Virgo (album)

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Virgo
Studio album by
Virgo
Released1989 (1989)
StudioRax Trax, Chicago, United States
GenreChicago house
Length36:56
Label
  • Radical
  • Rush Hour (reissue)
Producer
  • Eric Lewis
  • Merwyn Sanders
Virgo chronology
Virgo
(1989) 		Resurrection
(2011)
Reissue cover
Artwork for Rush Hour Recordings' 2010 reissue

Virgo is the eponymous debut studio album by American

12" EPs released in the United States on Trax Records, Do You Know Who You Are? by Virgo Four and Ride by M.E.. Both were pseudonyms of Eric Lewis and Merwyn Sanders, two art students and childhood friends from Chicago
. The album was first reissued in 2010 on Rush Hour Recordings.

While rooted in the

cult classic
over the years. Although it remains largely unknown, Virgo is now recognized as an essential release among house enthusiasts, and is considered by some as the greatest album of its genre.

Background and production

Childhood friends Eric Lewis and Merwyn Sanders were born and raised in Chicago, United States. At first, they formed a band called Quadraphonics in middle school, with Lewis on guitar, Sanders on drums, DJ Calvin on bass, and "another friend named Edgwick" on guitar.[1] In high school, only Lewis and Sanders stuck together, a time when they acquired a drum machine, a Moog synthesizer and other equipment used by the burgeoning Chicago house scene. They had discovered house music at high school parties (like Mendel Catholic High School) and nightclubs such as Ron Hardy's Muzic Box, the Power Plant and The Warehouse; the duo also frequented nightclubs in Toronto, Canada. Sanders recalls: "That was '80 or so, '81. We just started doing a bunch of music at home. At that time we got a 4-track. So, that's what we would do, go to school, and we would hang out and do music... and go shoot some ball, then work some more music."[1]

Lewis and Sanders first approached Larry Sherman of Trax - a label that had a capital role in the development of house music - in 1984 or 1985, as the genre was beginning to take off. As titles in his catalogue were beginning to chart and the duo were unknown in the club scene, Sherman shrugged their demos off. State Street Records were also uninterested. At that time, the duo started attending the Art Institute of Chicago, and began to produce new music in its sound room. When they came back to Sherman in 1988 with additional material, he agreed to put it out. Sanders and Lewis produced the album at Rax Trax, where they met Rick Barnes (who ran the studio) and Derek Brand, members of the Nicholas Tremulis Band. Although Lidell Townsell was enlisted to help the duo with production, they ended up doing it themselves. Regarding the recording, Sanders stated: "Most of our stuff we played live except for the drum machine. Everything else we got so used to just playing, I guess just from the repetition, we didn't use a sequencer at all. We showed up at the studio, had our keyboards, hit "Record." It's kind of like a live session with the keyboards."[1] They recorded all the songs in one live session, quickly moving on from track to track.

Release and reception

When they approached Trax Records, Sanders and Lewis called themselves M.E., a reference to their initials, "with a possible nod to the

urban
label StreetSounds.

Neither Sherman nor Virgo made an effort to promote the album or contact other DJs. Reflecting on this, Gabriele of PopMatters felt that "it's testament to the emotional resonance of the music itself that it grew over the years into something of an underground classic.[2] Sanders has said: "See Eric and I were so kinda, sometimes I actually kinda regret it, 'cause we were so detached from everything. [...] We were really just about the music. As soon as that was done, we were going back and still working on new stuff. We were looking at that as just a foot in the door to do something even bigger."[1] As the Radical Records album was solely attributed to Virgo, confusion arose over the band's identity as it "gained traction over the ensuing years."[2] Alexis Petridis stated that "no artist sums up the unknowability and mystique of the early house scene quite like Virgo."[3]

More recently, tracks off the album have been featured on

Warp and Soul Jazz Records. Virgo was remastered and re-released as a double 12" and CD in 2010 on Rush Hour Records, as part of their House of Trax reissue programme. This edition featured new artwork, "crisper highs and a slightly punchier low-end."[4]

Composition

"Do You Know Who You Are"
Originally released as "Do You Know Who You Are?" on Trax Records in 1989, and credited to Virgo Four.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

A

techno and Balearic beat.[2] However, Virgo has been noted for its idiosyncratic sound, more introspective and dreamy than other mechanically intense styles from its era, Phuture's "Acid Trax" for example. In a 2009 interview, Merwyn Sanders stated: "We were into a lot of classic stuff, Kraftwerk and Gary Numan and a lot of jazz stuff. That’s what I grew up around, listening. My dad was a huge jazz fan, so that was just engrained in my head without me even knowing it. So I guess that’s what you get a little sense of with that album we did."[1] Fact called it a "deep post-acid" album, and wrote that despite being similar to other contemporary house releases, "it stands alone, and its cerebral but generously groovy evocation of the urban nightscape has never been matched for elegance or acuity."[5] Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "music you might make the day after a drugged-out bacchanal – wistful and contemplative, shot through with a creeping, contagious melancholy."[3] Joe Muggs described Virgo as "archetypal house music through and through: it is design as much as it is art, absolutely attuned to the proportions and metabolism of the human body in a technological society." He also noted that despite the "soulfulness and the spindly stripping down of its production", the album is not "less powerful than noisier, bassier or thicker music."[6]

The first side of Virgo includes Virgo Four's Do You Know Who You Are? EP. Its opening track, "Do You Know Who You Are", features an "odd, nagging, guitar line" reminiscent of

slap bass into the lexicon of house."[3]

Legacy

Despite not being a household name, Virgo is now recognized as an essential release among house enthusiasts and, according to Fact, it "is considered by many to be the greatest house record ever made."[7] The publication listed Virgo as the second best album of the 1980s, with Joe Muggs writing:

It's a metaphor I've used before, but when you hear something as perfectly designed as this, it's like getting an amazing chair – one that is comfortable, beautiful, refined and usable every day. When you get something like that, regardless of its age, do you then abandon it or declare it obsolete or decide to attach a fifth leg to it just because your neighbours get a different chair made of some new construction material?[6]

Virgo was also included in

Warp Records.[8]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Eric Lewis and Merwyn Sanders

Side one
No.TitleLength
1."Do You Know Who You Are"4:45
2."In a Vision"4:47
3."Going Thru Life"4:37
4."Take Me Higher"4:48
Side two
No.TitleLength
5."Ride"4:32
6."School Hall"4:25
7."Never Want to Lose You"4:43
8."All the Time"4:19
Total length:36:56

Notes

  • "Do You Know Who You Are" listed as "Do You Know Who You Are?" (with question mark) on the label.
  • "Never Want To Lose You" is misspelled "Never Want To Loose You" on the label.

Personnel

Credits adapted from the liner notes of Virgo.[9]

  • Eric Lewis – producer
  • Merwyn Sanders – producer
  • Idest – artwork design
  • Trax Records – phonographic copyright
  • Sanlar Publishing – publisher
  • Radical Records – marketing
  • Spartan Records – distribution

Release history

Region Year Format Label Artist Title N°
United States
 1989
12" EP
Trax Records
 Virgo Four Do You Know Who You Are? TX175
M.E. Ride TX176
United Kingdom LP record
Radical Records
Virgo
Virgo
 VIRGO1
CD CDVIGO1
Cassette
 ZCVIGO1
Germany LP record VIRGO1
Netherlands
 2010 2x12" record Rush Hour Recordings RH-TX1LP
CD RH-TX1CD

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Arnold, Jacob (26 April 2009). "Merwyn Sanders Interview". Gridface.com. Retrieved 5 September 2016.
  2. ^ a b c d Gabriele, Timothy (6 July 2011). "Virgo Four: Resurrection". PopMatters. Retrieved 2 September 2016.
  3. ^ a b c d Petridis, Alexis (12 January 2016). "Cult heroes: Virgo – obscure Chicago house duo full of mournful mystique". guardian.com. Retrieved 2 September 2016.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Carnes, Richard (11 March 2010). "RA Reviews: Virgo - Virgo". Resident Advisor, Resident Advisor Ltd. Retrieved 7 September 2016.
  5. ^ "Virgo's 1989 LP to be reissued". Fact. The Vinyl Factory. 5 January 2010. Retrieved 2 September 2016.
  6. ^ a b c d Muggs, Joe (24 June 2013). "The 100 Best Albums of the 1980s: Virgo - Virgo". Fact. The Vinyl Factory. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
  7. ^ "Chicago house legends Virgo to play select live dates this year". Fact. The Vinyl Factory. 1 September 2010. Retrieved 2 September 2016.
  8. Rovi Corporation
    . Retrieved 5 September 2016.
  9. ^ Virgo (Vinyl LP). Virgo. Radical Records. 1989. VIRGO 1.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)

External links

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