Lost tribesman

>> Inside NYC house DJ Dennis Ferrer’s inner circle

by PETER LIGHTBURN

Whoever dares to pen house music’s obituary is gonna have to deal with cats like the much-travelled New York DJ/producer Dennis Ferrer. Armed with a sharp melodic ear and a keen business sense, he has been running Sfere Records with the fabled Kerri Chandler since 1998. Ferrer’s output is a striking panoply of gospel stompers, Brazilian afro-jazzers and downhome, clubby soul, surfacing on A-list labels throughout the U.S. and Europe such as Ibadan, Large, Easy Street, Basic, Chillifunk and King Street. A hotly anticipated Bombay Records release with Chandler, entitled Where I Live, will greatly augment his standing in the house community.

Mirror: Let’s go back to your techno days. What factors made you gravitate to what you’re doing now?
Dennis Ferrer: I was always into the soulful side of house, but never expanded on the possibility of entering the genre until I got together with Kerri, who basically schooled me. At the time I was doing electronic music, it had not become a huge thing and the cash advances were pretty minimal, making it difficult to make any kind of decent living off it. So everything kind of pointed to my gravitation to house. Even though electronic is pretty big these days, my heart always has been and always will remain with soulful house.

M: What is the concept behind the Lost Tribes of Ibadan?
DF: The Lost Tribes of Ibadan is a concept that Kerri and I came up with when I did a remix of Kerri and Vera Mara’s “Saudacao Aos Orixas,” on Ibidan. We didn’t want the track to come up as a so-called legitimate release, so we thought of this concept as a way of putting out tracks that were different for us and kept our audience intrigued, as there would be no names on the labels for them. In order to know the names, you kind of have to be in our circle and this makes for great interest and publicity.

M: What’s special about your working relationship with Kerri Chandler?
DF: The partnership is an interesting one as we don’t really work together in the same room. We pass along our parts to each other as we finish each recording, and we each come up with different interpretations. This kind of method rounds out our releases and it avoids the typical argumentative situations that most partnerships eventually come to.

M: You two have a project with Montreal’s Bombay Records coming out. How did it come about? How will it be different from other material?
DF: Bombay approached me with the idea last January. They figured that it would be a good idea to release a short look at what our partnership has accomplished since our label’s inception. And since most of our releases are never pressed a second time, this would be a good chance to make sure that everyone would have the ability to possess them. This is special for me, as I don’t even have pressings of my own back catalogue! It’s totally unmixed, so you can enjoy them without interference and this allows you to play them out if you’re DJing. So go out and buy it! Hint, hint! Oh, and there’ll be a special, unreleased track on there also—and no, I’m not telling you what it is! :

With Patrick Dream at Illume on Friday, Sept. 20, 11pm, $10

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