Footwork lives in Chicago, even when it doesn’t. The movement—bleeding-edge club tunes fragmented from house, high-speed dance battles, and most crucially, the community of people who make it and party to it—can’t be divorced from its hometown, even as its global reach extends far beyond its creators’ expectations. Still, it’s an all-inclusive kinda deal: footwork fans and creators are everywhere now, thanks to the last five years of compilative surveys and worldwide touring. Belgrade has become something of a sister city to Chicago thanks to its obsession with the genre; Japan’s footwork scene has been thriving for years (check the sprawling 2012 compilation from the Japanese Mutation Bootyism collective). So it’s not as weird as it might seem that the deepest-digging footwork comps of the 2010s come from the Bay area—specifically, from a 21-year-old Vallejo native who goes by Sela, a restless producer, DIY footwork archivalist, and mastermind behind one of the rarest, most thorough footwork compilation series in digital form.
If Planet Mu’s seminal footwork comp Bangs & Works, Vol. 1 served as a trans-Atlantic introduction to the scene, and its follow-up presented a wider breadth of styles and samples, Sela’s CRACK series burrows deep into the core of early, unpolished footwork and juke sounds, much of which was never released, certainly not spotlighted on a national level, and probably never heard outside of the scene’s early participants. Over two years and three volumes, Sela scavenged the depths of the Internet for artifacts of footwork’s formative years, obsessively mining dormant Myspace servers for tracks passed between producers in the mid-2000s that may have been long forgotten.
The tracks aren’t always pretty; though CRACK I aimed for listenability to attract newcomers to the scene, the latest (and likely final) installment, released at the end of December, showcases "the ugly/dark/raw/beta forms of this music." At a whopping 54 tracks, the collection spotlights footwork’s younger and less-heralded artists (DJ C-LO, DJ Killa, DJ Frankie, names rarely seen in scene surveys) alongside unreleased material from established names like DJ Nate, RP Boo, and the late, great DJ Rashad. Much of the material feels like sketches or experiments rather than finished products intended to sell the sound, but for footwork completists or anyone with a more than cursory interest in the genre, all three volumes are essential. And though many of the tracks weren’t intended for distribution beyond an inner circle of producers and dancers, in that sense CRACK embodies the community-oriented nature of footwork, even as it approaches the scene from the outside: the movement has been defined by the process of sharing the music just as much as the process of creating it.
Though Sela admits that there’s no footwork scene at all in Vallejo, the music has crept into his own production work. Over the last four years, he’s put out 18 solo releases of impressionistic, weirdly comforting footwork-inspired productions and ambient soundscapes, in addition to five split releases, including a joint EP with erratic Japanese footwork producer Foodman. His latest, #BARS, released earlier this month in digital and cassette form, is a collage of eerie, bedroom footwork-influenced sounds. The samples are powerfully subtle: indoor voices beamed in from disembodied Lite FM stations, the anxious rattle of ice cubes in a glass, sensual whispers and murmured warnings. But he’s quick to note that his work isn’t meant to be considered as footwork in the same way that the CRACK volumes are; #BARS comes with the disclaimer: "not meant to be a ‘mirror’ of real footwork, just me having a bit of fun."
In the wake of CRACK III’s release, Sela shared the intense process behind compiling the series over the past couple years, and his evolving understanding of the genre over the course of the compilations. You can download CRACK Ihere, CRACK IIhere, and stream/download CRACK IIIhere.
Pitchfork: How’d you originally get into footwork?
SELA: I had heard the genre very vaguely prior to this, but I'd say I started really getting into footwork mid-2011. I remember I randomly stumbled upon "Pop the Trunk" by DJ Diamond on Youtube super late one night and all I could think was, "What the fuck is this music?" I started to look through Youtube a bit more, and listen to the Planet Mu footwork releases and comps. And this is when I started to see the divide between "real" footwork and newer, more trap-influenced stuff. This realization was sort of the precursor to my decision to make the first CRACK compilation.
Pitchfork: What was the inspiration behind the o.g., CRACK Vol. I?
SELA: Despite only being into footwork for two years at the time I started putting the comp together, I had pretty strong feelings about the way the genre was being emulated by anyone who took enough notice to try and put their spin on it. Some of this fault falls on the listeners and readers as well, as it seemed like a lot of people who heard this kind of music [in passing] weren't able to get past the silliness or rawness of some of the samples used, or more so the way the samples were used. In the time prior to release, I had already dug really deep into various websites and forums, trying to find more of the first and second generations of this music. A lot of things about the music started to click for me. The vocal samples. The repetition. The timing in relation to the dancing. The general technicality and again, rawness of it, for lack of a better term. It just blew my mind how this music was a decade or more ahead of its time from a production standpoint, and it made me want to share something that would hopefully—possibly—lead others to this same realization.
Pitchfork: Most of the tracks in the CRACK comps are super obscure, and very few seem to exist elsewhere on the Internet. What’s the process for finding this stuff?
SELA: It was pretty tedious. I knew that most of this music was uploaded on Myspace, but a lot of it was uploaded on Imeem as well. Myspace bought Imeem, which obviously means Myspace took control of their servers and the data on them. Weirdly enough, all these years later, it turns out that Myspace did not delete much of anything from these servers. And even more weirdly, with the “New Myspace” revamp that was done a year or two ago, whatever updated search engine they used allows users to browse a bunch of uploads that were not previously visible or accessible, a lot of these being Imeem tracks. I used this to my advantage and came up with maybe 100+ search terms to input. When I found something relevant, I kept the URLs, then looked through the profile's friends list for anything that looked fitting or interesting.
Doing this for a while got me to a point where I isolated a bunch of recurring profiles that were basically all the people who participated in the scene when it was happening—think Facebook's mutual friends feature. There's a bit more to it, but basically, after finding all the songs I wanted, I still had to record them in real time, as Myspace, like most streaming sites, is scripted in a way that doesn't present the media being streamed as accessible—you can't rip what's playing like you can from Youtube. Since the bitrates vary so much, I recorded in .WAV format so I could just transcode at whatever VBR, but .WAV’s can't be tagged. So upon converting to MP3, I had to tag each song again one by one. It was still fun to do though, overall.
Pitchfork: Has your sense of style or purpose, or your understanding of footwork as a whole, shifted over the course of the three volumes?
SELA: I think the first one was solely about showcasing the older, less-heard music, with specific attention to listenability for people who are new to the genre. CRACK III is the most well-rounded of the three. CRACK II is still consistent, but I released it so soon after the first one that I personally feel like there's a little less intent behind it. I still really like most of the tracks on there, though. III has the same intent as the first compilation, and definitely goes back to putting the main focus on "lost" tracks. But I disregarded listenability for newcomers on this iteration, aside from putting some real thought into the ordering of the tracks. It definitely has changed my understanding of the genre, the culture, and probably of electronic music in general. The fact that this kind of music exists lets me know that we still have a lot of ground to cover in terms of electronic music. The capabilities are endless.