Pitchfork

It's easy to imagine Philly-based party collective Spank Rock swarming the Fabric DJ booth, getting places they didn't really belong until they got there-- that's pretty much their style. Call it a sneak attack, especially since Spank Rock himself, the Baltimore-born MC who provides the public face of the collective, doesn't DJ. Producer Armani XXXChange, who masterminded YoYoYoYoYo, Spank's 2006 genre-defying, sub-genre mashing proto-everything rap record (see here) is also likely on the sidelines. Instead, on the decks and below the radar are the group's two DJs, Ronnie Darko and Chris Rockswell, in charge and running things.

They're an unlikely choice for Fabric, who historically skew towards dance circles and Europeans. But there is a precedent, another Philly guy who favors mixtapes over 12" and rap over microhouse: Diplo's FabricLive 24 mix is duly acknowledged by Spank Rock's finisher, the soul semi-classic "Love to the World" by L.T.D., previously the starter for his own 2005 mix. Diplo made his Hollertronix-branded bones exploring what XXXChange would later synthesize on YoYoYoYoYo: leaning harder on rap than anybody else who DJed downtown while still mixing in big chunks of more indie-friendly sounds such as electropop, dance-punk, and post-punk/funk. These days Diplo produces grist for this mill: baile funk, M.I.A., and of course gallery rap, in the persons of Philly savants Plastic Little, Amanda Blank, and, um, Spank Rock, who owe their signing to Big Dada to Diplo. Philadelphia is among other things a small town.

Spank Rock, with FabricLive 33, have made from this borrowed and now much-imitated template a charged-up, obvious mix. Forget novelty or crate-digging (the outset has them talking about their game plan, which boils down to the third-person crack "these are the songs they always play"). As they note in press materials, "how we roll, as far as making the party, is debauchery and fun."

And so the warm-up is one long grinning stretch of recognition, a quick build of one hit after another: Kurtis Blow, CSS, sample-staple Yello's "Bostich", one of Daft Punk's over-familiar, computer-voiced tracks, and the indelibly ubiquitous Italo-disco bassline of Kano's "I'm Ready". Add Switch's "Apache"-manhandling "A Bit Patchy" back-to-back with the Contours' "Do You Love Me" and you have a shorthand history of some of the most popular songs and sample-sources from the last 40 years in less than 22 minutes, not even counting the ingenious wholesale inclusion of Yes ("Owner of a Lonely Heart") and the Romantics ("Talking in Your Sleep") minutes further down the line.

These guys wouldn't be who they were without a movement, and so friends and neighbors stop by to prop up the middle of their mix, among them CSS, Ed Banger affiliate Uffie, and Bonde do Role. Amanda Blank raps over the Justice Mix of Mr. Oizo's "Nazis" and 1984 club-hit "The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight". From their section of the record store, wherever that is, comes the last third: a Catholic selection of electroclash chestnuts and like-minded scenester genre-orphans-- Simian Mobile Disco, Chicks on Speed, Miss Kittin, and Hot Chip.

Like Diplo didn't, they don't touch the rap with which they distinguished themselves in the States. The one modern rap track in the whole going, Rick Ross's "Hustler", is only proof that what Scarface, the movie, is to Rick Ross, Rick Ross is to hipster DJs: source material and shorthand for a kind of lifestyle neither actually live.

Personally, I don't keep various Fabric mixes around, one for washing dishes, another for surfing the web, one for doing parties without doing any work, one to impress ladies with all my "rare cuts," etc., but my best guess is no one will be let down using FabricLive 33 for any of the above purposes, except maybe the last. Spank Rock's shifty identity is well served by the anonymity of a DJ mix: When Spank's vocals are dropped, or Amanda Blank's, or Uffie's, they've got context, and a point-- keeping things moving. Which is what these guys do best.