Theo Parrish DJ-Kicks: Detroit Forward
This is one of those records with detail, where you hear something new-to-you every time you listen. I guess the way that sentiment is normally said would be that it rewards repeated listening, but this is not the instant gratification type of reward. The thing about this collection, which Parrish has put together for the long-running compilation series DJ Kicks, is that it has a few spikes to it. It rewards listening but it is not always satisfying. It gives you something to nod your head to and then takes it right away. It repeats and repeats and repeats a groove, a set up of unnerving synth chords, a vocal call, until you are not enjoying the album so much as an observer or a listener but as an instrument. I wouldn’t quite call that being rewarded. I would call that being played. Being expressed.
We open with “Pressure”, a song that knows how to insert itself carefully into your consciousness. We start with the simplest plucked guitar line which slowly starts to reverberate in space, and the reverberation becomes a voice, swirling, and the voice becomes voices as a lo-fi hi-hat driven drum line comes in, and then a quick cut to silence for just a second and: we switch keys all of the sudden while the programmed drums come in with some real bass, some bass that would shake the speakers if you played it loud enough. It’s a groove, a real groove.
Then all of the sudden it’s over and we’re in “Simba’s Theme”. The drums are disjointed and filtered, there’s animalic sounds emanating from somewhere, noise and a lonely rhodes or wurlitzer playing a little melody, a little dissonant chord structure. There’s not much to grasp onto here for balance; it’s like being a little drunk on a small boat. That’s how the album goes, for the most part. You’ll get a little something that grounds you completely and then a few things that take you apart again, make you aware that the earth is spinning fast and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
The DJ-Kicks series was created in 1993 by the !K7 record label to showcase the talent of the nightlife scene in a format you could take home with you. Each album features a different DJ putting together a mix, and you get the sense that certain DJ’s have a whole lot of fun taking on the challenge of creating something that feels worthy of preserving on a compact disk. Theo Parrish was a perfect pick for the series. Parrish is a DJ’s DJ, famous first as a representative of the Detroit scene and now known for his long, all-night sets that everyone who’s been to one says will take you on a true journey. He’s a snob, a nerd, a perfectionist, the sort of creative person we’ve started to miss in these days where creators who maybe could have used a little more practice time or a little more real world experience are sharing everything they do on socials the second they do it. I appreciate this clip of him, 20 years ago, talking about the switch from analogue to digital DJing:
It’s not that I fully agree with him; it’s that I, too, have the unreasonable expectation that an encounter with art or music should change your DNA. That’s kind of my whole goal any time I’m creating art, or seeking it out. I want to feel rewritten. And I think that’s what connects me to this album – I can feel how it’s trying to change me, and I think at certain points it really did.
The center of the album for me is “Wind Drifts“. These chords are spiritual to me. If I heard this on a dancefloor in the right place, at the right party, it would absolutely change my life. It already has, just hearing it through my headphones. I feel connected to some god, some spirit, when I hear what’s going on in this song. And after a few listens I realized that it’s not about the Rhodes keys or the spare, understated drums. It’s about the bassline, the bassline that starts simple and gets more active the longer you go into the song. The bassline lifts. It brings you up. It’s not a simple task, what that bassline accomplishes, to ground the song while being light on its feet.
After listening for a while, I decided to figure out if there was any more context I could find about the making of the album and I was delighted to learn that this is the first exclusive mix for DJ-Kicks, meaning every song in here is new, released just for the album. The amount of effort that must have taken, for a series which is normally just mixed songs of tracks that have already been released, makes sense given Parrish’s high-effort, high-reward approach to DJing. I thought that this video below, released to promote the album and showcasing some of the featured artists, was a lovely little peak into the recording process:
What sticks with me more than the music in this album is the approach, the care, the intention. The music sticks too, it lives with me, but it’s the effort that makes it most meaningful.
2025 has been a year of trying to dig deeper into everything I experience, making sure to spend more time on every relationship I have to others and their work. What I look forward to most in 2026 is the opportunity to dance a little more with the music of the past and present both, to wonder at and examine the art that has been left for us like a hand-made gift, bearing the marks of the work it took to make. There will be no perfect albums for me to listen to in 2026, but there will be ones made by people who put as much of themselves into their work as they possibly could at a time when they were blessed enough to be able to do that work, to create for a brief moment something that has come across my path. Those albums are the ones I’m looking forward to hearing the most.
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