DJ-Kicks: Eris Drew (2LP) [!K7]

Format: 2x12" in gatefold sleeve.

Tracklist:
A1 Zen Experience - People Won't You Come Along
A2 Motion Blue - Scream
B1 Direct 2 Disc - Excuse Me (Stab Mix)
B2 Darwin Chamber & DJ Utopia - Tribute (DJ Utopia’s Mix)
B3 Octo Octa - Cabin Dance
C1 Eris Drew - Hope In a Smoke Filled Room
C2 Toka Project - Toka Love Project
D1 Eskimos & Egypt - Fall From Grace (Distressed Version by Moby)
D2 Eris Drew - Momentary Phase Transition

The next installment in the classic DJ-Kicks series is a selection of rapturous house, ethereal breaks, and transcendental rave from the high priestess of the motherbeat herself, Chicago DJ Eris Drew. A DJ, producer, and musician, longtime Smartbar resident, and co-creator of the T4T LUV NRG party and label, Eris has been mixing records since the early 90s, taking her ecstatic house and energetic, uncompromising mixing style to clubs, raves, and festivals all over the world ever since.

Her 79-minute DJ-Kicks, as she puts it, presents “the funky, emotional, ecstatic house and breaks backbone that defines my sound,” and features tracks, remixes, and exclusives from Moby, Calisto, DJ Garth, Onionz, DJ Who, Kair, Hoof, and Toka Project, as well as her own and her partner Octo Octa’s productions.

The result of countless hours of digging, her selection dives deep into rattling breaks, rave stabs, and ghostly strings of 90s classic — and lost gems — of hybrid house-breaks, combining them with more recent finds. The mix moves seamlessly between the emotional, bittersweet and evocative, and the raw, hard and gnarly.

Put together on two turntables and one mixer in her cabin studio in New Hampshire, this is more than just a collection of explosive tracks: “I recorded it in my cabin while the violent world spun around me. Being in my sanctuary in the forest was important; the mix needed to convey the feeling of that place and the inspiration it gives me.” It's a session that accurately captures Eris Drew’s sound and approach: finely tuned selections, seamless transitions, and high-energy cuts, scratches, and spinbacks put in the service of a single goal: “I wanted the mix to feel like climbing a mountain, to produce an ecstatic feeling of overcoming.”

Eris started mixing records at 18 and has barely stopped since, honing the skills that come together on this session over three decades. As she says: “I’m an exclusively vinyl DJ with over 30 years of mixing, and I feel like the mix reflects that.”

Many of these records have been with her for years, traveling the world with her. The age of some of them can be felt because she expressly asked the mastering engineer to preserve it in the reproduction. Raw and real: this is the sound of Eris Drew.