GI Disco is a tenuously linked – but very high quality – comp from BBE that purports to chart the legacy of visiting American GIs in West Germany during the late 70s and early 80s. To a country hooked on Euro-pop and hard rock, the appearance of Afro-American soldiers brought to the nightclubs and airways a healthy and much needed dose of NY disco, funk and boogie.Most fans will already have the majority of these cuts in their collection, leaning as it does solidly towards the dancefloor rather than willful obscurity. But if you think disco means drunken sales reps shimmying to KC And The Sunshine Band, there could be worse places to start discovering the joys of ‘real’ disco music.Opening track Rumors by Times Social club defines well the music of this era, as disco embraced technology and moved away from the media spotlight creating a heavier underground groove. Many people may be familiar with Freeze’s IOU, but it’s the darker dancefloor sound of The O’Jays with Put Our Heads Together, and particularly Surface vamping it up with Falling In Love that really make the grade here.As a collection of classic tracks, the uninitiated could do a lot worse than seek this tightly curated compilation out as a window into the roots of today’s contemporary dancefloor music of all genres. A high velocity package from start to finish, GI Disco is a worthy and very enjoyable comp if not particularly innovative in approach – definitely one for any collection lacking the groove.TOBY HEMMING
New York-Addis-London: The Story of Ethio Jazz 1965-1975(Strut/Inertia)
The ever reliable Strut records continue to mine the crates for another impeccably presented history lesson in world grooves. Sitting at the place where world music meets party music, this is the latest in a long line of so-called ‘undiscovered’ masterpieces. Vibraphone and keyboard player Mulatu Astatke left his native Ethiopia in the 60s, eventually finding himself in the hot bed of emerging contemporary jazz scenes of London and New York. This compilation is a testament to the first African musician to combine traditional music with the freeform grooves of the jazz world and a great statesman of modern music. For most people the idea of a world music/jazz fusion invokes images of over studious chinstroking muso buffs., but this lands on the right side of funky, applying intelligent melodies to a strangely appealing bass-led groove. And as with all Strut releases the attention to detail in packaging and liner notes make this an essential purchase.
Shoes your Illusion I & II(Shoes Recordings/Inertia)
Are re-edits really just the preserve of music fans with little discernible musical talent, but a working knowledge of pro tools? Or are they in fact part of a rich musical tradition taking in the earliest dancefloor pioneers searching for a way to make the record just that little bit funkier? This comp from the shadowy Shoes Crew is in fact a cut above the traditional formula of extending the intro and stringing the breakdowns out a bit. Shoes your Illusion is a double album of unashamed funk and soul standards, each given a subtle but intelligent work-over to create more than the sum of the parts. To tackle a set of classics of this calibre and come out on top is no mean feat, and the Shoes crew re arrange classics such as Bitches Brew and Why Can’t we Live Together to admirable effect. It’s a great way to rediscover your favourite songs, or for the uninitiated the perfect introduction to your musical heritage, highly recommended.
As part of the recent resurgence in what has been termed cosmic disco, or disco not disco, has been a real convergence of some of the mellower synth led elements of soft rock, and more leftfield ‘disco’.
With Fleetwood Mac being a standard set staple at Lowlife and bass laden Compass Point productions showing up everywhere, it’s not a new trend.
Anyway, the sound is no better personified than the fabulous AOR Disco blog, who have put a little selection of tracks together for Disco Outcast here. Well worth checking out....
Not sure if this is the best, or worst thing I have heard all year. Ex Gang Starr frontman, and arguably best MC ever, rapping over Ceronne's 'Supernature' Judge for yourself......
This pop up pocast player looks like SHIT- but if you can get it to work, the content is phenomenal. Rare as shit recording of Larry Levan from the Garage, early 1980's. Enjoy....
So Michael Jackson is gone. I’ve seen plenty of comment about this, some positive some down right stupid. However whatever you say, Jackson changed the face of popular music beyond recognition. Quite aside from practically inventing the music video genre, breaking MTV and propping up Motown, Jackson alongside Quincy Jones moved black music into the heart of pop, creating a legacy that undermines all but the blandest, whitest of today’s music. Before Thriller, there was soul, funk, and disco and then there was every other type of music, including pop. By exhibiting a healthy disregard for genre, Jackson quite literally defined his music as what was to be known as pop, a decision that resonates with almost everything of any note since. Easily as influential as the Beatles, Velvets or any other rock ‘n roll band, Jackson the man may have been a questionable proposition, but his music lives on….
Disco, it seems is no longer the dirty word it was. Once the nemisis of the mass of mainstream punters hardwired by the hideous rewriting of the seventies that pushed the image of tacky suburban nightclubs and cheap polyester suits, to those who had evolved a groove, disco has always been another slightly truncated form of funk and soul. Indeed to the house music generation, in a way it embodies a more authentic view of four to the floor hedonism.
To some this was always the case, and to two New York immigrants, one the son of a wealthy British retail dynasty (Mothercare no less!) the other a transient French punk rocker, Disco was just another party of a party mix, part of a collage of sounds that sounded great at two o’clock in a steamy basement club. It was these two guys, Michael Zilkha and Michel Esteban who in 1977 created ZE records, a seminal New York ‘No Wave’ label that mixed the stripped down experimental bassline disco being championed by the likes of Larry Levan at The Paradise Garage, with the spiky indigenous punk being created in the wake of the Ramones and New York Dolls.
More that just a record label, ZE came to embody the spirit of the anything as long as you can dance to it, musical policy of NY clubs like The Roxy where the ice cold minimalism of Kraftwerk, could be heard next to bad ass funk from James Brown mixed in with the jerky rock n roll of Talking Heads. And it was this mix and match attitude tied together with a funky bassline, that steered ZE to become the influential downtown label of the late 70’s early 80’s.
Soon the label boasted an impressive roster of the cream of the twisted underground signing up such new talent as James White and the Blacks, Was (Not Was), Kid Creole and the Coconuts, alongside more established performers including John Cale and Suicide.
ZE 30 is a timely release from reissue label par excellence Strut that collates some of the finer, funkier and frankly weirder moments from the labels history. The 14 track selection stretches from to good times dancefloor classic ‘Tell Me That I’m Dreaming’ from Was not Was, to Avant-garde industrial experimentation from Suicide with ‘Dream Baby Dream.’
It’s easy with these label perspectives, to be willfully obscure in order to gain some uber-hip upper hand, but Strut tread a fine line here of showcasing the astonishing breadth of material on the album with some genuine floor fillers. The aforementioned Paradise garage sound is represented by Larry Levan weighing with his stripped back druggy mix of Kid Creoles demolition of Caribbean politics, characterized by a rush of syncopated handclaps, whilst the more white boy punk sound can be heard in Alan Vegas willfully obscure techno rockabilly ‘Juke Box Baby’
The slickly marketed music industry of the last two decades has been quick to compartmentalize and pigeonholes sounds and scenes to create highly lucrative ‘units’ meanwhile missing the point of the soul of pop, a soul based on crossover and masterful accidents. Its only with the democratization of content bought about by the internet that things are starting to change,, and its into this musical palette that the far out low down sounds of ZE nestle nicely.
Last night I went to the very brilliant Island 50 showcase gig at the Shepherds Bush Empire. Celebrating 50 years of Chris Blackwell's hugelly influentual label, the line up featured August Darnell aka Kid Creole, Sly and Robbie with The Compass Point All Stars and of course the original diva Grace Jones.
Sometimes these industry events tend to be full of back slapping smugness, but this was a real party with extra sub bass to match. Grace Jones is a faultless performer, unwilling to acknowledge the freak show nature of her image, instead relying on a truly electriying persona matched with titanic vocals.
Thanks to @allgigs for the tickets, follow them on twitter.
Just to add a bit of balance, not all rock music is shit.
In 1978 the Rolling Stones enlisted disco producer du-jour Bob Clearmountain ( who later went on to commit the ultimate musical offence by engineering Bryan Adams Everything I Do)to remix this track from the album 'Some Girls. Giving them them their eighth number one in the US, it also facilitated the revitalisation of the band in the eyes of the rock critics and helped them regain the 'influential' status that had eluded them on their previous two albums. Mick was in the middle of a divorce from Bianca and in the midst of a blooming romance with Jerry Hall when this was song was written, which led to much media speculation about which one of the Jagger women it was penned for.
Pout your lips, spank your ass and go "oooh oooh oooh oooh oooh oooh".
As I havent written any reviews in ages (boooo), thought I would higlight this excellent article I came across in FACT Magazine- essential reading for disco head nodders
It comes from the fantastic German Best Before Disco fanzine. I don't neccesarily agree with the idea that acid house is 'funkier' than disco- but its bloody welll written, so worth a look.
Disco vs Acid House - Tuesday, 20 January 2009
To me, disco music becomes interesting by the late '70s when producers started to tear down disco's "wall of sound" and got rid of all those sickening orchestral sections, mostly made up of string and horn compositions. Not only the reduction to the bare musical essentials, but also the concept of automatization was necessary to help disco become fresher.
Back in 1975, during the production of Donna Summer's 'Love To Love You Baby', Giorgio Moroder advised his drummer Keith Forseth to play the drums in perfect sync with a Wurlitzer Sideman - the first commercially available electronic drum-machine, which was made in 1959. While the rather crappy Sideman sounds (created from vacuum tubes!) were not used in the song, Moroder's approach was clear: to seek for funk in a dry, steady machine-like beat. The bass drum was recorded very loud and with a distinct punch and although the track runs on only 96 bpm (a term that came up in the disco era btw.) it might mark the beginning of a new technique that soon became essential for dance music production.
While house music adopted disco's 4-to-the-floor rhythm structure and thus created an apparent connection, the sound aesthetics slowly became more abstract and futuristic. A Ron Hardy Warehouse mix from the mid-'80s is loaded with edits of cheesy, ornamental Disco tracks, suddenly cut through by minimal pumping House rhythms that sound like they slipped in from a wormhole. One wonders why wunderkind DJ Ron Hardy hadn't just dismissed Disco completely after house music was born. From the view of a DJ or dance music producer, the focus on pure rhythm rather than on opulent orchestration should be a logical consequence.
However, the advent of programmable drum machines like the gritty sample-based Linn LM-1 and the Roland TR-808 and 909, with their archetypical pounding bassdrum circuitry provided the necessary equipment to make the crowd "jack". Soon, rhythmical paradigms were broken up and snares and handclaps were put all over the place while never loosing their quantized tightness.
I feel that acid house finally liberated dance music from individual-related live music and erased the reference to disco music as far as possible. With acid, atonality found its way into house and the snatchy rhythms coupled with the staccatos and portamentos of the 303 are a perfect match. I wouldn't argue that Acid House is more intelligent than disco - it might even be more stupid - but it's surely closer to catharsis and much more funky!
Suggested Listening
Chip E. - 'Time to Jack' (Gotta Dance Records, 1985) [above] Hercules - '7 Ways' (Dance Mania, 1986) Mr. Lee - 'House This House' (Trax Records, 1987) Tyree - 'Acid Crash' (Rockin House Music, 1988) Gherkin Jerks - 'Acid Ingestion' (Gherkin Records, 1988) Armando - '151' (Warehouse Records, 1988) Mike Dunn - 'Magic Feet' (Westbrook Records, 1988) Two Of A Kind - 'Acid Bitch' (West Madison Records, 1988) Fast Eddie - 'Acid Thunder' (DJ International, 1988) Spanky - 'Acid Bass' (Trax Records, 1989)
I found this on YouTube- short clip of The legendary New York nightspot The Paradise Garage. Larry Levan spinning Eddy Grants 1982 proto house/disco/electro groover Time Warp.
