded at The Diamond Mine in Queens the old school way, with the whole band playing the songs in one take and captured to analog tape. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.