With footwork having long since severed its umbilical ties to Chicago, it’s easy to forget about the artists still producing tracks in the Windy City. One of the lesser-heard and lesser-known is DJ MC, a South Side producer back from a two-year break from uploading — and who also happens to be one of the weirdest and most innovative. He’s at his best when he takes minimalism and repetition to the extreme — as he did on his Bangs & Works Vol. 2 track “Y Fall” and on the unreleased “Super MC” — which is precisely the approach he takes on his latest track, “tha8080’s.”
Sure, footwork can get same-y and incestuous, its tropes becoming traps and its templates becoming hindrances. But when producers allow their tracks to really breathe, when they exhaust the repetition and foreground the choppy loops like they do on this number, it still cuts through the clutter like the knife that originally sliced through the electronic dance scene four years ago. Check it out here:
• DJ MC: https://soundcloud.com/mariocooper