Since 2002, The Juan Maclean and DFA Records have revitalized American dance music, creating intensely dense tracks packed with the history of the genre, and the punch of musicians with serious punk rock roots. This seemingly odd amalgam of electro and rock, though, has a long precedent for the musicians in and around the DFA label and The Juan Maclean.
John Maclean began playing guitar in the late eighties and early nineties with J. Ryan in the electro-punk band Six Finger Satellite. The band released the four song EP, Weapons, in 1992 on Sub Pop. Hailing from Providence, Rhode Island, Six Finger Satelite was the first east coast band signed to the famous label from the Northwest, and they soon began inhabiting the noisier outer reaches of indie rock. By 1993, on their first full length, The Pigeon Is The Most Popular Bird, recorded by Bob Weston of Shellac, the bands’ interest in aggressive rock and harsh electronics lit up on numbers like, “Home for the Holy Day” and “Funny Like a Clown”. The tunes harsh and off-kilter rock attack were reminesent of other Chicago acts such as, Steve Albini‘s Big Black and Shellac, as well spazz-rock retards, The Jesus Lizard. But with 1994’s Machine Cuisine, an all synthesizer album, the band began zeroing in on a wicked post-techno for drugged out androids. The bands interest in electronics and recording began to intensify in these years with John Maclean moving into a larger production role while beginning to build his home studio in Providence dubbed, The Parlor. Also during this time, the bands reckless substance abuse began catching up when bassist Kurt Niemand died of a drug over dose. The band added bassist James Apt, and continued melding their interests in techno, new wave and 80’s electronics on the 1995 album Severe Exposure, and 1996’s Paranormalized. The band spent much of that year touring with Shellac, The Jesus Lizard and Trans Am. In 1997 James Murphy joined as the bands sound engineer introducing a punishing urgency to their live shows through a PA set-up he called, “Death From Above.” Murphey would also go onto produce the bands 1998 release, Law Of Ruins, bringing some spacier dynamics to the rock and electronics mix. However, soon after the albums release, John Maclean quite the band retiring from music to pursue a college degree in English, and later teaching troubled teens in New Hampshire.
Seemingly frustrated by the limits of indie rock and deciding to use his own troubled teen years and struggles with drug addiction, Maclean turned to teaching english, but soon found himself teaching electronic music to kids, when the school’s official music teacher quit. During this time John’s friend James Murphey would go onto form the record label DFA with with record producer and former UNKLE drummer, Tim Goldsworthy, as well as friend Jonathan Galkin. Both Murphey and Goldsworthy were frustrated by the limits of the respective genres they’d worked in, punk and dance, and their mutual frustrations from different angles fueled new and exciting forays into electronic and dance music using the full, analogue sounds of a rock band set-up. Through a series of phone calls, Murphey pursuaded Maclean to begin playing and recording again; and in 2002, under the name The Juan Maclean, John released the 12″ singles for DFA entitled, “By The Time I Reach Venus” and “You Can’t Have It Both Ways”. The tracks seemingly bore little resemblance to the aesthetic of Six Finger Satelite, and with a deft and sophisticated hand The Juan Maclean were sifting the sources of electronic and dance with very clear vision making excellent use of Detroit techno and funk, Euro-Trash pop, the many houses within House, and NY favorites like disco and punk. The band also featured shared vocal duties with LCD Soundsytem‘s Nancy Wang, and it added a vampy, hollow-eyed sexiness to the sound with Ms. Wang intoning, “Why won’t it break/Now’s the time to make you/ make or break…”, over a dark wave of techno on a track like, “You Can’t Have It Both Ways”. The songs seemed to display simple lyrical content, yet further analysis revealed an almost philosophical enquiry from the heart of the dance floor. The 2003 single, “Give Me Every Little Thing”, simmers out of a housey mist while oblique lyrics seem to speak to concerns of an alienating, technocratic society to which The Juan Maclean prescribe a sexy and funked up disco with the refrain, “Wait… alright/Give me every little thing/and don’t stop”, as voluptous antidote to 21st century alienation.
While it would seem The Juan Maclean have concentrated their efforts on producing dense singles that seem to digest modern music whole in a matter of several minutes, the band has produced one full length, 2005’s Less Than Human, and long promised a follow up called, The Future Will Come, which looks like is slated for a 2009 release! Less Than Human forecast chilly times and cool German blues for homesick and love-lorn androids, while, if this years uplifting and Ibizia soaked single, “Happy House” is any indication, the future promises a more human palette of loss and redemption. We agree, Juan Maclean, “Thanks for being/So damn excellent!”
