[MetroActive Music]

[ Music Index | SF Metropolitan | MetroActive Central | Archives ]

Audio Alchemy

[whitespace] E-Team
House Hybrids: Recinos and Moore, known as the E-Team, transform almost any sound, even the most unlikely pop or rock song, into a thick, driving dance track.

The E-Team turns rock, pop and goth into house hybrids

By Amanda Nowinski

I was tricked into liking a Jewel song by local mixmasters Raul "DJ EFX" Recinos and "Big Ed" Moore--and I don't know how to justify the phenomenon. Was it the granola-glam überhippie that got me feeling the groove, or was my pop prejudice eclipsed by the clubbed-out, deep-house reconstruction of "You Make Lovin' Fun?" Naturally, I hope for the latter.

Recinos and Moore, together known as the E-Team, are creating an unusual reputation for transforming almost any sound--even the most unlikely pop or rock song--into a thick, driving dance track, including the recent remix of Paula Cole's aggressively ubiquitous "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" and the (yet unnamed) upcoming release of an "experimental" techno album the two recorded with Journey frontman Neal Schon on Schon's own Higher Octave Records.

Although the E-Team production company is only several years old, Recinos and Moore are veterans of the dance music and hip-hop communities. A former road and sound system manager, Moore toured with bands such as Run-D.M.C., Public Enemy, Mantronics, EPDM and 2 Live Crew ("with the strippers with the butts") for years before turning to the less hardcore sounds of house. A DJ of legendary status who plays internationally on a regular basis, Recinos began producing house albums in 1986 for the likes of Rozalla, Boy George, David Bowie and Dee-Lite. United by this shared history of heavy bass and a passion for volume, Recinos and Moore are currently gaining attention for their original works, including the hard-edged tribal dance track "The Party."


Metropolitan: What inspired you to turn your focus from hip-hop to house?

Recinos: We were both playing an N.W.A show at the Henry J. Kaiser. Ed was both the road manager/get-the-fuck-outta-my-face guy and the sound man, and I was DJing. After the show, the bus carrying the band had to back up into the auditorium because there was a group of guys outside the building that wanted to kill N.W.A. And then the Uzis came out, and there was all this firing. Oh no! Tat-tat-tat! All the sudden I realized, "Hey, man, the gay scene ain't all that bad."

Moore: We do rap, but we're selective about who we work with.

Recinos: And the projects have to be really creative. Talk about taking creativity to the extreme--check out Bridget from God's Girlfriend. Bridget was the head dominatrix at Bondage A-Go-Go, a 7-foot-tall blonde. That's homie's picture.

Metropolitan: Wait--is this a dude?

Recinos: No, it's an it. He likes it that way.

Moore: He used to be in the Navy--he maintained nuclear power on an aircraft carrier.

Recinos: But something went wrong there. In God's Girlfriend, he plays the guitar and uses household appliances--you know, drills, blenders, whatever. And we do all the mixing.

Moore: He makes Marilyn Manson look pop.

Metropolitan: Neal Schon making house music seems like a huge, almost bizarre leap. How did your project transpire?

Recinos: I'll tell you something right now. In the early '70s, they thought Neal Schon was the devil. He comes from an underground world, and so do we.

Metropolitan: He's not there anymore.

Moore: Who cares? It's experimental. He's doing something that doesn't have big commercial pressure on it. He realizes that even for the dance world, what we're doing is very unusual. Dance is a totally new territory for Neal. But the beauty is, we're not expected to have this on radio stations in three weeks. We don't know if we'll ever get that with this project. We're expecting to break ground, instead of just making money.

Recinos: It doesn't matter if people don't like it. It was therapeutic for all those involved.m

Metropolitan: What's up with your new passion for gothic music? Is it '80s nostalgia for brooches and face paint?

Recinos: No. Believe me with this one: gothic music is pure and clean.

Moore: He went to a God's Girlfriend show and saw women wearing corsets and shit and said, "I'm doing this." [Laughs.]

Recinos: For me, it's because I need a voice to say what I want to say. Gothic allows you to say whatever you want. Really. Marilyn Manson proved it, but he had to stop because the record companies asked him if he wanted to sell or not. My thing is not to sell records or CDs--it's just to perform the music. I have a lot to say--more than I could say in dance, hip-hop or any other music combined. It's the only medium in which I can say anything.

Metropolitan: Why can't you say it in house?

Recinos: Because in house, unless I'm saying, "In the beginning" or "Jack your body" or "This is fresh" or "Ooh, baby, I'm so high," I don't get credibility. I don't want my message to be tainted by that. I just want to come out fresh. I'm serious. God's Girlfriend plays gothic Miami bass. When I saw them, I felt their message. And I knew that the audience did, too. It's a little dark, but dark can be seductive, dark can even be love. When you feel really happy and in love, you eventually come down from that extreme high. You feel the melancholy. Gothic isn't dark, it's melancholy. Gothics are just tortured children locked up somewhere in purgatory or some shit. It could have been country music for me, if it had allowed me to say what I needed to say.

Moore: The difference between music with black roots and white roots is that in the rock world, you can say a lot more stuff without getting criticized. But if we made a rap record and talked about a bunch of crazy stuff, people would say you're being politically controversial, messing with kids' heads. With the rock stuff, you don't get as much flak for it, because everybody's white. That's how it works. Rock bands can sing about suicide, murder, whatever. But then you go to the rap department, and rappers are talking about gangs, and the media backlash goes after the black music first and leaves the rock music for last. Very few rock groups get worked over. You have to be Marilyn Manson or Ozzy Osbourne for somebody to be screaming about you these days.

Recinos: I consider myself multi-talented. Imagine taking the Gothic road--the road much less traveled, and making it more pleasant. It's the road with no resistance.

Metropolitan: But what if they resist your hip-hop beats? Can they really shake it like that?

Moore: Everyone likes to dance, don't kid yourself. White kids love to dance. They might not know why they're able to dance, but they love to do it. It's easier for them to move when there's a heavy beat.

[ San Francisco | MetroActive Central | Archives ]


From the August 10-23, 1998 issue of the Metropolitan.

Copyright © Metro Publishing Inc. Maintained by Boulevards New Media.