House Of Downtown
Author: Stephen Jewell
The debut 'Release' from Auckland dance duo House of Downtown was hailed as the album that would put New Zealand house music on the world map, when it appeared in mid 2001. Unfortunately, 'Release''s release was protracted, plagued by squabbles, and then the album itself didn't live up to the unrealistically high expectations that surrounded it.Even though the album failed to set the charts alight (no one's talking numbers), neither HoD's Christiaan Ercolano and Emerson Todd nor their label have been deterred. The pair are set to release their sophomore effort, 'Mutha Funkin Earth', again on Universal Music, in early May.
"'Release' sold what any other album by any other dance duo was selling at the time, but unfortunately, it was only in New Zealand," says Todd.
"It was as good as I expected," Ercolano adds. "But a lot of people don't understand that we're writing our own albums, we're not doing mix tapes."
The two say that their first album's release was so drawn out that by the time it came out, they were "... so over it". Problems were mainly caused by the numerous samples that they had originally included on the debut.
"There was a lot of bad things that happened between us and our record label, which have now been sorted out. We were probably over-reacting about the samples," says Todd. "But it wasn't us at all. We were the ones who, when we finished the album, were saying '... the samples are sweet, you try and find them.'
"The problem was that (Sydney dance producers and HoD's friends) Pnau got majorly screwed over just before our album came out. Their album, 'Sambanova' was pulled from the shelf because of big, obvious stuff like huge Miles Davis samples. So (Universal) freaked out and gave us an ultimatum. It all had to be cleared or they weren't going to release the album, and this was after they'd said 'Go ahead'."
Because of all that, he says, with this album they haven't worried about New Zealand so much.
"This is us trying to push ourselves overseas. And it's very much our second go at doing the first album because we felt so restricted on 'Release'. For this album, we were, for the first time, free to do what we wanted to do."
According to Universal's MD Adam Holt, the band and record label have agreed to put the debut album behind them and approach 'Mutha Funkin Earth' with a blank slate.
"While 'Release' didn't sell quite as well as everyone hoped, Universal were still passionate about what House of Downtown were doing," says Holt. "We sat down with Christiaan and Emerson in mid 2002 and reviewed 'Release's performance and talked about the new album. Having listened to what they wanted to achieve, we had no hesitation in funding their second album."
'Mutha Funkin Earth' is not so much a radical reinvention, more a subtle shift, with the album's many vocal tracks conveniently placed at the start and the more experimental, dance-floor tunes relegated to the back.
"This album is taken from where the vocal tracks on 'Release' were going," explains Ercolano. "We're now working solidly with vocalists. We wanted to hear singing and we wanted to hear big basslines. Everything we do would be much better understood by Americans. To me, what we do is American singing styles done by Polynesians over traditional good grooves.
