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Music

Composuresquad "Freaked Out" When He Heard This Horror-Like Club Track

The Last Record: the Chicago-based DJ and member of the Them Flavors nightlife collective picked a mix of experimental club, reggaeton and dembow tracs.
Photo of Saint Icky and Composure Squad by Christopher Wong.

Whether it's for playing out at a club or listening at home, DJs and producers typically have an encyclopedic hoard of music, new and old. In The Last Record, they tell us about the last three songs or albums they've purchased, and why these were important additions to their music collection.

This week, we spoke to Jermaine Collins, aka Composuresquad, a DJ and member of the Them Flavors nightlife collective. Catch the DJ next at Eutopia 3 at Rutcorp in Chicago on June 17th. "It's a great party with a variety of DJs, live performers and visual artists the entire night, and brings the actual most diverse crowd I've seen at any series," Collins said.

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Red Rat - "Tight Up Skirt"

Recently, I've been inspired to explore more diverse sounds than what I usually play in my sets (club, rap, techno ranging from 115-140 BPM). This lead me to reggaeton, which I've heard in passing a lot living in Humboldt Park [a predominantly black and Puerto Rican neighborhood in Chicago] the last two years. I didn't get into dancehall at all, besides a few songs that I really liked (most notably "Text Message" by Busy Signal).

I saw someone post this song as a "mood" on IG and looked it up. When I heard the beat–more minimal and with less of the roots style that is standard in early dancehall and Red Rat's high pitched voice coupled with sexually suggestive lyrics that I couldn't completely understand–I was blown away. I listened to only dancehall for about a week after that, collecting names/low bitrate mp3's of older albums or singles that I liked.

El Alfa - "Segueta"

As I said before, I've been listening to a lot of reggaeton. I've wanted to play what I'd liked from artists like Daddy Yankee, Voltio, and Don Omar while DJing, but realized I had no connection to the music as I had no idea what they were saying. I also had a desire to play songs that Spanish speakers would immediately recognize, so I hit up my friend in New York who also throws and plays parties for "actual hits." He provided me with a couple playlists and this song immediately stuck out to me.

It was faster than what I'd become accustomed to hearing. But it also uses the same characteristics as most of what I like like a few sound effects (a bell, a hollow sounding whistle and something that sounds like a windy saw) along with driving percussion. I learned later that this was just called dembow.

Kieran Loftus - "Satin Sixers Jacket"

When I first heard this song late last year, I freaked out. My tastes veer on the darker/more experimental side of dance music, and this was honestly unlike anything I'd heard up to that point. The first third of the song sounds like a horror film, using only synth, an acid bass line, and pitched down vocals to set the mood. Around a minute later, the drums come in, and while the patterns are familiar, they shift from Philly club to techno in 30 seconds. This is all at 119 BPM. The effect is amazing, and the four songs [Kieran Loftus has] released since then are in the same family of sound.