Da Mongoloids explained: or how van Helden, Jr Sanchez, Daft Punk + more didn’t make the 36 Chambers of house
Plus Two Shell, LYZZA, Hologram Teen, Sharada Shashidhar + more
In the 90s, hip hop and house music had a very lopsided relationship. Hip hop artists didn’t have much time for house, on the whole; but there were a number of house producers, particularly in New York, who adored hip hop and did much to bring it into their sphere. Armand van Helden is the obvious example; but you could also name Todd Terry and even Daft Punk over in Paris.
Perhaps inevitably it was van Helden - along with Junior Sanchez - who came up with the idea of the “Wu Tang of house” in the early 90s, with the nascent collective being given the infinitely regrettable name of Da Mongoloids.
(I spoke to Junior Sanchez recently for a Line Noise and he acknowledged that the name wasn’t a good one: “We learned later [the name] was not a good word in the English language, in the UK,” he said. “But we're coming from Mongolians and that whole mongrel crew of warriors. And we weren't coming from people with disabilities.”)
Speaking to Steve Aoki in 2023, van Helden explained where the idea of Da Mongoloids came from, back in 1994. “The main reason we started is because we were young upstarts in house,” he said. “There was already a crew of dudes. They didn't have a name but the crew was Masters at Work, Kenny, Louie Vega, Todd Terry, MK, whatever. If you went to an event and they were all there, they'd all be at the bar, right? Me and Junior aspired to be that.”
“We started to see how, besides that group, there actually wasn't a lot of unity in the music. What was happening in hip hop in the early 90s was that thing of getting people together, organising in a group setting. We were super fans of Wu Tang. We were like, ‘That's the group.’ So for us, in the house world, we're like, ‘Maybe we can form a Wu Tang of house.’”
On a musical level, meanwhile, the inspiration was mercurial Chicago producer Cajmere and his hard-edged Relief label. In the Aoki interview, Junior Sanchez references “tracky Chicago and New York house”. “We logged a lot of the music that was coming out of Chicago,” van Helden continued. “Like Cajmere: predominantly Cajmere’s label Relief Records. And we were fanatical about it. Nobody in New York was touching those records. And really the Mongoloids sound that we created, that was copying Cajmere.” “Thomas [Bangalter]’s Trax On Da Rocks, that would be a very Mongoloid-ish record,” Sanchez added.
As a huge fan of both the Wu Tang and New York house, I was always intrigued by the idea of Da Mongoloids, whose name seemed to crop up regularly in interviews but who remained something of a mystery in the early internet days. I wanted to ask Junior Sanchez about it, to try to clear up who exactly this group was and what they did.
“We created this idea of Da Mongoloids and it was myself, Armand, Basement Jaxx, Daft Punk and all our friends,” Sanchez told me. Other members of Da Mongoloids included DJ Sneak, Roger Sanchez, Todd Terry, Ian Pooley, Laidback Luke and UK house duo Rhythm Masters, although the membership never appears to have been fixed.
“We wanted to create unity,” Sanchez continued. “We're already working together, remixing each other, helping each other out. Now we just needed to form a collective of like-minded individuals and do something a little bit more meaningful.”
My perception of Da Mongoloids was a group with big ideas that never really did very much. But Sanchez corrected me on this. There appear, in fact, to be two different ways of looking at Da Mongoloids. One is in view of the small amount of music that actually came out under Da Mongoloids name - essentially one 1996 12 inch, Spark Da Meth, that was all van Helden’s work, and remixes of NuYorican Soul’s Runaway and The Funk Junkeez (aka Roger Sanchez)’s Got Funk.
The other - which Sanchez favours - relates to all the times that the various members of Da Mongoloids worked together in the 90s and early 2000s, no matter the name. This includes numerous remixes of Daft Punk (including Roger and Junior Sanchez’s take on Revolution 909, van Helden’s remix of Da Funk, Ian Pooley and DJ Sneak’s remixes of Burnin’); DJ Sneak and Armand van Helden’s incredible Hardsteppin Disko Selection 12 inch; Junior Sanchez’s collaborations with the Rhythm Masters (as New Age Funkstas) and Laidback Luke (as Riot Society); and Basement Jaxx’s remix of DJ Sneak’s Fix My Sink. All in all, that’s a world-beating selection of tough, jacking house.
Junior Sanchez also mentioned his vocals on Basement Jaxx’s Remedy and Rooty albums, as well as Roger Sanchez and DJ Sneak opening for Daft Punk on their Daftendirektour tour. “There was a lot of collaboration and cross-collaboration that people didn't realise,” he said. “When we put the collective together, people are like, ‘They are working together, they are helping each other out.’ Even if we didn't get credit, we were present, we were doing stuff together.”
What the group didn’t do - to my and their infinite regret - was record an album. Sanchez said that Pedro Winter, Daft Punk’s manager, and Thomas Bangalter, were the two people who took the idea of a Mongoloids album most seriously.
“We wanted to do an album. I learned later on that Pedro and Thomas went to Armand like, ‘We need to do a Mongoloids album.’ But what happened was, everyone's career started to really pick up and exponentially explode,” Sanchez said. “So everyone kind of started to fragment. We kept that unification and that friendship. But we never executed what we should have done: our 36 Chambers.”
Sanchez said that van Helden regrets this to this day. “Because he didn't take it as serious as I did, because he was just like… He mistakenly thought, because he didn't take it seriously, nobody else did,” Sanchez explained. “But, on the contrary, everyone took it seriously. And the most who took it serious were Daft Punk and Pedro Winter. They were really like, ’What are we doing?’ And Armand, to this day, he wishes… We all wish we would have put it together because they went to him two or three times talking about doing an album.”
Sanchez said that van Helden was very nonchalant in the 90s. “He didn’t like to impose anything on anyone. If it was organic and happened, it happened in that moment. But planning stuff? He was never a planner.”
So that, then, was Da Mongoloids. Listening to the incredible catalogue of collaborative music that they did record and their brilliant individual works, it’s hard to feel exactly short changed by the way things turned out. (If you’ve never heard Psychic Bounty Killaz from the Hardsteppin Disko Selection EP - or the even better version that came out on van Helden’s 2Future4U album - then do yourself a favour.)
At the same time, the idea of a 36 Chambers of house, with Armand van Helden, Junior Sanchez, Basement Jaxx, Daft Punk, DJ Sneak, Roger Sanchez, Todd Terry, Ian Pooley, Laidback Luke and the Rhythm Masters each bringing their distinct personalities and sounds, Wu-Tang style, under the heady influence of Cajmere and Relief, is almost too much to imagine, a potentially game-changing house masterwork that foundered on the rocks of nonchalance and is - barring several remarkable turns of events - gone forever.
…
My Line Noise interview with Junior Sanchez is released on Monday. His new record Art-O-Fact (Detroit Remix) arrives on Carl Craig’s Planet E label on October 11 and we talked about that; about Detroit and Miami; about his love of The Prodigy and even Tatu. It was a wonderful, far-reaching conversation and I hope you enjoy it.
Some listening
Two Shell - Everybody Worldwide
Among the increasingly tedious “antics”, Two Shell have been building an impressive body of work and their debut album (if it is an album and not, oh I don’t know, a model boat race) is a compelling prospect. Everybody Worldwide, a relatively straight-forward piece of ambient-ish house with a touch of 2-Step, isn’t their best work but it is catchy as hell, thanks to the curiously chopped vocals and a rave-y chord sequence rendered very softly indeed.
LORD JAH-MONTE OGBON - I’m Signed to Lex Now I’m Up
North Carolina rapper Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon is a prolific mixtape veteran - and now, as the name suggests, a Lex records signee - but he’s new to me. I was, however, won over very quickly by the charming / haunting flute + Farfisa loop that forms the background to this single and which I could, frankly, listen to all day. Faced with such perfection, the Lord gently wraps his vocal around the loop, caressing it into life like a mother cat gently cleaning her kitten of its post-birth gunk.
Chromesthesia: The Colour of Sound Vol.1 is a fascinating idea for an album. It sees British-Egyptian historian Hannah Elsisi track afro-diasporic rhythms across what she calls “the Global Mangrove Archipelago”, which, if I have understood it right, translates to the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea; the Red Sea and Mediterranean; the Indian ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The first fruit of the compilation is this elegantly mucky collaboration between raptor house don DJ Babatr and Brazilian artist LYZZA, which rather brilliantly shrugs off its roots in academia by scampering all over the dance floor with a mixture of LYZZA’s rhythmic nonchalance and Babtr’s drum-led assault.
Sharada Shashidhar - Soft Echoes
Perhaps the only thing more remarkable than the cute shorthand being used to describe Sharada Shashidhar - “the jazz Kate Bush” indeed - is that the LA vocalist and composer actually earns it, in that she makes jazz - very sumptuous orchestral jazz - and her swooping, preening vocal melodies do sound a lot like Kate Bush. It’s a wonderful sound. But on Soft Echoes, the title track of her new EP, this is joined by a fantastic song, too, which leans lightly on Kate Bush circa-The Kick Inside (which is, with apologies to all the other albums, my favourite Kate Bush record).
Things I’ve done
Line Noise - With Morgane Lhote / Hologram Teen
Yes Morgan Lhote used to be in Stereolab, aka one of my favourite bands ever, but nowadays she makes delightfully colourful electronic pop as Hologram Teen. We talked about music and tech, humour, her biggest melody, being in a band with James Ford, 80s French music, Downtown LA and being on the cover of Common’s Electric Circus.
The playlists
There are two: The newest and the bestest, with all the best new music of the last three years; and the Newest and the Bestest 2024, which is a variation on the above that you can probably work out. You get all the songs here. And you even get some more.
Ben, that was a cool read.
Thanks 🪜🪜🪜
Not a criticism nor a critique but perhaps....
Basement Jaxx - FUN ( DA MONGOLOIDS RMX)
Should be mentioned as it was a defining track from that era.