A temperate sway: why Mood II Swing are house royalty

Plus Two Shell, Kit Sebastian, Sofia Kourtesis and more

A beautiful piece from Yinka Shonibare CBE: Suspended States at the Serpentine Gallery

In a world of musical flash and blabber, Mood II Swing are the perfectly greased cog that keeps everything moving: not eye-catching, fashionable or particularly sexy but absolutely vital in their low-key ingenuity, a miracle of musical engineering that always does its job.

Mood II Swing are, in many ways, the epitome of the faceless producer. Which is not to say that John Ciafone and Lem Springsteen are boring. More that they are laser focused on the job in hand. Since the duo made their debut in 1992, Mood II Swing have put their name to hundreds of records, under their own name and various aliases, as well as record-box-loads of vital remixes; they also have tonnes of writing and production credits for other artists. 

If you’ve been to a club more than twice since 1992, you have almost certainly danced to a record bearing the Mood II Swing mark; and yet I wouldn’t recognise them if they walked down the street in one of their own T-shirts. (If they did T-shirts. Which they don’t.) They have under 500 followers on X, not even 7k fans on Instagram and their official website hasn’t been updated since 2019.

Perhaps more pertinently, most people don’t even know the role they played in the biggest song to bear the Mood II Swing imprint. The duo co-wrote and produced Ultra Naté’s global hit Free but many fans think they only remixed it. “We come from the mentality that she was the artist and even though we were the producers, she's the one that's going to present the record all around the world and perform the record,” Springsteen told Resident Advisor’s Stephen Titmus. “If you read the credits it says, ‘written and produced by Springsteen & Ciafone,’ you know. But in the media it was Ultra Naté, Ultra Naté, Ultra Naté. Which we were OK with.”

When Free blew up, in fact, the duo didn’t even have management; and they didn’t start DJing until the 2010s, when recorded music income started to fall. Interviews with Mood II Swing are hard to find, too, with the duo seemingly happy behind the boards and out of the spotlight. Mood II Swing have only released one studio album in all their long years (and that, kind of, under an alias): Storybook by Mood II Swing presents Wall of Sound, in which the group indulge their jazz funk fantasies, with little of their clipped house style. (Although there are many more compilation albums of their work on the market for anyone whose interests are raised.)

This reticence is laudable. But it makes it easy to underrate Mood II Swing, who are undoubtedly one of the most important groups in house music. Alongside Todd Terry, Mood II Swing helped to bring the hip hop drum swing into house, giving New York its own recognisable house sound; they are the epitome of irresistible, hypnotic, minimal house; they helped birth UK Garage; and their records are also big on the techno scene, for their intensely focused groove. 

Much like Masters at Work, who mentored Mood II Swing early on in their career, Mood II Swing represent the coming together of a talented musician / melody writer with a master of the drums. Lem Springsteen is the former, a promising young pianist who released two R&B-influenced singles in the 1980s before turning to house. He provides the mood, then, while John Ciafone brings the swing. 

Much like Todd Terry - and MaW’s Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez - Ciafone started off in hip hop, initially making beats for local New York rappers. That all three producers make possibly the best beats in house music is surely no coincidence. Ciafone’s beats - as you can hear right from the start, on songs like The Club Kidds’ During Peak Hours, Mood II Swing’s 8 Ways To Knock Down A Wall and the duo’s remix of Masters at Work’s Gonna Get Back To You, all released in 1992 - don’t necessarily sound like hip hop, in the same way that Todd Terry’s do. But they have plenty of that vital hip hop crunch: the bass drum hits you hard down low, while the snares and claps punch elegantly through the mix. (According to Stephen Titmus in Resident Advisor, the duo used a E-mu SP-1200 drum machine, as favoured by many house producers. which would make a lot of sense.)

But, for me, what really defines the Mood II Swing sound is the graceful swing and beautifully contained bustle of the drum programming. Most Mood II Swing drum patterns are only made up of a few key ingredients - a four / four bass drum, shuffling hi hats, sparse but effective snare hits and perhaps the odd clap. But Ciafone finds a world of inspiration in the interaction between these limited ingredients - in the way the snare, say, plays off and around the hi hat. This minimal drum palette allows other ingredients - a snatch of vocal or a keyboard stab - to come into play, creating an ultra-rhythmic musical web for the song to repose on. (During Peak Hours is, I think, an absolute master class in this.)

The drums’ rock solid base also sets up a brilliant contrast with the more musical elements of Mood II Swing’s productions. Penetration, for example, from the duo’s debut release for Eightball Records in 1992, features airy synth chords, a  trilling saxophone, jazzy brass hits and snatches of disco vocal, ingredients, in some hands, for a lightweight deep house number (which can be a great thing, of course.) 

But added to Ciafone’s apocalyptic kick drum thump and a corporeal bass line it creates something altogether tougher, the kind of song that will cut through a DJ’s set by its sheer physicality, without using any cheap tricks, a track that will make you dance just that little bit harder, almost without knowing why. (Shout out too to the adamantine gospel of I Need Your Luv (Right Now) (Lem's Church Mix) off the same EP, with its wonderfully menacing two-note bass solo.)

With their love of hard drum shuffle and pulsating bass, it was perhaps inevitable that Mood II Swing - like Todd Edwards, Armand van Helden, MK and others - would find an audience in the UK, their hardscrabble sound particularly at home among the DJs who would later go on to create the UK Garage sound. In Britain the duo’s best known song is Closer (and in particular, the Swing II Mood Dub), a pre-Garage anthem and massive influence on the UKG scene with its clipped vocal sample, syncopated drum swing and prominent bass line. (That honking sax riff also helped.) 

This song, in fact, might have been my first conscious introduction to Mood II Swing, when Todd Edwards included it on his epochal Locked On. Inside The Mix album in 1996, where it sits snugly alongside his own Saved My Life and MK’s dub of Jodeci’s Freak In You, in a kind of founding gospel of UKG.

The influence of US house and garage on UKG is well known. What is remarkable about Mood II Swing, however, is that their music also found a home among techno DJs, a mark of the duo’s tightly coiled grooves and ferocious drum attack. 1995’s Move Me, for example, is an absolute ringer for the dub techno shuffle of Basic Channel, with its low, low bass line and echoing synth production. This, on paper, reads like an arctic shift for Mood II Swing; but in reality the song actually sounds more like the logical conclusion of their low-end exploration. 

1996’s corkscrew-tight Slippery Track was, according to RA, “hammered by DJs like Laurent Garnier, Juan Atkins and Sven Väth”, while Ciafone’s solo track Tick Tock (as Chiapet) was a chilling club monster the same year, with its apocalyptic helicopter vibes. It remains the one house track I would definitely play in the event of a societal breakdown. 

So far I have concentrated on Mood II Swing’s incredible production. But they are also brilliant songwriters - led, I suspect, by Lem Springsteen - as is evident on songs like Ultra Naté’s Free (obviously), Masters at Work’s To Be In Love (on which Springsteen has a credit), Fonda Rae’s Living In Ecstasy and Kim English’s Learn 2 Luv.

Some of the peak Mood II Swing is found when they remix their own productions for other artists, such as the Mood II Swing Club mix of Learn 2 Luv and the J.C.’s Ecstasy Dub of Living In Ecstasy, which located the midpoint between the original production and the dubbed-out wastelands of Move Me. Springsteen himself is a fan of the Mood II Swing live mix of Free, on which he plays keys, Ciafone is on drums and Woody Pak, who plays the original song’s iconic riff, is on guitar. But it’s just a little too noodling for me.

The duo are also masterful remixers of other artists, the mixes artfully jacking up the original’s dance floor smarts without abandoning the song’s own characteristic style. When asked his 10 favourite Mood II Swing songs, by Music Is 4 Lovers, Springsteen actually chose eight remixes, which surprised me a little. 

He included several of my favourites, including remixes of Lucy Pearl’s Don’t Mess With My Man, King Britt Presents Sylk 130’s When The Funk Hits The Fan (“this is probably the funkiest MIIS bass line created”) and Janet Jackson’s Come On Get Up. His list doesn’t, however, include what are probably my two favourite Mood II Swing remixes, the Vocal mix and Borderline Insanity Dub Mix of Crustation’s Flame, in which they transform a rather dull trip hop knock off into two separate deep house masterpieces.

Mood II Swing have scores of remixes to their name. Discogs mentions 432 and I think many of these are duplicated - but all the same! However unsexy it may sound, they are very sturdy remixers. You know they’re not going to do an Aphex Twin and chuck out 99% of the original track or produce something entirely unexpected. But what they will do is perfectly Mood II Swing-ify your original track, leaving it entirely suited to the modern dance floor, the drums pumped up and pulsing, the bass funky and the production neatly shorn to their demands. This, the remix suggests, was your song’s original destiny and it took us to get you there. (I find it almost impossible to hear Don’t Mess With My Man these days without thinking back to the Mood II Swing version.)

In a way, this is very true of Mood II Swing in general. They are dependable in a way that doesn’t scream excitement and thrills, their innovation happening on a subtle level of production, in between the drum swing and the tight musical feel. But if you dig into their catalogue you will find that, in staying true to themselves, Mood II Swing have found incredible ways to expand the house template, without ever missing a beat. They have long been New York house royalty; the rest of the world should bow to their genius.

PS I have put together a brief Mood II Swing best of playlist for you.

PPS Do let me know your Mood II Swing favourites.

Some listening

Two Shell and Sugababes - Round

Two Shell have earned themselves at least another six months of dull puns and interview lies with this blazing remake of Sugababes’ brilliant 2002 hit Round Round, with vocals re-recorded by the Sugababes trio of Mutya, Keisha and Siobhan. Round has industrial 2-stepping drums, vocal cut ups and suitable air of pop menace, which result in an utterly irresistible hit.

Kit Sebastian - Metropolis

Take one riff inspired by Azerbaijani musicians, add a Western funk groove, an Italian analog synth and a “mock-choir” and you have Metropolis, the new single from London-based duo Kit Sebastian, the kind of song that slinks all over the speakers in a cosmopolitain summer groove, clipped, clever and just sad enough to last until autumn.

Things I’ve done

Line Noise - Sofia Kourtesis returns

The last time Sofia Kourtesis visited Line Noise, she announced that she was planning her debut album. When she returned, at Primavera Sound 2024, that incredible debut album, Madres, had eaten the world, becoming one of the most loved and critically acclaimed dance music albums of the past few years. We spoke to her about the incredible reaction to Madres, emotion in dance music and taking a neurosurgeon to Berghain. 

Kampire Presents: A Dancefloor in Ndola

If your song of the summer isn’t African House Party Project’s 1991 banger P-Coq or Di Groovy Girls’ Ririmi Rotsombela then you’re not listening to the right records. Kampire’s excellent new compilation for Strut will rectify that. And I reviewed it for Pitchfork. “Most listeners to this compilation will never visit Ndola, but the evocative power of A Dancefloor in Ndola makes you feel like you almost have—like you too might have sweated out a night at the center of Zambia’s Copperbelt Province to the continent’s greatest electronic pop bangers. This is dance music at its transportive, revelatory best, a real reminder of what an astute, inventive DJ can do.”

The playlists

Music is a moral law. And my playlists are the search for justice. Or something. Anyway, please follow them: The newest and the bestest; and the Newest and the Bestest 2024.