Most dance music is released on 12-inch singles, and most of them are sold to club DJs–the music has never really taken off with the buying public. Matt Adell–the brains behind Organico, one of Chicago’s most important dance-music labels–wants to change that. “I want to work hard against the disposability of dance music. The shelf life on a dance record is often shorter than the period of time it took for the artist to make it, and I just think that’s insulting. When I put out a record I never take it out of print. I only release records that I think people would listen to at home.”
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Adell, an Evanston native, played hardcore punk in his high school band, Nadsat Rebel. But while attending San Francisco State University he worked in a dance-music specialty store in the Castro, and the dance scene became an obsession. When he returned to Chicago in 1989 he got a job at a local house-music store, where he met Derrick Carter, an innovative techno recording artist and a popular club DJ. Adell then spent four years working for the Wax Trax label.
Adell, now 28, has grown increasingly interested in the connection between dance music and underground rock. “When I first got into dance music one of the things that was happening was the Manchester scene,” with bands like Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, and the Charlatans mixing rock and the wigginess of rave culture. “When I was into punk rock I was the punk guy that still liked Donna Summer and the Sugar Hill Gang.” Last year Organico released an expansive Dubtribe remix of the song “Ufonic” by space rockers Sabalon Glitz. In a few weeks the label will put out the first record by Designer, a dance-music project by recording engineer and former Liz Phair guitarist Casey Rice, and later this summer will come a record of Tortoise remixes by Dubtribe and Tranquility Bass.
