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Music

​Lockah's ON DECK Comes with Fightin' Words for the UK Underground

"I think a lot of 'dance' music coming from the underground is almost completely counterintuitive to cultivating the right atmosphere and vibe needed for a good night on the dancefloor."

Tuff Wax head Lockah is a slippery fish. His penchant for producing glitchy, melodic, pseudo-vapor cinematic booty jams is one that's prone to roving. His DJ sets are even harder to pin down. "Maybe some people don't know what to expect when I play a DJ set," Lockah tells THUMP from Edinburgh, Scotland. "But I'm always in love with tracks that have a raw edge and something fully dancefloor friendly within them."

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Lockah's debut ON DECK is informative of the machinations behind his recently released LP It Gets More Cloudy. "I want you guys to listen to this and understand where I'm coming from when I get behind the decks. Here we've got some obscure rave things from yesteryear, Drexciyan New Wave, 80s Japanese oddities, Kraftwerk covers and all sorts of other tracks with tough breaks and danceable funk…Some of it a little ridiculous, but all of it is great music to my ears"

"This is the kind of thing that I listen to," he goes on. "Strip away some of the big melodies that I'm known for with the Lockah material, the ravey, b-more breaks, tape fuzz and squirmy bass lines are all still there."

THUMP // ON DECK: Lockah by Thump on Mixcloud

Lockah's music has always had one ear to a nostalgic recollection of the 80s. Part of this is wrought by a general distaste for current affairs in dance music. "Anyone who thinks this is a truly golden time for 'forward thinking' electronic music is not on the same wavelength as me," he says. "I also think a lot of 'dance' music coming from the underground is almost completely counterintuitive to cultivating the right atmosphere and vibe needed for a good night on the dancefloor."

"I think I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for something truly new and fun to happen right now in the UK. It seems like a bunch of people involved in it are a little humorless, and that the people calling me out for being corny should take a long hard look at their own taste in music first." We don't think you're corny, Lockah. We think you're rad.

Lockah is on Facebook // SoundCloud // Twitter

Tracklist:
Intro - What A Way To Celebrate
Levon Vincent - Bonus Beats
Benoit B - Bingo
Kornél Kovács - Gangster
The Cyclist - Sheen
DJ Rush - I Wanna (Chewed & Scropped)
Jive Rhythm Trax - BPM 117
Duane And Co - J.B. Traxx
Jail Break - Mentality
Kowton - More Games
Acen - Close Your Eyes
DJ Overdose - Ruimtepuinruimer
Jamm 85 X-Press - Get The Fuck Out
Glass Domain - Interlock (Bellio Duplo Edit)
State Of Mind - Untitled Drumapella
Thomas Banglater - Juan Atkins Loop
DJ Technics - Computer Madness 2007
Anthony Rother - Trans Europe Express
Aksel Friburg - Viking Music (Disco Mix)
LA Dream Team - Calling On The Dream Team (Melo D Edit)
Black Devil Disco Club - The Devil In Us (Dub)
Hiroyuki Namba - Who Done It? (Part 2)