A central figure within New York City’s electronic music community, Phil Moffa brandishes many hats: go-to mixing and mastering engineer for house and techno luminaries, studio owner of the beloved hub Butcha Sound Studios, and revered artist/producer in his own right fluent in a range of club-oriented and texturally ethereal sonic languages, as exemplified by remarkable releases like Elevation (2014) and Rare Forms (2016).
Maybe most uncanny, however, is Phil’s role as an educator and mentor. Now in his twentieth year as an instructor and lecturer in the studio production program at SUNY Purchase’s Conservatory of Music, as well as teaching in the Sonic Arts MFA program at Brooklyn College, he’s long emphasized the importance of experimentation and collaboration. So it’s only fitting that his latest project should connect all of the aforementioned in perhaps the most organic way imaginable. The “Second Foundation” Remixes EP features Phil’s own music as re-imagined by four remixers several years his junior – AceMo, Photay, Alredna and Zianni Orange – all of whom also happen to be former or current attendees of his production masterclass.
Culled from material originally released on Elevation and Rare Forms, the 4-track digital release represents a uniquely intergenerational creative exchange. Renowned as mainstays of NYC’s dance music scene, AceMo and Photay were students of Phil’s in the mid-2010s when, as Phil has recalled, they were already making “the most futuristic stuff I ever heard.” Tapped to remix Phil’s furiously atmospheric “Elevation,” AceMo’s treatment remains true to his one-time teacher’s appraisal, intensifying the track’s rhythmic elements to their punishing limits while expertly interweaving mesmerizing synth textures as counterpoint over the course of its nearly ten exhilarating minutes. By contrast, Photay’s reinvention of Phil’s “Alma Del Mundo” is a more pronouncedly playful affair. Building off the core of Phil’s original minimalist samba-tinged percussion, Photay perfectly places synth accents, rubbery bass, and layers of hooky, wordless vocals in an infectious arrangement that evokes Carnival in the cosmos.
Burgeoning artist/producer Alredna also attended Phil’s class, graduating two years ago. Based on his contribution herein – a remix of Phil’s “Roiling Boil” finely orchestrated with a dramatic ebb and flow before settling into a plaintive piano coda – he possesses a command for merging relentless tracks and ambient sensitivity reminiscent of his mentor. Currently an enrollee in Phil’s masterclass, artist/producer/instrumentalist Zianni Orange forgoes the formalities of lengthy build-ups on their remix of Phil’s “Vertigo” (their first commercial release) and transforms the original’s cinematic tension into a super-tight, frenzied flurry of drum & bass.
New York City’s Love Injection Records will be releasing Phil’s “Second Foundation” Remixes EP in tandem with reissues of Phil’s Elevation and Rare Forms EPs – both of which have been out of print for years. In addition, a short documentary film about Phil’s mentorship will accompany the release. Taken together, the composite picture not only tells Phil’s story, and charts the impressive paths of his former students and the promise of his current ones, but leaves us with at least one lingering truism: that learning in its purest form is an act of reciprocity.
