The Weirding Module The Voice at Work

The voice at work, motivating dancers, chilling or heating spaces, augmenting varied scene-specific emotions that enhance sociability, excitement, wildness is the subject of this show, appropriately provided as a beat mixed DJ set that party hops different scenes and eras.

There's a type of spoken-word associated with house music, epitomized by Lil Louis, Blake Baxter and Hercules that enlivens the track in a sweaty way, a hot way. It's a non-genre of MCing and it's certainly not singing but something that's got a dark, sexual utility. There's a kind of post-punk oratory that uses found texts and lists of dislikes, or grim northern towns to add cold irony to dance-able music, blowing on the soup until it's inviting enough to dip in. When footwork subjects a voice to its brutal repetitions, scrubbing obsessively back and forth, it wrings out every drop of threatening affect, ceaselessly challenging and calling the body out, the opposite of humanized, every loop the same remorseless velocity but time shifted and disorientating. Recent iterations of Brazilian funk have become so stripped back they're almost acapella, pitched down and gothed out. The Voice in situ, controlling the climate, working.