In praise of Switch aka fidget house relit my fire

Plus DJ Sneak, Halo Maud, Turbojazz, 96 Back

By the mid 2000s I was going off dance music for the first time since my early teens. Dubstep was bubbling under and minimal techno hadn’t gone right up its fundament but, on the whole, there wasn’t that much electronic music that would have pulled me into a club as I slowly approached my 30s. It simply wasn’t that fun. 

(Incidentally, I’ve just looked up Mixmag’s best albums of 2006 and what a strange list that is. Sure Burial and Hot Chip. But The Gossip? Justin Timberlake? BT? Nelly Furtado? Jesus 2006, what happened?)

What pulled me back in was a genre of music - fidget house - that today is seen, at best, as an unruly gatecrasher; and in particular Dave Taylor aka Switch aka Solid Groove aka A. Brucker, a producer who, for a good two years, seemed to be everywhere, making things better wherever he painted his magic.

And I do really mean everywhere. From 2006 to 2009 Taylor released a ubiquitous underground anthem, in Switch’s A Bit Patchy; co-produced (with Diplo) Major Lazer’s Pon De Floor, which Beyoncé would later employ on her iconic single Run The World (Girls); worked on MIA’s global hit album Kala (including US hit Paper Planes); mixed a Fabric Live CD with fellow fidget-er Sinden; and remixed everyone from P Diddy to Björk. He was even named XLR8R’s artist of the year in 2007. This is the kind of overarching hot streak that most producers can only dream of.

And yet, to be honest, I had kind of forgotten about Switch (and I bet you had too) until I watched the MIA documentary Matangi/Maya/M.I.A this week. Taylor (who I am going to call Switch from hereon in) isn’t in the documentary, as far as I can tell, but his productions crop up all over the film, notably on Kala highlights Bamboo Banga, Bird Flu and Boyz. And I was just thinking to myself how well those songs were made when the documentary’s end credits came up and I was reminded of Taylor’s role in their production.

(This is not, in any way, to take away from MIA’s own role in those songs. It’s her album and she co-produced it all, while also providing the vocals and the overall vision. Maybe I will get to her some time. But for today, I want to talk about Switch.)

Switch’s production on Kala is not entirely typical of the work for which he is best know. Kala roams beautifully around generic boundaries, taking in everything from Baltimore club to urumee melan, with its roots just about set in hip hop. Switch is known for house music and more specifically the wretchedly well-named sub genre fidget house that cropped up in the mid 2000s loudly revelling in tightly-knit, ever-changing, rave-inspired production, lots of cut-up vocals, wild breakdowns and great tranches of sub bass, like speed garage on ADHD. 

But you do get a flavour of what Switch was about from his work on Kala. Two tracks - Hussel and 20 Dollar - feature the cut-up-to-the-point-of-insanity vocal production that would be his trademark, while the album’s brilliant use of samples points to another of Switch’s strong points. On Kala, Switch and MIA pull from an incredible variety of potentially mismatched sources - Boyz, for example, draws from both Soca and Tamil gaana - creating vibrant, eclectic but coherent sonic stews in hard-hitting, tight productions.

Like Armand van Helden before him, Switch has an excellent ear for a sample and the musical imagination to make his source material work. (Also like van Helden, he is an excellent remixer.) On Switch’s best known solo track, A Bit Patchy, he makes something fresh out of one of the most wearily over-used songs in recorded music history, Incredible Bongo Band’s Apache, by cutting up the sample in unexpected ways, making a kind of dance hall house rhythm out of the familiar break. The result sounds simultaneously obvious and very new, a winning combination for a dance anthem. To this Switch adds a filthy sub bass rumble that speak to the UK’s post-rave traditions of jungle and UKG.

Switch’s production is also incredibly sharp. While minimal and dubstep both favoured drawn-out, austere grooves, Switch and his fellow fidget house artists were throwing everything but the kitchen sink at their constantly shifting productions, in a way that sounded refreshing and vibrant, especially for someone like me who was largely enjoying dance music outside of the club. The results are large but never bloated.

In Switch’s remix of Spank Rock’s Bump - one of his best-known works - he won’t let the arrangement settle for a moment, constantly pulling at the musical fabric in a way that might be quite unsettling if you’re trying to have a dance but works brilliantly when, say, going for a winter walk around a park, which is how I remember the song. You sometimes feel like Switch has almost too many ideas - but I would far prefer that to too few. This is why fidget is such a good name for the genre - it is, literally, fidgety house, house that can’t and won’t sit still for a moment. 

These constant shifts also allow Switch to flit between emotions and styles: This is Sick, his 2005 track as Solid Groove, is an excellent example of this, as rude synth riffs abruptly shift into a celestial sample - taken from New Sector Movement’s broken beat classic The Sun - and back, each emotional jolt a new shot of energy for the dance floor.

Listening back to Switch’s greatest hits today, they sound very much of their time. I suspect that some of the production effects he relies heavily on were a result of recent technological shifts, which does date them slightly. But they still sound fantastic, dance music that is full of invention, drive and funk.

So why is Switch largely forgotten today? For a start, he spent many years concentrating on production work for other artists rather than music under his own name. These included Beyoncé (I Was Here), Santigold, Christina Aguilera and MIA. (Apparently, he almost died while making MIA’s Matangi, which can’t have helped.)

According to Diplo, his erstwhile production partner in Major Lazer, Switch “just can’t finish songs”, which may help to explain why he has concentrated on a more back-room role. In a 2008 interview with XLR8R Switch claimed there was a Solid Groove album on the way but this was never to be.

He also churned out the remixes at a rate that risked burning out his sound, doing 18 of them in 2007 alone. Switch is an excellent remixer, capable of radically reviving a song while staying true to its spirit and some of his best work is to be found in this area. His take on - and I apologise for this in advance - Mika’s Love Today, for one, is brilliant, its bouncing, strafing bass lines and cut-up vocals both dance floor catnip and somehow very true to the pop spirit of Mika. 

This facility meant that Switch was very much in demand for his remixing in the mid 2000s, taking on everyone from Robbie Willians to Nine Inch Nails. But a significant percentage of his remix work was for British indie bands who may have fancied themselves with something of a dance edge, including a number of the “new rave” suspects, such as Klaxons and Late Of the Pier. The results were often excellent - his remix of Late Of The Pier’s Gary Numan-esque Space and the Woods is fabulous - but he probably got tarred by association when the whole new rave scene slunk off to lick its day-glo wounds.

Fidget house itself also suffered a fairly radical reverse in fortunes. One minute, somewhere around 2008, artists like Sinden, Jesse Rose, Hervé, Fake Blood, Jack Beats and Crookers (who I would call more blog house but let’s not split hairs) were strutting around the lower top of the dance music hierarchy, then the bubble burst and they slunk off back into cult appeal. 

By 2010, when Domino released MEGA, MEGA, MEGA, the debut album by The Count (aka Hervé) & Sinden, an album that was meant to launch fidget house into the charts but fell flat as a pancake, it was pretty clear the gig was up. (And, hey I LIKE that record.)

While former production partner Diplo has become one of the world’s biggest DJs, Switch, now apparently living in LA, has kept busy, writing and producing in a low-key fashion. (He left Major Lazer in 2011, incidentally.) In 2015 he launched his new house project, With You., releasing a single with Vince Staples. And in 2018 his label Diary Records released Hello Happiness, the twelfth studio album by the legendary Chaka Khan, for which he also supplied production. 

This may sound like a long way from producing frantic, bass-y cut ups for The Black Ghosts and DJ Mehdi in a 2000s style but it was a joy to discover his 2018 remix of Khan’s Like Sugar, which has all the filthy bass and frantic cuts trademarks of his classic work, as if Switch simply couldn’t contain himself any more.

Could fidget house be revived? Possibly. The similarly 2000s genre of Blog House recently had a second summer in the sun, so nothing is impossible. Maybe 2026 and the 20th anniversary of A Bit Patchy will prove the trigger for a revival. If it does happen, I am all here for it. And, as his recent remix of Chaka Khan proves, so too is Dave Taylor, my favourite producer of the mid 2000s and a man who helped to bring house music back to my life.

PS I have put together a brief playlist of some of my favourite Switch productions. Have a listen here. Although I have to say that a lot of my favourites aren’t on Spotify, which seems kind of typical of the mid 2000s house era.

Some listening

DJ Sneak - Love Can Make It Happen

Love Can Make It Happen finds Chicago House king DJ Sneak in an unusually contemplative mood. You could still dance to its jacking beats but the song feels made for staring out of the window on a rainy day, contemplating lost loves, which, perhaps, is the best kind of house music. There’s almost nothing to the song - a vocal snippet, moody chords and beats. But what there is, is pretty much perfect.

Halo Maud - Terres Infinies

French psychedelic pop artist Halo Maud provided vocals on the best tracks - the shoegaze-y ones, natch - on the Chemical Brothers’ unexpectedly strong recent album, For That Beautiful Feeling; now she’s back with a new album, her second, in March. It unites all the things you need from some French psychedelia: heavy breakbeats, fuzzed-up guitars and acres of French cool, like yeye gone wild in the countryside.

Turbojazz / Break One - Take 3

Italian producer Turbojazz calls back to the golden era of Broken Beat on Take 3, which features jazz funk squelch - there really is no other word - on the bass and artfully tilted breakbeats, to which he adds a massive old-school piano breakdown to really get those Scottish taps aff. It’s silly, in a ridiculously infectious way.

96 Back - Laco (Metrist reworm)

If the tune is nice, as many 90s jungle MCs would have it, play it twice. Or, in the case of 96 Back’s strafing club classic Laco, get Metrist in for a maximalist remix that throws 96 tons of elastic club nastiness at the window and watches what oozes down. Reworm indeed.

Things I’ve done

Line Noise  - With Muzi

I didn’t know all that much about South African producer and DJ Muzi before this year. But his recent album uMuzi is a fabulously bright piece of house music that pulses with life. And he has a fascinating history in music. I interviewed him for Line Noise and we talked about getting Chris Martin to sing in Zulu, Daft Punk and connecting generations. 

Line Noise - With Colleen

The wonderful Colleen joined us at the Radio Primavera Sound studios this week, ahead of her Barcelona Auditori gig, to talk about the pleasures of wandering around Barcelona, working with Moog, a cat in the studio, ongoing inspiration and her excellent eighth album Le jour et la nuit du réel.

Twitching around

This week, on the Radio Primavera Sound Twitch, we finally got around to interviewing Madrid indie rascals La Paloma and we also spoke to the ineffably excellent Colleen, who I have been wanting to interview for ages. Coming up next week: our best of year reviews and an office Christmas party. Do tune in. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays, from 11am to 1pm CET. (Mainly in Spanish. Although the Colleen interview was in English.)

The playlist

I have a very long playlist of the new music I have been enjoying since 2021. It’s called the newest and the bestest. You’ll find all of the above songs on it and more. What more could you want for Christmas? A playlist with a better name? Oh shut up.