DANIEL WANG FALL USA DJ DATES TBA

Bullet Points
* Daniel Wang started his independent label BALIHU in NYC in 1993. The labels unique take on Disco and early House and Techno has been a huge influence on the modern disco scene and layed the groundwork for 00's labels like DFA, Wurst, Rong and many others
* This comprehensive collection of Balihu cuts is the first time many of these tracks have appeared on CD (scroll down for full tracklist)
*Hercules and Love Affair cite Daniel as a big influence and just included one of his tracks on their recent mix CD. Daniel's tracks have also been licensed to an incredible array of nu-disco mix CDs including Dimitri From Paris' "Playbox Mansion" mix. Daft Punk also cited thanked Daniel in the liner notes of one of their CDs



WRITE WHAT? ABOUT BALIHU RECORDS?
by Daniel Wang - courtesy FAITH MAGAZINE UK

Uh... I had some reservations about writing about my own label, not least because in the past few years, it seems like i've produced more magazine columns than new tracks!... And frankly, because there's nothing i dislike more than artists who talk a lot about their own art -- you walk into the Tate Modern and there's a pile of coal and some glaring neon sign which took no imagination or skill to create, and if you didn't read the long paragraph on the wall and the monograph in the book shop, you'd never guess that the coal is supposed to represent exploitation of African miners, or that the neon stands for years of being abused by drug-addicted boyfriends... i mean, really. It seems that a great "anything" wouldn't require explanation. Like we all felt with house music when we first heard it so long ago. You heard that sound, and BAM! You just had to find out where to get that high over and over again...

So, since Faith Magazine and Rush Hour Records asked me to do a piece about these 15 years of Balihu Records, i thought i'd share some personal thoughts and tidbits, because such things can be quite a laugh in retrospect. I wonder if we couldn't substitute some names and come up with identical revelations - "In 1989 i heard Pete Tong play "Bomb the Bass" and that changed my life forever.." Afterall, surely we realize, a lot people in this world DO NOT flip out for music. They don't move when they hear a beat, they get their thrills from quiet books or violent video games or from mountain climbing. Well, we're not those people -- that's why i started making records and that's why YOU are reading this magazine.

HOW THE SEED WAS PLANTED, SO TO SAY

When people ask me how my DJ'ing began, i usually say "going to illegal discotheques in Taipei in 1983 and making tapes for gay students' house parties in 1988", which are both true. But releasing a record is different, and 20 years ago, it wasn't a given that you had to "make records" in order to be booked to play. Was your favorite local DJ in 1990 a "producer"? Probably not. On the other hand, Lil' Louis was already famous for "French Kiss" when he DJ'd in San Francisco in 1991, and only 10 of us showed up at his gig. I moved there after college and became roommates in the gay Castro district with a sweet Nicaraguan-American guy named Aaron Olivares. He had this "UK Dance Now" documentary video featuring Tony Humphries and Club Zanzibar, with Underground Solution's "Luv Dancin" and Tony Varnado's "The Flower" playing on the soundtrack. Aaron and i checked the stores constantly for new NuGrooves and Strictly Rhythms, and went on Sundays to the End-Up club - a San Francisco ritual for gays, rave kids, and people on drugs in general.

Aaron was the first person to play me the original 12" of Loose Joints' "Is It All Over My Face". I also met an incredible DJ named Bruce Gauld (NOT the guy who owned the disco store), whose content and style were something like Larry Levan's (Salsoul, Talking Heads, Liquid Liquid & ESG, amazing segways). Bruce was into Todd Terry drum breaks, and we were enchanted by two "JPR" bootlegs which we thought came from West 14th Street, NYC. Only years later in London would i meet the man responsible, a certain Mr. Asher. At the time, those sounds seemed like a Message From Beyond -- since i didn't know that they had actually been produced by the likes of Norman Harris and Curtis Mayfield (loopy but respectful re-edits of "Born This Way", "Nights Over Egypt", "Twilight", and Patti Jo's "Make Me Believe in You"), i assumed that the person behind JPR must be a TOTAL GENIUS! I think the illusion crashed when i discovered another original source of one of those tracks, Don Ray's "Standing in the Rain", which was much more gratifying than a looped arpeggio. This probably made me realize that there was a world of DJ's sampling ancient disco records and playing hours and hours of awesome music, somewhere out there in New York. (London or Paris were surely not the source of any serious House Music!)

MEETING DJ's and LEARNING THE CLASSICS, RESULTING IN BALIHU 001

I moved to Chicago to continue school, taking every chance to fly to NYC for underground dance events like House Nation. Now here's the slightly crazy part - in order to learn where these records came from, i called up Roger S., Tony V. and Eddie Matos personally, and asked to visit them. If you can imagine this scene in 1992 -- the subway took me to a huge brick building in Queens, and there was Roger Sanchez in a nearly EMPTY flat with nothing but a rack of synths and a HUGE 32-track mix console. I asked him, "How did you come up with something as amazing as Luv Dancin'?" (People told me he had been selling mixtapes on lower Broadway only a few years before that.) His seemed a bit distant, but he kindly gave me technical tips and asked me if i had any material for his new label...

Well, i wanted to visit a few more of my heroes first. Eddie lived in a tenement in lower Manhattan, where the Hasidic Jewish district meets Chinatown. The flat was a mess, all dusty records and drum machines, but he was full of warmth and enthusiasm. He played me favorites like Melba Moore and Gwen Guthrie, and he even called me months later when he heard the first Balihu on the radio (in Tony Humphries' mix, no less). An afternoon journey to Newark, New Jersey, was all the more inspiring. Tony Varnado, this gentle, well-spoken black man met me, drove me to see what was left of Zanzibar, played me his unfinished sketches from cassettes, showed me how he'd mix Kiss "I Was Made For Loving You" over a house beat, and told me that his dream was NOT making club tracks, but rather playing keyboards in a "soft rock" band (like Marty Paich from "Toto" probably)! His girlfriend at the time was very beautiful, and as they dropped me off at the train station, i remember thinking, in a corny youthful way, black folks like these are pure gold,.. although their world was totally separate from mine...

But the truth is -- Roger S. had first dibs on Balihu 001! No joke. I spent many hours on my synths and then called him from Chicago, but since i didn't know what it meant to "record on multitrack" or "mixdown and master a final version" at that time, i offered to send him the Akai diskette and my Korg 01W sequences, which i thought he'd be able to read as MIDI files and reconstruct in his studio. No further reply from Mr. Sanchez! (I don't blame him! Can't imagine that he would even remember.) Eventually i rented a project studio for an afternoon, recorded all 5 tracks, and used my credit card to press the vinyl myself.

Meanwhile, i got over the odd feeling of being the only Chinese boy in an all-African-American gay disco, because they could see that i was as queer as any of them, and we certainly all had fun dancing. I would stay all night at a club called "The Box" and catch the earliest train back to the school campus at 6:30 am. One of those nights, i heard the "whoa-ah whoa-ah" vocals on Loleatta Holloway's "Hit And Run", ran to the DJ booth, and found that even my favorite Strictly Rhythm track was inspired by some 70's Salsoul classic. So, in 1994, i moved from Chicago to East Village NYC. Danny Krivit, another hero of mine because he was the true originator of the disco re-edit bootleg, gave me a member's pass for the Sound Factory Bar, where i spent hours learning to vogue with Muhammed Ultra Omni -- that's what those Philly samples and dedications on Balihu 003, 004, and 005 were all about. He was simply street dance incarnate, and was particularly obsessed with the horn riffs on Parlet's "Pleasure Principle" because of their "southern" jazz timbre. (You can hear him discussing Nubian voguing philosophy in Wolfgang Busch's documentary "How Do I Look?")

THE 2nd & 3rd PHASES OF BALIHU - SYNTHESIZERS, EURO-DISCO SOUNDS, FRIENDS

It should be said that "hard house" was already dominating NYC at the time, so you see, Balihu was always an odd fish in the soup. Then, around 1996, my Japanese friend Hiroki "Tee" passed his job at Dr. Sound Music Store on to me, and so began Balihu's 5-year lesson in synths and music in general. (The store had sold cheap, worthless 303's and 606's to Dimitri of Deee-lite shortly before their superstardom.) The really underground house parties in NYC disappeared, the gay scene was completely crass (Junior Vasquez, bitch tracks, muscle Marys), and the only option was "Body and Soul" on Sunday afternoons. The first few months there with Francois K. and Danny Krivit were pleasantly spaced-out, but that changed eventually. It was upsetting, hearing the occasional classics needlessly mixed with the tracks produced by those hyped-up New York DJ's... No names need be mentioned here. Bombastic drums, keyboards and vocals not even in harmony with the bassline, repetitive nonsense sold to the hungry crowds based on "Nuyorican" or "Afro-Brazilian" identity and a dubious claim to the Paradise Garage legacy. "How We Used To Do It (at the Garage)" - that's exactly the mindset that Balihu wanted to avoid. Watching people sing along to "Let No Man Put Asunder" for the 2000th time had turned me off for good.

So you could say that Balihu began exploring some other aesthetic, but this was also the general air in New York, leading to "Electroclash" and "DFA" styles -- danceable music not based on a pretense of African roots or the dreary rituals of "House/Garage". Meanwhile, our technician Takeshi-san was showing me the insides of analog gear every day. I got an ARP Odyssey at the flea market, and we'd sync up 303's for fun during our lunch break. I met producers like Randy Muller (with both of his Oberheim Expanders, which he had used for Brass Construction and Tamiko Jones!), and realized what a difference there was between someone like him and these DJ's who produced a new bullshit remix every 5 days. And perhaps I've never mentioned what an influence Thomas Bullock (Rub 'n' Tug) had on me. He made an amazing mix cassette (spray-painted neon red) with Alan Parsons, Gary Low, and a pile of obscure il-Discotto maxis. The slow, hypnotic, delayed synth sounds in his mix completely got into my head. You hear that starting with Balihu 007 and improved upon with Balihu 008 and 009.

In fact, the gay/tribal house scene in New York struck me as a kind of hypocrisy. What is mean is, the "Chelsea gays" (who ended up taking over Body and Soul) can be a very knee-jerk politically vocal group -- they see themseves as left-of-center because they stand opposite the American Christian right-wing, but their taste in music, it seemed to me, was a sort of fascist parallel to the W. Bush years, i.e. without intelligence or nuance, but based purely on the principle of "Might Makes Right". My drag-queen friend London Broil wryly called this "pounding the children into submission". I always felt that the basslines and arrangements should carry the groove, not the kick drum alone. This is specifically why Balihu -- in my mind it's all related -- never made a single record which relied on big thumping beats to make its case. Sometimes this ideal was exaggerated to a fault. It was also because i didn't have a big studio, so i was often unsure how loud my drums and basslines really were in the mix. Once Nd Baumecker played "Berlin Sunrise" at Panorama Bar in Berlin after some techno track, the dance floor paused for a moment because the kick drum volume became noticeably softer, and i thought "ugh, i got it all wrong!"

I had met Brennan Green already, and i worked with Carlos Hernandez at Dr. Sound. Balihu had been a solo project, but seeing these two jam on any instrument more skillfully than i ever could (my strength is programming and editing), i felt that Balihu could be a channel for them as well. I don't like it when people call them my "proteges", because they actually showed me a lot more than i ever taught them - no false modesty. Brennan had toured with a rock band and was producing before he even met me. In the meantime, Morgan Geist gave me a chance to put out music on Environ without burdening my own credit card, so it only seemed only normal to release new artists. (Carlos and Brennan appeared on Balihu 010-014.) It may sound pedantic, but Balihu was my own classroom, and i learned that the sheer fact of having your recording on a 1000-copy reproduction totally changes how you approach your own work. It's like having a mirror held up - you really have to distill your ideas and better moments, and ask yourself: if i didn't know who made this song, would i really buy it or play it? Like many of you reading, i'm a great admirer of Alan Parsons for saying, "I never had a live band, the recording is my final goal" (or something like that). When i think of my favorite records, many of them are probably studio sessions which were never repeated again.

CRITICALLY REGARDING BALIHU and THE D.I.Y. GENERATION WHICH IT'S A PART OF

Now, whether Balihu has reached its own disco ideals is pretty debatable. I'm actuallly just as critical of myself, and hardly ever listen to my own tracks or play them at gigs. Early on, a sentence from some music textbook got stuck in my head -- "Most pop music is written as an extension of a simple set of minor keys" -- therefore, there's this melancholic feeling on many of the Balihu records, which is an overuse of minor chords with some 7th chords to make them "shiny". It's really a big conceptual error, and I wish i had "cleared my mind" of this early on. But mechanically studying the charts doesn't help -- now i know, you have to feel an inner emotional connection to what those chord changes express in order to use them. Naively, in my DJ sets, i always preferred records with those minor-to-major changes (Voyage, Kat Mandu, Cerrone...), which a lot of people describe as the "cheesy parts" of disco songs. But one dear friend really made me realize the difference between songs based on just a repetitive groove and songs based on a complete cyclical structure. Not long after my move to Berlin, David R. copied a 4-CD "Carpenters" anthology for me. I had loved those songs as a child but hadn't even HEARD them since i had gotten into dance music. I gradually realized, "Here are all the answers" -- the compact pop forms, Karen singing Cole Porter over Bach, the later Rod Temperton songs she recorded (same period and style as Heatwave, George Benson, Michael Jackson). Plus, theremin genius Pamelia and i recorded a version of Herb Alpert's "Rise" in my new flat, and seeing her map out the chords (again, basic cyclical structure) made me see how a good song really works. I've yet to put this new perspective into all my own productions.

Sometimes i'm not sure if there's any justice in the music world anymore. I don't mean the sheer happiness of making music, i mean money and recognition. Everyone wishes, if just one great disco-funk band like Earth Wind & Fire came around again, it could banish all the best-selling hiphop and techno acts into oblivion. But the funny thing about our dance music world is how unpredictably it functions. In 1977, unless you were a skilled musician or singer, you wouldn't even have access to a studio, because the cost and effort wouldn't be worth it. MIDI and recording software changed that, and Balihu wouldn't exist without these technologies. But making music doesn't depend on having good ideas or real ability any more -- we're somewhere between democracy and total anarchy. Replacing the elite musicians of yesterday with laptops is something like exchanging the "tyranny of the few for the mediocrity of the masses". The school of Villalobos has reduced all possible variations in arrangement to muting the kick drum - what else is there to say? Plus, I've been receiving a sincere stream of promos -- every unknown 25-year old can now produce tracks with nearly flawless sound. Like a concerned uncle in an armchair, I write back emails every week: "Your sound is technically perfect - how about expression and originality?" I'm glad that people still see "Balihu" as someone they can share their hopes with. At the same time, i wonder if they hear the difference between my crude early attempts and their slick new tracks. I hope i don't sound cynical with this observation: instead of being a medium for diverse musical pleasures, the vinyl record has become only a "DJ name card" which strives to AVOID originality by saying, "i'm into this kind of music too, i belong to the same Nu-disco/ Minimal/ Electro Myspace community as you do, so please book me."

But then, i'm well aware this post-1990's anarchic D.I.Y. system is how Balihu got recognized in the first place -- and the best-selling Balihu track of all time is still the first one, consisting of some bizarre samples, an out-of-tune monotone string line, a MIDI timbale break played with one finger (although very lively), and some lyrics which sum up disco - "Like some dream I can't stop dreaming, i can't stop moving to the sound". Even after 15 years, i must admit, Balihu 001's virtue is its strangeness. So when people ask me how i view all this, i can only say: "with a large dose of irony." It has been a personal diary, not a record label. A real label would seek out new artists, promote acts and albums... Balihu, on the other hand, is a sort of "fanzine on vinyl" which points the way to the "Real Thing" (i.e. full-on disco music) while only occasionally sort-of approaching that thing itself. But i've also noticed, by emulating one's heroes, one can become a sort-of hero oneself. Mick Jagger has admitted that his whole stage act is "basically fantasizing that he is Tina Turner."

When you look at any musical career, you find lessons to learn. I'd never compare myself to a genius like Nile Rodgers, but seriously, even 30 years after he started, what do you want to hear when you see him in concert? Do you care about his multi-platinum productions for David Bowie or Madonna? No, you want to hear the raw brilliance of those first 2 Chic albums and the guitar lines from "He's the Greatest Dancer". That's the essence of it -- the rest is just what money and accessibility made possible. What are the records for which we'll remember Derrick May or Daft Punk? Or all the British 80's acts - Eurythmics, Human League..? When anyone starts out making music, there's a naivete and excitement. You get recognition (whether big or small) and you start to travel. Then you expect more, you try to extend the success, and try to save money for family and retirement,.. and you get distracted from the central joy of it all, which was really just a sound inside your head.

PRETTY EXPLICIT IDEALISM ALWAYS

In the past few years, i've let friends like ilya and Massi carry the message, but now, my new 32-track Korg HDR is encouraging me to be active again. And i don't feel that Balihu has to continue on vinyl -- CD's are fine as long as the music has something to say. I suppose i'm a school-teacher at heart ("Mr. G" from cult Australian TV show "Summer Heights High", to be precise), and i sincerely believe that most commercial pop music is making kids dumb - especially the soulful immigrant children in the big cities - they ought to be learning guitars and saxophones, but get sold aggressive rap music by MTV instead. The record companies which exploit youth like that, like people who spend their millions on vapid "conceptual art", really disgust me -- one could give funding to music schools, for starters...

Well, after all this time, i can see Balihu and my own DJ career -- through other people's eyes -- as a tiny statement of individuality, queerness, whatever. Commercialism has rendered so much pop culture stupid and numb. The media tells young people that it's all about Gucci bags, having a hot body, staying sweat-free, and taking lots of digital photos of oneself -- materialism and narcissism. Contrary to all that, in principle as least, are gay bears, hand-written record labels, musical introspection, bands like Hercules & Love Affair, and dark rooms where sound and feeling are more important than appearances. That's what these 15 years taught me. I didn't know it when i started, but i'm glad i got a chance to find out and say it out loud :-)

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Daniel Wang Presents BALIHU 1993-2008 - tracklisting
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CD 1
01. Daniel Wang - Like Some Dream
Taken from BAL 001 - The Look Ma No Drum Machine EP [1993]
02. Daniel Wang - Get Up Get Up
Taken from BAL 001 - The Look Ma No Drum Machine EP [1993]
03. Daniel Wang - Warped 
Taken from BAL 001 - The Look Ma No Drum Machine EP [1993]
4 Daniel Wang - On The Moon
Taken from BAL 002 - Unreleased [1993]
5 Daniel Wang - East Village Hustle
Taken from BAL 003 - Aphroasiatechnubian [1995]
6 Daniel Wang - The Twirl
Taken from BAL 003 - Aphroasiatechnubian [1995]
7 Daniel Wang - In The Street 
Taken from BAL 003 - Aphroasiatechnubian [1995]
8 Daniel Wang - In A Golden Haze
Taken from BAL 004 - The Morning Kids [1996]
9 Daniel Wang - Free Lovin
Taken from BAL 004 - The Morning Kids [1996]
10 Daniel Wang - Glow Worms
Taken from BAL 005 - Chroma Oscura [1996]
11 Daniel Wang - Seven Shadows
Taken from BAL 006 - The Probe, The Strobe [1996]
12 Daniel Wang - Disco Delay
Taken from BAL 007 - Mood Mylar [1997]
13 Daniel Wang - ADSR
Taken from BAL 007 - Mood Mylar [1997]
14 Daniel Wang - Iye-ubao
Taken from BAL 008 - Cristal-Plastique [1997]
15 Daniel Wang - Ah n'Arrete Pas
Taken from BAL 008 - Cristal-Plastique [1997]
16 Daniel Wang - NYTK (1978 mix)
Taken from BAL 008 - Cristal-Plastique [1997]

CD 2
1 Daniel Wang - Thousand Mirror Moon
Taken from BAL 008 - Cristal-Plastique [1997]
2 Daniel Wang - Lets Go to Mars
Taken from BAL 009 - Subtle Shuttle [1998]
3 Daniel Wang - Solarian Six
Taken from BAL 009 - Subtle Shuttle [1998]
4 Carlos Hernadez - Shyboy 123
Taken from BAL 010 - This Is The Final Balihu Release [1999]
5 Brennan Green - No Matter
Taken from BAL 011 - Potato Emperor EP [2002]
6 Daniel Wang - Zeit ist Ein Fluss
Taken from BAL 012 - Deutsch-Chinesische Hemmungslosigkeit EP [2002]
7 Daniel Wang - Blau Drei
Taken from BAL 012 - Deutsch-Chinesische Hemmungslosigkeit EP [2002]
8 Brennan Green - Behind the Ocean
Taken from BAL 013 - Undecided EP [2002]
9 Brennan Green - Nolitas Magnet
Taken from BAL 013 - Undecided EP [2002]
10 Ilya Santana - Crystal Sea
Taken from BAL 015 - Walking On A Crystal Sea [2004]
11 Ilya Santana - Wicked Sequence
Taken from BAL 015 - Walking On A Crystal Sea [2004]
12 Massimiliano Pagliara - Beach Birds
Taken from BAL 017 - Transmissions Florales [2008]

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Links, Mixes and other fun stuff
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Resident Advisor Playing Favorites Interview - LINK
Time Out New York Interview (July 2009) - LINK
Family House Interview - LINK
Daniel Wang - Red Bull Academy Radio Show - LISTEN
Daniel Wang - Bodytonic Podcast mix - LISTEN
Daniel Wang - April 2009 mix - LISTEN