Rammellzee
Month:
…One More Thing
A couple thoughts occurred to me over the course of last week's endeavors, including the whole Island Disco post and the trio of concerts (especially the Jarre show) that I was lucky enough to attend. These were thoughts that I didn't get a chance to work into the other pieces, even if they may have been tangentially relevant, so I figured that I'd collect them all here. Well, here goes...
A couple dear cousins of mine, both a good deal younger than I, sometimes ask me to paint a picture of the nineties. Break it down, so to speak. Drop some science. I'm always more than happy to do so, as I have a fundamental fondness for the era. Not even so much fond memories of particular events or happenings, but an affinity with the general vibe of the era.
Anything was possible. The future was up for grabs! Dance music was on the ascendant, reaching ever new heights of innovation by the week, it seemed. It was like rock's sixties and seventies all rolled into one. There were hard times to be sure — that's just something you can't escape, no matter the era — but the general tenor was one that kept you hopeful that tomorrow was gonna be a brighter day.
I'm well on record as an aficionado of the nineties, and yet the 80s might have had an even greater impact on me. First off, I was younger. Secondly, I hadn't yet experience the symptoms of depression that would rear their ugly head increasingly as the decade wore on. But really, and I remember this vividly, circa 1989 there was this sense that the table had already been set for the decade to come.
Something like Big Audio Dynamite's Free and the film Flashback make the point I'm trying to here. I can think of no greater evidence of this than the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and the elation that resulted (with dance music providing a suitable backdrop for the era, Love Parade, etc.).
This is the era that most of these thoughts I've collated spring from, loosely put the years 1986-1992. Period markers include hip hop's rise to dominance as a genre, house and techno on the ascendant as well, ragga in the charts, sampladelia coming into its own as the art form of the era, the Second Summer Of Love, big shades, t-shirts and day-glo colors everywhere, all with the darkness of Seattle grunge and the Wu-Tang Clan still a ways away from cracking the mainstream. If forced to narrow it down to a distinct season, I'd peg it for me at summer vacation following second grade. That is, summer 1989.
Still a kid at the time, I remember this era through the lens of phenomena like Reading Rainbow, LeVar Burton's PBS television show where he'd delve into some topic — oftentimes in some far off corner of the world (one episode on Japan stands out distinctly in my memory) — all while encouraging reading among the youth. This of course overlapping with his time on the USS Enterprise D as Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Yes, the man was on a roll.
I remember a distinct trend in music of the era — not only on the radio but also in movies and television shows — taking on a decidedly tropical flavor. Suddenly it seemed as if marimbas were everywhere! Even Quentin Tarantino/Tony Scott's True Romance featured them front-and-center during the more lighthearted scenes. I've been at great pains to point out the ways it colored the dancefloors of the era, but its presence could definitely be felt in the wider culture. I'm talking about Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry Be Happy, Jimmy Cliff's cover version of I Can See Clearly Now and of course Inner Circle's Bad Boys (AKA the theme from COPS!). It doesn't get much more central than that, does it?
This when the likes of Shabba Ranks and Maxi Priest were tearing up the charts, also figures like UB40 and Snow giving it all a pop spin. This might be the strongest direct presence Jamaica has ever had in pop culture, more so even than the new wave era during Bob Marley's reign. Of course it was all hoovered up by rap and rave culture, popping up in all sorts of places from Dr. Dre's West Coast hip hop to The Prodigy's dazzling, candy-coated ardkore. Even rock had its dalliance with the stuff in the form of 311, Sublime and a thousand third-wave ska bands! And who could forget Common Sense's Never Give Up?
For our purposes, this manifests itself most particularly in the whole Nu Groove aesthetic, especially in the output of one Bobby Konders. Records like She Say Kuff, Ruff & Massive and House Rhythms offer up a near-perfect fusion of deep house and digital reggae, sometimes even featuring dancehall figures like Mikey Jarrett and Maxi Culture on the mic. And look no further than the sleeves to Bobby Konders & Massive Sounds and "All The Massive Hits" In A Rub A Dub Stylee for a perfect visual image of this whole trip.
There was a greater awareness of the environment at the time, which ties in with Jarre's Oxygene in ways that I'd forgotten. Did you know that it was originally an opus dedicated to the sanctity of planet Earth and a paean to its preservation? That was a thread running through the era, a notion that had become important in the aftermath of the 1960s but in truth dates back to grizzled adventurers like John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt realizing that America's wilderness was something quite special and undoubtedly worth preserving.
Famously, Richard Nixon established the EPA during his administration. This when films like Silent Running and Soylent Green hammered the point home in celluloid, films that would have a profound impact on the era's psyche. By the dawn of the compact disc era, environmental recordings, sounds of the rainforest, ocean waves, sounds of the bayou were everywhere: suddenly you could set up a whole sonic environment in your living room. Get carried away on rainclouds (or ocean waves!). You can hear this all over peak-era electronic music like FSOL's Lifeforms, The KLF's Chill Out and countless Orb remixes (Auntie Aubrey's Excursions Beyond The Call Of Duty is full of found environmental sounds).
This all dovetails with the sheer wonder I can still recall as a youth of having a yearly pass to the San Diego Zoo, seeing animals from across the globe and placing them within the context of the world's geography that I was picking up along the way (with the attendant flags and capitals, naturally!). It seemed that these formerly exotic realms were very much front and center at this point, places like the Serengeti, the Amazon and most of all Australia's outback were the focus of documentaries and more. The Discovery Channel really started to make itself felt as a presence around this time, and I remember spending hours watching coverage of these far flung locales.
I've often wondered why Australia in particular managed to so thoroughly capture the world's imagination at this point. It seemed to have this cachet of the exotic, romantic and futuristic. The sound of didgeridoo was everywhere. Was it the vanguard cinema of Peter Weir (Picnic At Hanging Rock, The Big Wave... Gallipoli even featured some Jarre in it's soundtrack) and George Miller (Mad Max, The Road Warrior, et. al.) making a splash, or impressive feats of architecture like the Sydney Opera House becoming lodged in the international consciousness as a modern wonder of the world? My brother lays it all at the feet of Paul Hogan. And yes, the Crocodile Dundee films were a bona fide phenomenon at the time, and they did spend a satisfying amount of time in the outback. At any rate, I remember that featuring a narrator with an Australian accent in your documentary was the golden touch at the time, signaling that elusive combination of frontiersman and futurist.
I defer to the films that Disney put out around this time: The Rescuers Down Under, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Cool Runnings and Aladdin. Also globe-trotting films like Club Paradise, Romancing The Stone and Jewel Of The Nile and the Indiana Jones trilogy. O.C. And Stiggs with their King Sunny Adé obsessions and inner tube pilgrimage down to Mexico, not to mention their high-rolling, exotica-crazed pal Coletti (Martin Mull in a brilliant cameo turn) took this spirit into the mundane suburbs of Arizona (often reminding me of a certain crew in the greater San Diego area circa 1997). Look no further than the soundtrack to Disney's The Little Mermaid (along with Cool Runnings, the storied film about Jamaica's first bobsled team) for evidence of the level to which it all penetrated the mainstream.
Think also of Peter Gabriel's records around this time, things like Security up to and including Us, and the whole Real World set up, bringing music from around the world to the Western stereo (usually glossed up with some period production flourishes). Speaking of the big time, you also had Paul Simon's Graceland, recorded with Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Los Lobos, a righteous flirtation with African music and zydeco (in the comics, O.C. And Stiggs were obsessed with Clifton Chenier). Vampire Weekend are still riding that wave. Then there's that one song (Help Me Somebody) on My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts that I could swear has a distinct zydeco flavor.
The Talking Heads went down this path after their whole Compass Point era had run its course, with David Byrne even directing a film (True Stories) about small town life. See also Paris, Texas and Ry Cooder's gorgeous slide guitar soundtrack to that film. This sound was sort of the era's go-to for signifying rootsiness at the time, shades of which filtered into Angelo Badalamenti's soundtracks to David Lynch' films (especially Twin Peaks). Think of all that heavily reverbed, languidly played rockabilly (Chris Isaak's Wicked Game) that fit Lynch's distinctly American Gothic, neo-noir moves like a glove.
As I mentioned before, the summer following second grade: that was quintessentially this. I remember taking a trip up to the Bay Area with my family for an uncle's wedding, a trip that extended to include a greater tour of Northern California. We checked out Lassen Volcanic National Park — memories of the lava tubes, hot springs and Mt. Harkness, seemingly covered entirely in grasshoppers — and Mount Shasta, the Redwood Forest and back to San Francisco and Monterey. In retrospect, there was an interesting mix going on up there, a melting pot of post-new wave gen x college kids, faded hippies, club kids, yuppies and bohemian types that was quite fascinating. To this this day it's stayed with me, a pungently evocative atmosphere. San Louis Obispo was pretty far out, anyway. We didn't get a chance to check out the aquariums in Monterey though (it was far too crowded).
Which was a shame, although I always meant to go back and check it out. A shame — not that I'm complaining — because the ocean is the final element in today's list of items. Some post-Jacques Cousteau bizzness. Whale song recordings were very hip at the time (see Sinéad O'Connor's Jerusalem, Open House' Aquatic and once again, The Orb). Then of course there was Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, featuring a story involving time travel, San Francisco and humpback whales. Oceanic.
If there's one figure where I'd point and exclaim there!, then it's Arthur Russell. He makes this point quite beautifully. You can just hear it in records like Let's Go Swimming, In The Light Of The Miracle and Lola's Wax The Van. At any rate, I always thought it wax an appropriate touch making the sleeve to The World Of Arthur Russell the bottom of a swimming pool. His was a true Ocean Of Sound music.
The signifiers are almost too many to count. First of all there's the alias Indian Ocean that he used for the phenomenally abstract, fractal-winding post-disco of the School Bell/Treehouse record (bringing to mind both the aircraft carrier scenes from Top Gun — set in the Indian Ocean, remember, and tangentially Tony Humphries' Zanzibar club). The Paradise Garage too, Larry Levan's domain. Then of course there's the labels on the early Sleeping Bag releases, the era when Russell had the greatest influence, featuring a stylized Koala.
Another of Russell's aliases, used for production, was Killer Whale. Though there was never a record released under the name — such a shame! — it crops up on the Clandestine record, Loose Joints' Tell You (Today) and of course Let's Go Swimming. It's all very much emblematic of all subjects covered here today, showcasing that sense of the whole world being at your fingertips (a sense that would culminate in the world wide web). Everything suddenly felt very futuristic.
At any rate, I think the freshness of all this music — the Compass Point material, Nu Groove sides, Night Dubbin' — speaks to the era still having a quite strong charge about it. It has certainly stayed with me through the years...
Jarre Beyond The Clouds
Saturday night, Snakes and I caught Jean-Michel Jarre at the Spreckels Theatre. Being the kind-hearted mensch that he is, Snakes hooked a brother up with a ticket to the show. We and Jarre go way back. It all started back in our school daze, when I was deep in the studio laying down what would become the b-side to Galaxies, Red Planet. On hearing the song, my wise uncle James remarked that it reminded him of Jarre's music. I had never heard of the man, and so he explained that he was one of the original electronic artists to make a big splash back in the day.
Fast-forward a few months to the following Christmas. On opening a gift from this very same uncle (with the tell-tale 5"x5½" dimensions), I was confronted with the Images compilation of Jarre's work. And thus opened up a whole new world of seventies electronica to my ears. As was often the case, Snakes and I would vibe out to the disc in the studio or cruising around town. Ultimately, word spread and eventually a tiny, informal Jean-Michel Jarre appreciation society seemed to spring up nearly overnight in the greater Allied Gardens/Grantville area. Ok, so it was just a handful of mates, but still...
Fast-forward twenty years spent with the man's music — the both of us acquiring various records like Oxygene and Equinoxe on multiple formats, spinning them out from time to time, plus descending further into the world of early electronic music with every passing year — and we're walking into the Spreckels Theatre to see Jean-Michel Jarre live and in person. It quickly became apparent that there was a sizable presence of French ex-pats in attendance, while the age range of the crowd was pretty diverse. I'd guess we were somewhere in the middle.
With little fanfare, the opening DJ strode out to set the stage with a sprawling set of cinematic electronica. Picture a hybrid of both Blade Runner OSTs, and that'll give you a decent idea of how it all began, with downtempo industrial beats entering the picture after the sweeping overture slowly gained steam. There was one track that reminded us of Daft Punk's score for Tron: Legacy before the set ultimately eased into a grinding midtempo stomp (think Fluke's Zion from the second Matrix film). There was even one song that sounded like a dead ringer for The Dream-era Kevin Saunderson.
Once the set had concluded, the lights came on for about twenty minutes. It was a stunning set, but no announcement was made of his name until Jarre called it out at the end of the evening (but we didn't catch it at the time!). Thankfully, Snakes did a bit of digging and discovered that the DJ in question was Marco Grenier. Mystery solved! Definitely worth investigating further. We were still reeling from it all when, after a brief wait, the lights dimmed again and show was ready to begin...
With a wild slab of synth noise cutting through the theater from behind a translucent screen, the first portentous chords of the evening set the clockwork wheels in motion. Suddenly, the screen opened like a doorway to reveal vector door after vector door, revealing Jarre atop a platform center stage, ensconced within his machines. As Jarre conjured massive sounds from his vast array of synthesizers, he was matched by equally dazzling visuals in an remarkable multimedia spectacle. Accordingly, since we were seated for most of the show with no one sitting behind us, I snapped far more pictures than I usually would.
For the entirety of the show, Jarre was flanked by a drummer on his left and another synthesist on his right (actually, they both were manning myriad instruments at various points), bolstering the sound into more muscular groove than one might expect (shades of François Kevorkian drumming against Walter Gibbons' marathon DJ sets at Galaxy 21).
It dawned on me about fifteen minutes in — and I can't believe it hadn't earlier — that Jarre's music exists not only in the continuum of seventies space music (with Oxygene a quintessential head elpee), but also served as a perfect complement to some of the more propulsive dancefloor moves of contemporary electronic denizens like Patrick Cowley and Giorgio Moroder in much the same way The Orb and The Future Sound Of London would have with the likes of Orbital and Joey Beltram. With Kraftwerk fitting into this equation roughly the same way Detroit does (but of course!).
Suddenly, mid-show there was an unexpected shift into almost Wax Trax!-style industrial/EBM music. One tune made me flash on Front Line Assembly's The Blade (it took everything in me not to start repeating stick 'em up muthafucka, this is a hold up!). There was even a collaboration with Edward Snowden titled Exit (apparently from the recent Electronica 2 album), a pounding paranoid thriller of a track that tackled the subject of privacy (and the fight for the right to keep it).
Snowden himself even appeared on screen to give a brief speech mid-song before being sampled to bits during the track's x-ray denouement. It was all very much of the spirit of Cabaret Voltaire's intense interrogations of surveillance and control. Thanks to Snakes for providing the above photo... I was so mesmerized by this sequence that I forgot to snap a picture!
The big surprise came at the end of the extended sequence, when Jarre himself strapped on a guitar to add some rugged crunch to the track's climax. Yeah, that was pretty cool.
Of course various portions of Jarre's flagship piece, Oxygene were peppered throughout the marathon performance. The first to feature was the stratospheric drift of Oxygene 2, which coming face to face with in a live context drove home the fact that it's very much of a piece with someone like Daniele Baldelli's cosmic visions. I've always loved the way his loping rhythms aren't remotely like anyone else's (and the remain an obvious precursor to ambient house).
Oxygene 4 — perhaps the man's most widely known moment — featured as well, during which people were dancing in the aisles (one woman was doing some very spaced-out dancing — not unlike Keith Flint's car surfing during The Prodigy's Out Of Space music video. The Oxygene 8 (from the 90s-era Oxygene 7-13 record, a sequel of sorts) which I remember fit quite well with some of the more pastoral corners of trance that were happening at the time). I was reminded of Dr. Alex Paterson's remix of the track, which after thorough rejection from Jarre himself, he wound up releasing as The Orb's Toxygene. That was pretty funny.
At one point, Jarre — ever the showman — played a series of lasers fanning out toward the ceiling. Every time his hand would break the stream of the laser, a bass note would ring through the theater. Depending on which stream he touched, a different note would sound off. Inevitably, the sequence grew increasingly complex until the man was doling out notes in rapid succession. If I'm not mistaken, this has been a hallmark of his stage show for some time.
Another surprise (in an evening full of them) was a track that Jarre had recently recorded with the Pet Shop Boys, featuring twenty foot tall digital recreations of Neil Tennant singing to the rafters. A melancholy synth pop epic, it was without a doubt one of the evening's highlights. The visual effect was pretty trippy too.
One thing that quickly became evident was how comfortable Jarre had become with the pulsing grooves of dance music, indeed much of the night's music was taken from his recent two Electronica albums. I must admit that I hadn't kept up with the man's more recent music, but after hearing a considerable selection of what he's been up to in the ensuing years, it's painfully apparent that further investigation is essential (along with the Pet Shop Boys and Snowden, Electronica 2 also features collaborations with Jeff Mills, Primal Scream, The Orb, Sébastien Tellier, Yello and Cyndi Lauper!).
There was one sequence involving stylized dancers that was particularly memorable. Segments that I missed documenting included spooky performances of Equinoxe 4 and Equinoxe 7, featuring rows of parallaxing binocular people from the album's sleeve. At one point, I could swear a giant alien grey appeared in the middle of the screen, and there was also a return of the figures holding up their cellphone cameras in lieu of eyeglasses!
Jarre was a gracious host, descending a staircase to interact with the audience fairly often, which was a pleasant surprise. Towards the end of the performance, he even gave shout outs to his backing musicians along with the opening act. It was rather fitting for a man who's always made electronic music with an unmistakably human core. Seeing him in person was in something I never thought I'd get to experience, and it exceeded my expectations in every way.
As the crowd poured out of the theater and into the streets, Snakes and I headed down to catch a ride home, discussing the night's music like we had a thousand times before. And suddenly, it was as if we were teenagers again...
Dimitri From Paris – Night Dubbin’
Dimitri From Paris presents Night Dubbin' Mixed by The Idjut Boys
BBE 2009
Nearly ten(!) years ago this little package came tumbling out into the shops with little fanfare, brought to you by the good folks at BBE. It's a sprawling selection of 21 shimmering dancefloor dubs from the first half of the 1980s, brilliantly compiled by Dimitri From Paris across two discs in original unmixed form, while The Idjut Boys mix the third (playing the soundboy to Dimitri's selector), all lovingly presented in an indispensable 3½ hour anthology (recalling Dimitri's Disco Forever triple-disc extravaganza).
Whereas that set chronicled peak-era disco by the likes of Charanga 76 and D.C. LaRue, Night Dubbin' shines the limelight on the time period just after. Post-disco and pre-house, the music captured here is a spectral, electro-tinged dance music imbued with half-lit neon glow. This is the sort of thing one might have heard at Tony Humphries' Zanzibar and Larry Levan's Paradise Garage (indeed, this is the genesis of the sound that would come to be called garage), where the sounds of disco mutated into the forms that would light the fuse on the Second Summer Of Love.
This album contains the original version of Such A Feeling
Touching down with the reverb-soaked acappella vocals of Aurra's Such A Feeling Part 2, you're hit immediately with the sort of organ line that would come to define large the garage sound in years to come. However, a delicious electro boogie squiggle enters the fray to complicate matters with spiral synths twisting and turning in orbit around the track's crisp percussion. That right there gives you a great thumbnail of what to expect here, so if that sounds like a good time to you, then feel free to proceed with the knowledge that you're in for a treat.
With The Idjuts segueing smoothly into Thug Rock Chimental Mix by Sandy Kerr, the final crucial ingredient of today's journey takes center stage: I'm talking about low-slung, deep-grooving slap bass magic. Together with the dubbed-out vocals, garage-inflected keyboards, wasp-leg synths and that rolling 1980s drum matrix, all the elements are present and correct.
There's even this whistling, high-pitched synth that prefigures the sound of mid-nineties digital-era Detroit techno figures like Kenny Larkin and Stacey Pullen (particularly the Silent Phase record). That's actually not uncommon in this mix, where one will often do a double-take on some fragment of a track (or idea within it) that sounds utterly ahead-of-its-time.
Suddenly, incandescent synths drift into view with an almost steel drum, calypso flavor. Island disco vibes to a man. This is the Limited Edition Special Remix of Serious Intention's You Don't Know. I have the original version on 12", but this remix takes the track in a radical new direction.
What were once relatively straightforward soul vocals in the original version are now fed through what sounds like a harmonizer, pitched-up and mutated into Smurf territory. This is the sort of dancefloor psychedelia that Prince was perfecting around this time, going to show the continued usefulness of Eno's concept of scenius. Something In The Water Does Not Compute.
It's worth pointing out that You Don't Know was one of the foundational building blocks of garage, which when you connect the dots forward fifteen years to the So Solid Crew's They Don't Know becomes all the more fascinating. It's a continuum, folks! And as in The Matrix, once you see the connections they're with you to stay.
Collapsing into the hall of mirrors intro from Michael Wilson's Groove It To Your Body Instrumental Mix, it's not long before you're flooded with rolling waves of Clavinet funk like a fast-forward Stevie Wonder (one pictures the cyborg keyboardist from Vibrations in action). The only respite is a cool breeze of cascading chimes, still rapid-fire but serenely so, before the bridge hits with a snatch of breezy acappella and then you're back in the thick of the Clavinet jungle.
Shades of Nu Groove-esque moody atmosphere announce Lenny White's My Turn To Love You Dub Version, a streetlight moonlight foray into post-jazz funk boogie. Yet another track fueled by clockwork slap bass, the tune's moody rumblings ultimately get subsumed into the track's metronomic forward motion. Shards of synth creep through the tune's murky aura, giving the track that extra punch as outer space effects unfurl at the edge of the soundscape, looped sax trilling off onto the horizon.
This album contains the original version of My Turn To Love You
This from Lenny White's 1983 LP Attitude, which also has the twilight burner Didn't Know About Love Til I Found You, finding the erstwhile fusioneer (and member of Return To Forever) keeping up with the times and rolling deep with the Jamaica, Queens crew (see also Don Blackman, Bernard Wright, Tom Browne and of course Lenny White's own Twennynine project).
This album contains the original version of "D" Train Theme
Aside from Easy Street, if there's one label that fits the remit of this mix then it's Prelude. And who better to represent the label's trademark post-disco machine boogie than James "D-Train" Williams, whose You're The One For Me defined the sound of the era's machine funk (even as Jam & Lewis picked up the baton and ran with it)?
In this case, you've got the stellar dub of the "D" Train Theme, also from the You're The One For Me LP, which picks up where that record's genre-defining title track left off (albeit with a greater presence of funk guitar and even a little proto-rap worked in for good measure). If there's one figure here that you could claim to be the founder of this feast, than it would be old D-Train.
With the Theme shimmering out across a pulsing electro-bass riff, the Paul Simpson Connection is in full force with Treat Me Dubmental Mix. Like the Aurra track, this is very much a proto-garage moment, with that skipping hi-hat rhythm underpinning club pianos and soulful keyboards. Gradually building before it all explodes in a crescendo of intricate synth filigree and dubbed-out, churchy vocals, it maintains a vibrant elasticity throughout. That rubberband synth bassline practically glows in the dark.
Ever so subtly swinging one bassline to another, The Boys drop into Wuf Ticket's The Key Dub Version, an electro boogie masterpiece driven as much by a rhythmic vocoder loop as much as the beat itself. There's vocals happening on something like three or four planes, with a baritone voice rising from the cracks in the beat as synths shimmer above it all, falsettos rising from within. Interesting to note the appearance of another jazz funk luminary, with James Mason (the man responsible for the sought after Rhythm Of Life LP) making his presence felt in this shadowy electro crew.
Like a line drawn in the sand, Radiance's You're My Number 1 Dub announces its presence in the mix with a soulful keyboard line before dropping into a mass of descending chorused guitar, and suddenly you can just feel that you're about to be hit by something drastically different. That guitar — sounding not unlike one of Jungle's luminescent six-string figures — cuts a rakish angle across the track's electroid bass 'n boogie, while Andrea Stone's vocals echo ethereal in the distance.
When it all drops into that unadorned mid-section, grooving on a simple organ refrain, it's as if the 90s have come seven years too soon and you're soaking up the purest uncut garage down in Jersey. Either that or a Moodymann record. Which hooks up brilliantly with the next record...
Raw Silk were best known for Do It To The Music (with its immortal music's hypnotizing refrain sampled seemingly hundreds of times over the years), but instead are showcased here for their other record on West End, Just In Time & Space Dub. Like it says on the tin, this is spaced-out dub disco shot through with swirling interplanetary sonix and disembodied girl group vocals, sporting an electronic sequence that predicts techno's minimalist streak before exploding into an absorbing chorus starring verdant synths and the funkiest of piano rolls.
All things considered, this might very well be the superior record to Do It To The Music and in it's . Like Marvin Gaye's Trouble Man OST, it's a record seemingly made with another era in mind (an era whose time had yet to come). It very well could be the most forward-looking song here, it's vast, hollowed-out stretches of atmosphere predicting techno's trajectory as the 90s progressed.
With the outer space sonix disintegrating into a cloud of stardust, Mikki's Dance Lover Dub Mix slips onto the scene with the sort of bassline that Metro Area would kill for. Indeed, this whole mix gives a bit of context to the uninitiated for all those Metro Area records: this is the sound that Morgan Geist was pining for (also check the excellent Moves EP, a personal favorite of mine from the man's oeuvre). The track is pure skeletal perfection, like Kraftwerk or Isolée... just perfect. When those electro boogie synths creep into the mix — disembodied vocals drifting out into the ether — the whole thing crashes through the heavens and sails across the stars.
Well... something has to follow what might be the most sublime moment here, and that tune is the instrumental of Electrik Dred's Butter Up Gimmie Some Bread. Another vocoder-fueled electro-bass odyssey, it rides a loose rhythm matrix into the island boogie of Cloud's Steppin' Out Jam Special Instrumental Dub Version, with its flanged guitars feeding into the track's motorik propulsion this is the most four-to-the-floor moment here.
In fact, its most minimal moments sound just like something out of an acid techno mix circa '95 (Plastikman's Mixmag Live!, for instance). Both these tunes serve to offer something of a breather before the last two tracks kick into high gear and all the rules get broken accordingly.
Surfing in on the derezzed collapse of Cloud, the RAH Band's offbeat European boogie comes crashing in at a lackadaisical pace, seemingly fifteen BPM slower than anything else here. Clouds Across The Moon strolls along with that moon bounce beat, bassline pulsing in tiny low-gravity arcs as sunshine guitars wander lonesome up and down the soundscape. As if beamed in across interplanetary transmitter, the wistful strings of some old-time orchestra drift across the stars as Nelson Riddle were conducting from orbit.
When it all reaches its crescendo, with those trilling hi-pitched synths almost sounding like something from Super Mario World, it's as if your locked in some yearning romance transpiring within the reality of some deserted arcade machine. The Super Nova Mix is a dubbed-to-pieces rendition of the original 12" version, which was a paean to a lover stranded on Mars (or is he?).
The biggest surprise here is saved for last, with a track originally from Wham's first album closing out the set. Enjoy What You Do Wham Rap Vocal finds George Michael rapping over a sunny bit of island funk that builds into frenzy of slap bass, chicken-scratch guitars and soaring brass, electroid synths weaving through it all as drums crash with wild abandon.
You could just picture this in the final scene of some contemporaneous movie — say a comedy with John Candy, Shelley Long, Robin Williams and/or Bill Murray — and everyone's getting down at the big party before the end credits roll. If pressed, I'd volunteer that it rivals Everything She Wants, although I haven't been able to find this particular version anywhere (none of the others are nearly as good this one).
A left-footed swerve from the seemingly kitsch to the sublime, it's a rather fitting end to a visionary mix that reclaims an era's music that people would have scoffed at as tacky and/or dated twenty years ago. Maybe they still do? Well, at least you know better...
What I'm really getting at is that this whole package, from the presentation on down to the extensive liner notes and of course the music within, is that it really hammers home the idea that the wildest strains of 80s dance — post-disco and pre-rave — were the era's head music par excellence.
It's something that dawned on me years ago when first confronted by the music of Kleeer and Mtume (to say nothing of Hashim's Primrose Path, Model 500's Night Drive, Mr. Fingers' Can You Feel It and Reese's Just Another Chance). It's a terribly evocative music, stripped to it's essence, yet possessed of visions of the stars. It's music to dream to and music to dance to... but most of all it's music to live to.
Haim Right Now
The Haim sisters rocked The North Park Observatory last night (and I do mean rocked). Their glittering sound had a harder guitar attack in the flesh, thanks largely to Danielle Haim's six-string pyrotechnics and the band's BIG beats in full effect. In fact, the ladies commenced the show by pounding out a martial rhythm in unison on a trio of drum kits. The effect recalled The Secret Machines on their Now Here Is Nowhere Tour, that same sense of aircraft-hangar-sized sonic vastness. In the end, it suited their sound just fine.
The band roamed the mirrored stage freely, Danielle striking rock star poses as she unfurled arcing guitar solos, Alana Haim working the crowd like a stand-up and Este Haim doling out some mean bass stage right. At one point, they even strolled down for a synchronized dance (I'm sure all sisters can relate)! The one constant throughout the show was that they seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves, and the feeling in the audience was mutual, in thrall as they were to the spectacle (at the show's climax, cannons shot confetti over the crowd).
During one of here soliloquy's, Alana confessed that the inspiration for her to start playing music was seeing Joe Walsh perform Life's Been Good at an Eagles concert, which makes perfect sense. The Haim sound seems to connect with the sound of eighties L.A. (Fleetwood Mac, Don Henley, etc.) that we grew up steeped in, in the same way SA-RA sources their sound in that decade's machine soul, all while carving out their own unique sonic terrain to inhabit with relish.
The end result comes out sounding like nothing else around, transcending even their inspirations in the process, standing as a wholly unique phenomenon in the body pop. Originality certainly has its advantages, setting them apart from much of the moment's landfill chart music. That, of course, and the ability to pen a great tune. Which we will all no doubt still be humming in ten years time...
Terminal Vibration: Bonus Round (Island Disco)
Picking up where we left off with the last chapter (Imperial Slates) and in light of the recent Parkway Bowl Disco Mix, it's as good a time as any to touch on a key element in the Terminal Vibration blueprint that doesn't fit anywhere else in the schema. Consider this a cool breeze of an interlude between last episode's heavy dub shapes and next week's hip hop brakes. At the interzone between post-disco, new wave and boogie lies a tropical dancefloor sound that runs like a thread right through the 80s (and beyond). This sound is embodied by no one quite so much as (you guessed it) the Compass Point All Stars.
The crucial ingredient that sets this sound apart from what everything that came before is the thorough absorption of dub reggae's sonic toolkit into dance music's fabric. One can hear the reverberations echo through the ensuing years, most obviously in the spangly textures within the music of house figures like Bobby Konders (and by extension much of Nu Groove's output), Larry Heard and Tony Addis' Warriors Dance setup.
The thread then gets picked up by the likes of The Future Sound Of London (the earlier material in particular, see Accelerator, The Pulse EPs and the Earthbeat compilation), The Orb (Perpetual Dawn, Blue Room, Toxygene, et. al.) and even progressive figures like Leftfield and Andrew Weatherall.1
Tangentially, large swathes of trip hop — Massive Attack, Smith & Mighty, Bomb The Bass and loads more — seem to flow naturally from the more downbeat corners of Grace Jones' (I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango), for instance) and Wally Badarou's (literally, in the case of Mambo) discography. And like trip hop, this is a territory that I only mean to touch on briefly in the context of the Terminal Vibration series, as I plan to spend a much more time in this region in the not-too-distant future, with a feature of its own. Like I said, this is just an interlude of sorts.
This sound — which I'm still rooting around for a good, concise name for — was a key part of the story of what went down sonically at the Paradise Garage. Larry Levan's production on Gwen Guthrie's Padlock mini-album epitomizes the sound, in which deep grooving bass, spangly synthetic textures, dubbed-out percussion and disembodies vocals all coalesce in a swirling headphone symphony. This is a four-dimensional, tactile approach to sound design that pulses through the era like a homing beacon, bringing all manner of disparate figures into the fold as the decade rolls on like the pied piper.
As I was saying before, the key crew in all of this was the Compass Point All Stars, who cooked up something quite special down in Nassau on a series of records for artists like Grace Jones, Gwen Guthrie and the Tom Tom Club. Island disco, Parallax Pier, coastal dub... whatever you call it, it's very much a sound all its own.
It's interesting to note — and I've mentioned this before — the way Caribbean transplants Grace Jones, Eddy Grant and Billy Ocean all seem to have put in early work hammering this sound out in isolation over the course of the prior decade, their unique geographic perspective informing the music they were making within the context of what was the by-and-large straight up disco community.
Then there's the whole new-wave-gone-to-the-tropics phenomenon that probably started with the Talking Heads' I Zimbra and Remain In Light (who were coming at it from a West African-informed trajectory), and The English Beat's shimmering Caribbean inflections. I'm talking about Burning Sensations' Belly Of The Whale, Haircut One Hundred's Pelican West and XTC's It's Nearly Africa, not to mention David Byrne's production for The B-52's Mesopotamia mini-album (the influence of which seemed to stick around through their third album, Whammy!, even informing certain corners of their Cosmic Thing comeback in 1989).
The whole thing wraps around to the extent that the Talking Heads seem to be influenced by the groups that they influenced themselves (along with the Tom Tom Club's records), going full-on tropical with Speaking In Tongues, which was actually recorded at Compass Point. It's a sound not unlike what Kid Creole And The Coconuts had been up too, a sound that was co-opted and given a dark twist by Jerry Dammers on The Special AKA's In The Studio. Interesting that many of the ska bands ended up shearing into this territory, with English Beat songs like Ackee 123 seeming to split the difference between calypso and township jive.
One doesn't need to search far to find the real-deal flipside to these island incursions in the honest-to-goodness Jamaican disco like Crashers' Flight To Jamaica (Cool Runings) and Third World's Now That We Found Love (which despite hailing from 1978 sounds like something from, oh about 1993), while music coming out of Africa like Juju Music by King Sunny Adé & His African Beats and Tony Allen's Afrobeat 2000 squared the circle between new wave post-disco and their Yoruba/afrobeat roots. Once again, the circular logic is in evidence throughout, with the original influence being touched in turn by the music they'd originally influenced. And on and on and on.
And let's not forget Thomas Leer's globetrotting, sun-warped new pop, records like 4 Movements and Contradictions where he perfectly captures that Mediterranean drift between Tangier, Cairo and Ibiza (and often makes me flash on The Jewel Of The Nile!). There's also Suicide's second album, the glistening, mirage-like synths of which — coupled with Ric Ocasek's ace production — which always struck me as an almost unexpected detour into such sun-kissed terrain.
In many ways, I've often thought that records like Dream Baby Dream and Suicide: Alan Vega · Martin Rev run parallel to certain Arthur Russell records like Let's Go Swimming, In The Light Of The Miracle, Lola's Wax The Van and Dinosaur L's In The Corn Belt. Indeed, large swathes of the Sleeping Bag catalog sit quite comfortably in this vein, as does much of the early Easy Street output.
Even European dance music like My Mine's Hypnotic Tango, RAH Band's Clouds Across The Moon and Yello's exotica-tinged sides seem to fit into this puzzle with ease. To reiterate, the currents of this music seem to run through the very fabric of the era's dancefloors... but that's another story for another day, and I've already gone on far too long tonight.
LISTEN NOW
- The English Beat Too Nice To Talk To Go-Feet
- Thomas Leer Hear What I Say Cherry Red
- Gwen Guthrie Seventh Heaven Garage/Island Trading Co.
- The Orb Perpetual Dawn Solar Youth Mix Big Life
- Talking Heads This Must Be The Place Naive Melody Sire)
- XTC It's Nearly Africa Virgin
- King Sunny Adé & His African Beats Ma Jaiye Oni Mango
- Yello La Habanera Carl Craig's Hands On Yello Urban
- The Special AKA Bright Lights Two-Tone
- Kid Creole And The Coconuts Table Manners ZE
- Tom Tom Club Genius Of Love Island
- Eddy Grant Living On The Frontline/The Frontline Symphony ICE
- Tony Allen with Afrobeat 2000 When One Road Close Another One Go Open Wrasse
- Suicide Diamonds, Fur Coat, Champagne Antilles
- The Future Sound Of London While Others Cry Jumpin' & Pumpin'
- Grace Jones I've Seen That Face Before Libertango Island
- Massive Attack Tricky & Shara Nelson Daydreaming Wild Bunch
- Dub Poets Black & White Massive B
- Bomb The Bass Bernard Fowler Sandcastles 4th & Broadway
- Arthur Russell In The Light Of The Miracle Talkin' Loud
TVBRR Island Disco
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One of the great musical epiphanies of mine a few years back was realizing that Leftfield were merely picking up where Bobby Konders and No Smoke left off. |
Jungle Life
Monday night, Jungle performed at The North Park Observatory. Sari and I caught the show, which makes it the fourth time we've seen them perform live. Hopefully there will be many more chances to come. The group has really grown into itself over the last couple years (the first album was recorded by only the core duo of Tom McFarland and Josh Lloyd-Watson), intensifying the debut's songs considerably (Tom going mad with the glissando keyboards at the climax of Time) and imbuing the new ones with a sprawling, verdant sense of space. Jungle vibes for real.
On hearing the crew's live sound, one's confronted with the question, How much more lush can dance music get?! You also immediately noticed the conspicuous presence of an (incredible) new vocalist nestled stage-right, who Sari later confirmed with Tom (had to throw that in there) is called Zangi.
There were even a few new new songs unveiled as well: Casio is a sumptuous fusion of deep house groove and an electropop sensibility that made me recall Erlend Øye's Unrest (yet surpassing it, please believe!), while they opened with the pounding Burundi beat of Smile, breezy harmonies surfing the rolling waves of rhythm.
And of course there was the requisite appearance of the new fan favorite House In L.A., a lavish, swaying epic that truly captures the feeling of sunlight streaming through cracks in the clouds. When it all explodes into that soaring chorus/climax — seeming to glide by in downbeat slow-motion, three feet above the ground — the fierceness of its languid abandon makes me flash on Talk Talk's Give It Up, that same sense of stately, towering splendor.
If the rest of the upcoming record turns out to be this good — and they seem to have unveiled a solid half an album's worth at this point — well, they stand a very good chance of surpassing the debut. I can honestly say that this new sound is everything I was hoping for when I first began to imagine where they'd go next after the debut (four years ago).
I didn't get a chance to post on it at the time, but last December we caught Jungle at the El Rey Theatre in Hollywood. The El Rey was seemingly a doppelgänger of The Observatory, down to the lobby and sprawling music hall architecture. Still, staunch San Diego gent that I am, I do believe that the latter is the better venue. Nevertheless, at each of the four times we've seem Jungle live, the group has managed to make every stage their own:
It was a dependably great show, and truly incredible to hear the new songs — especially House In L.A. — in the flesh, and in L.A. no less. Still, the group managed to surpass last year's show on all counts last Monday. If forced to choose, I'd even say that out of the four we've seen that this was the best show yet (and please believe that this lot know how to put on a show). The only question still remaining is: when will the new album drop?
Sari suspects that this might be a preview of the new record's sleeve... and I think she really might be onto something.
The Parkway Bowl Disco Mix
Back in the day, I worked at the Clairemont Library, shelving books and helping patrons. Stimulating work, to be sure. On my lunch break, and occasionally after hours, I'd walk a couple blocks over to the Sunset Bowl to grab a bite to eat, play video games and lay out the plans for Mettrex Recordings. After all, this is where Soul Machine's Essential Funk Files were born. Good times. The general vibe in prevalence was sun-glazed and tropical, which meant of course that it was right up my alley.
There was a DJ booth near the bar that was all done up tiki-style, and I'd always dreamed of spinning disco at the midnight bowling sessions they held on Friday nights. Records like The Incredible Bongo Band's Apache, Freddy Fresh's Roller Rinks & Chicks, Loose Joint's Is It All Over My Face, Paperclip People's Floor and Stereo MC's Rhino. You know, basically the good good. It was a good dream, but alas the place closed down before I had a chance to hold court in the mix. Now, an apartment complex sits where the bowling alley was once comfortably nestled...
The other bowling alley where I spent a lot of time — and did most of my actual bowling — was the Parkway Bowl, down in El Cajon. I most recently hit the lanes again with my brother Brian and cousins Isabel and Joelle a couple weeks ago to discover that the venue hosts something called Cosmic Bowling, held in a backroom with psychedelic lights and dedicated lanes for the renting. Brian commented that it was like something out of Kingpin...
It all brought me back to hours spent at the Sunset Bowl, dreaming up the future, and as is often the case a whole lot of records began to conjure up in my mind. One thing led to another, and I ended up doing a little mix. Within the confines of this two-hour excursion, you'll find dub disco, new wave, Philly soul, French disco, hip hop, boogie, Italo disco, punk funk, gulf stream and disco-not-disco, all anchored to a bedrock of largely straight up disco in the Chic tradition. It's all of a piece.
No attempt was made to be historically accurate; there's anachronisms all over the shop, because this is a 2018 disco mix — unapologetically so — filled with music that lived well past its era to fuel dancefloor mayhem through the intervening years and still sounds cutting edge some 33 years on.
So without further ado, I give you...
Listen Now
- The Parallax Sound Lab New York City Intro
- The Mike Theodore Orchestra Moon Trek Westbound
- The Clash The Magnificent Seven CBS
- Démis Roussos Midnight Is The Time I Need You Philips
- Martin Circus Disco Circus Prelude
- Kurtis Blow The Breaks Mercury
- Bruce Johnston Pipeline Columbia
- Odyssey Inside Out RCA Victor
- Montana Sextet Who Needs Enemies With A Friend Like You Philly Sound Works
- Eddy Grant Walking On Sunshine ICE
- Billy Ocean Stay The Night GTO
- Ian Dury Spasticus Autisticus Polydor
- Grace Jones Pull Up To The Bumper Island
- Delegation You And I Ariola
- The Whispers And The Beat Goes On Solar
- My Mine Hypnotic Tango Progress Record
- Giorgio Moroder Palm Springs Drive Polydor
- Ashford & Simpson One More Try Warner Bros.
- D-Train You're The One For Me Prelude
- Forrrce Keep On Dubbin' With No Commercial Interruptions West End
- GQ Disco Nights Rock Freak Arista
- Love Committee Just As Long As I Got You Disco Re-Edit by Dimitri From Paris BBE
- Kano I'm Ready Emergency
- Kebekelektrik War Dance Les Disques Direction
- Donna Summer I Feel Love Casablanca
- Bettye LaVette Doin' The Best That I Can A Special New Mix by Walter Gibbons West End
The Parkway Bowl Disco Mix
Welcome to the show, featuring James Woods, master of ceremonies.
Kicking off with the orchestral soul of Moon Trek, from arranger Mike Theodore's Cosmic Wind LP. Mike Theodore actually from Detroit — not New York — but the track does seem to conjure up images of the Big Apple. He not only produced Rodriguez's enshrined Cold Fact (alongside frequent collaborator Dennis Coffey), but also a brace of sides for the Detroit Emeralds. In between, he put out two excellent LPs of instrumental disco (of which this is the first) that remain cosmic disco par excellence.
Which brings back memories of driving to Patrick Henry back in the late 90s. This jam kicked off all manner of C90s during that period, soundtracking the crisp, early-morning drive to school. The album version, from the triple-LP Sandinista! is where it's at, featuring ever more lush production and further discotheque sonics in evidence throughout. The Clash were cool. I've always assumed that this and Radio Clash were their take on the early Sugar Hill hip hop sound.
Part of what was great about disco is how it ultimately pulled anyone and (nearly) everyone into its orbit, from Marvin Gaye to The Rolling Stones, throwing up all sorts of possibilities and drawing unexpected sounds out of left field (making something like Disco Not Disco a necessary intervention, bringing together a whole raft disparate material together under its umbrella). Nowadays, it serves as shorthand for whole swathes of music. Kevin Saunderson later mined this record for Reese's awesome You're Mine, rugged Detroit techno of the highest caliber.
Luxuriant sun-glazed disco from Greek balladeer Démis Roussos, who of started out in art-prog band Aphrodite's Child alongside synth ambassador Vangelis before striking out on a long and winding solo career. This from '75 finds Roussos with an early entry in the disco canon, with gruff, soaring vocals holding sway over a lazy mid-tempo groove. Dig those gently psychedelic organs! Far and away the best tune on the Souvenirs album, although I have a hell of a soft spot for the motorik country-western vibes of Tell Me Now. Great sleeve too!
When the chips are down, my favorite disco record. Laying the blueprint for Daft Punk, Cassius and Motorbass, this is French disco par excellence, with François Kevorkian reworking the fourteen minute album version by erstwhile-psych rock band Martin Circus into a seven minute rapid-fire edit replete with electro-boogie synths, soaring guitar solos, Moroder-esque sequences, group chants, rolling basslines, a second-line horn section and backing scat vocals that sound something like Bing Crosby duetting with Dieter Meier. I think the kitchen sink is in there somewhere.
Props to Prelude for licensing the track in the first place, putting François K in the studio to work his magic on the masters. Even as this tune perfectly captures the essence of peak-era disco, you can nevertheless hear the implied presence of the 80s waiting in the wings.
How come these early rap tracks all of a sudden sound fresh as a daisy? Twenty years ago this would have seemed like ancient history, quaint even, but in light of everything we've discovered in light of the 21st century disco/post punk resurgence it sounds utterly of-the-moment. See also the Jason Nevins remix of Run-DMC's It's Like That, which now sounds hopelessly dated while the OG sounds as timeless as the Nuggets box set. The Breaks glides along on a nimble funk groove, with rolling percussion, juke-joint piano and Kurtis Blow's off the cuff delivery all coming together to conjure up the moody, half-lit atmosphere of Martin Scorcese's After Hours.
Erstwhile-Beach Boy-drummer-on-holiday gets in on some tasty solo dancefloor action, taking his place behind the kit to guide a string section through the cresting waves of the Pacific Ocean. A killer groove, and rawer than you might expect. Check that rude drum beat, sounding like something cooked up on an Akai! Everything goes atmospheric halfway through, when the sounds of the surf wash across the breakdown like high tide on the sea of flesh.
Incidentally, I've often thought that The Beach Boys conjured up a convincing proto-disco sound on their Sunflower LP, what with all those sun-glazed sounds and burnished edges. Lee Perry too, which is probably why — as great as Pet Sounds is — it remains my go to Beach Boys record.
In the popular imagination, disco was supposed to have died on July 12, 1979 at Comiskey Park's Disco Demolition Night. Of course, history's rarely quite that simple. Rather than some behemoth slayed in one stroke by arena rock, disco was more like the virus that mutated to turn up again nearly everywhere — from ABC and Duran Duran's new wave to the electro boogie of The Gap Band and Mtume to Madonna and Michael Jackson's chartbusting pop to the gulf stream sounds cooked up at Compass Point and played out at the Paradise Garage, the pandemic seemingly spread all over — outliving the dinosaurs and ultimately defining modern music via the sounds of house, electro, hip hop and techno.
Of course, in the Big Apple plenty of groups kept on grooving and the dancers kept on dancing to straight up disco. In truth, some of my favorite disco records actually come from well after its supposed expiration date. Take for instance Odyssey's Inside Out, an low-slung slab of passionate modern soul riding a down and dirty gutbucket groove. Should I be embarrassed that I first knew it as a Electribe 101 song? I suspect that I should, but I don't feel it. I'd even go so far as to say that Billie Ray Martin managed to top the original, if by only a whisker.
Salsoul Orchestra mastermind Vince Montana (who also spent time in Philadelphia International's MFSB) in full swing during roughly the same era with a slab of minimal, slap-bass propelled 4/4 magic in which his vibes take center stage. I once awoke from a dream with this tune still ringing in my ears, and as I gradually worked out where it came from — sometimes you can't quite recall the specifics of these things right away — it hung over the morning like a mist.
I've always loved the way figures like Eddy Grant, Grace Jones and Billy Ocean brought the idiosyncrasies of their island life to the gulf stream flavor to their music. Indeed, to this day they form a loose triumvirate in my mind. What is Compass Point if not the culmination of this notion, with these three toiling away in the seventies only to become bona fide stars in the decade to follow. Eddy Grant later provided the theme song to the blockbuster film Romancing The Stone, while Billy Ocean did the same for its sequel (Jewel Of The Nile). And of course Grace Jones managed to become a bond girl and trade scenes with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan The Destroyer!
In light of his high profile, I'm particularly fascinated with Eddy Grant's ICE imprint, formed as he built his solo career from the ground up, he nevertheless stuck with it after hitting the big time with Electric Avenue. Of course he'd already made his mark on dance culture some time before, with this tune and Living On The Frontline being staples at the Paradise Garage (see also Time Warp by The Coach House Rhythm Section). Walking On Sunshine is a brilliantly rewired electro-disco jam dominated by top-heavy afrobeat horns and Grant's loosely-delivered falsetto. The song was later covered by Rockers Revenge, yet not by Katrina And The Waves, who's song of the same title is completely different!
Early Billy Ocean in this whiplash proto-boogie tune from his sophomore set (City Limit), which is propelled by a uniquely raw-edged drum beat that really snaps the track across the tiles of the dancefloor. Like Eddy Grant, Ocean would later top the charts in the mid-eighties with yacht staple Caribbean Queen.
The great Ian Dury in Nassau, on leave from The Blockheads and getting in on that Compass Point action. Very much of a piece with the surrounding records here, this was also a staple in Larry Levan's record bag over at the Paradise Garage. Dig this little interview1 with old Ian (who in his youth suffered from polio), talking about the story behind the song.
Yet more peak-period Compass Point (perhaps the peak, in this case) with Miss Grace Jones in the driver seat. The video2 is excellent too (Neuromancer vibes in full effect). In case you haven't noticed, I'm a huge fan of the whole Compass Point phenomenon. At the moment, I have a feature in the works, which I'm planning to post here sometime around the release of the Parallax Pier sequel in June.
Lush masterpiece of bedroom disco from the premiere British soul group. I've heard tell that this isn't even their greatest record, but it's the only one I own. You And I perfectly captures the tipping point between the string-laden groove of peak-era disco and the nascent machine boogie coming just around the bend. Check those aqueous, immersive synths straight out of the deep house playbook. Sublime, in a word, and a gorgeous tune.
Chartbusting disco, with a two note organ vamp that stands as one of the great tossed-off hooks of all time. Later propelling Will Smith's Miami into the charts, it also kicked off Jason Forrest's The Unrelenting Songs Of The 1979 Post Disco Crash record. Of course, none of that can touch the original. The L.A.-based Solar Records would later come to define the eighties electro boogie sound with artists like Shalamar, The Deele and Midnight Star.
Italo disco. Like early Depeche Mode, this is bubblegum synth music with an even greater affinity for the dancefloor. That moody synth sequence was later sampled by both Bandulu and Carl Craig, for Thunderground's Amaranth and 69's Rushed, respectively, which is how I found out about this track in the first place. Sporting a peerless play of dynamics between the moody verses and joyous candy-coated refrain, Hypnotic Tango itself is a computer love masterpiece.
From Moroder's third score, after Midnight Express and Foxes, for the film American Gigolo. This is probably my favorite of his OSTs. Everyone knows Blondie's Call Me, but this album also boasts the sleek motor-disco of Night Drive and The Apartment's moody paranoia (the latter even sounding like the lost score to The Parallax View). Palm Springs Drive — featured here — is my absolute favorite moment from the soundtrack, fusing Moroder's trademark motor-disco sound with an epic chord progression straight out of the Ennio Morricone playbook.
Gloriously lush disco from the dynamic husband and wife songwriting duo of Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson,. Penning some of the great soul songs of the era for other artists, including Ain't No Mountain High Enough, I'm Every Woman and You're All I Need To Get By, they also managed to put out twelve solid albums between the years 1973 and 1984. One More Try — from their third — finds the duo confidently entering the disco arena with a desperate plea for a second chance gliding over tricky dance rhythms, soaring ARP strings and some of the finest guitar soloing to ever grace a disco record.
The D-Train project was collaboration between James "D-Train" Williams and Hubert Eaves (previously responsible for the Esoteric Funk LP and later to play on some records with Mtume). Appropriately, this record lays down the blueprint for eighties electro boogie, with the zig-zagging synths that would come to define the decade's machine funk sound (see also Jam & Lewis), and took its rightful place as an immortal dancefloor classic. Even Liam Howlett couldn't help sampling its synth-squiggle magic for The Prodigy's Girls.
The quintessential dub disco record, featuring François Kevorkian yet again reworking an original track to a higher plane altogether. West End had a phenomenal run as the 70s gave way to the 80s, putting out loads of great records hovering on the interzone between disco and dub. In fact, this is as close to the Black Ark as disco would ever get. You can practically imagine Lee "Scratch" Perry's trademark ad-libs over the top. Underground disco par excellence.
Conversely, this is disco from high street, crashing the charts and the airwaves alike. Studio 54 music. I first heard this on Magic 92.5, way back in it's early years when it was on fire with live DJs and a killer selection of soul/disco/funk/boogie the order of the day. I remember driving home from the Clairemont Library one day, crossing the bridge from Mission Bay onto Friars Rd., when suddenly Disco Nights comes on the radio. I'd already become unknowingly aware of pieces of it — looped by Chicago's Stacy Kidd in a house cut that had come out recently — and the rush of recognition upon hearing the original for the first time hit like a ton of bricks.
That was one of the great things about branching out from beats, hearing all those records that had fueled the music I grew up with for the first time (and still at such a young age!. The realization that there was this vast continuum stretching back to figures like Curtis Mayfield, Miles Davis and James Brown, rather than everything being these solitary islands of sound, well it was quite a trip. All of this must sound so boring to someone coming in the era of Youtube, where all that information lay at one's fingertips! Well, back in the day, it was a big deal, trust me. And I wouldn't trade it for the world.
If there's a pre-disco sound that was disco's most logical precursor, then it's surely Philly soul. Groups like The Three Degrees, The Intruders and MFSB were dealing in proto-disco way back in '73 with tunes like Dirty Old Man, I'll Always Love My Mama and TSOP, and they all wound up dovetailing naturally into the scene once it was in full force. As if that weren't enough, full-fledged disco groups like Double Exposure, The Trammps and Love Committee all hailed from Philadelphia, starting out under different names earlier in the decade as pure Philly soul. Double Exposure's Ten Percent and Love Committee's Law And Order are both great examples of good LPs in this vein.
This is Dimitri From Paris' exclusive edit from his (excellent) Disco Forever mix. I remember picking this up in San Juan way back when. My cousin balked at the sleeve (I can't believe you're buying that!). This remix is brilliant, opening up the locked-down original to aircraft-hangar size. Transforming those baritone backing vocals into the lead, echoing lonely from within with that same sense of isolation as Bernard Sumner on the early New Order records. Chopping the horn fanfare into a looped refrain that builds and builds the tension to the breaking point before releasing in a single strummed guitar. Exquisite stuff.
Good old Kano. Kano were great. They must have the highest volume of classics out of all the Italo disco groups (shoot me down, I'm no expert on the stuff). Rather than a Moroder-derived machine pulse, I'm Ready is driven by loose-limbed live drumming (as is its b-side, Holly Dolly, famously the template for the proto-Detroit techno of A Number Of Names' Sharevari). The production on this record is just perfect, it's rubberband rhythm underpins gently trilling synths, vocoders and those delicate lead vocals.
This the original version, rather than the Tom Moulton mix. I go back and forth on which one I like more, each of which have their undoubted merits. Moulton's version grooves better, but this really places the synths front-and-center. Part of me thinks I made the wrong decision... like I said, it's a coin toss! This is Moroder-esque motor-disco of the highest caliber, always making me picture some motorcade/caravan cutting through the desert under the blazing sun, synth-lines melting in the heat.
The godfather of motor-disco disco tracks, produced by Giorgio Moroder for the prototypical disco diva, Donna Summer. Remember a few years back when everyone was calling themselves a diva? That was pretty silly. Donna Summer is the real deal. When I first heard this track, I assumed it was a recent remix and not the original version from 1977! Despite the utterly brilliant chrome-plated futurism in evidence throughout, Summer still manages to outshine everything else with soaring vocals eight miles high and rising.
Going out with a bang! More West End, this time with Bettye LaVette at the wheel of a steadfast galleon constructed by none other than disco super-producer Walter Gibbons. It's impossible not to be moved by this beautifully rendered tale of getting over somebody one day at a time.
At the track's midpoint, when that plaintive organ line erupts out of nowhere, well if you're anything like me you're in disbelief. You've never heard anything like this before! Then, the strings cut back in — horns bobbing and weaving over that groove — and the whole thing goes triumphant, proto-acid lines tearing across the soundscape like it's the most natural thing in the world, before the organ returns and a sublime piano line drives the tune to it's natural conclusion. Every element woven into a disco symphony. She's herself again now. I Will Survive, indeed. An impeccable example of the magic that can be wrought from a 12" slab of plastic, and a perfect ending to our disco odyssey. Hope you enjoyed it!
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Credits |
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Mixed By: Flynn & DJ Slye. |
Special Edits: Do'shonne & Slye. |
Samples: Fifty Foot Hose Opus 11, The Beach Boys Let's Go Away For Awhile, James Woods in Against All Odds, Nastassja Kinski in Paris Texas. |
Vibes: Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson, FSOL ISDN, Sudden Impact, Moodymann, assorted El Cajon dive bars and nightclubs, Disco Godfather, David Bowie's Station To Station, Patrick Cowley, Jefferson Airplane, Atari 2600 and those endless exquisite gradient skies, ARP Solina String, Palm Desert, Jedi Knights, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Club Stratus, Summer Of Sam, The Mizell Brothers, Arthur Russell, Bobby Konders, swimming in A.G., Morgan Geist's Moves, Hohner Clavinet, Herbie Hancock, Eddie Russ, Battle For The Planet Of The Apes, Jack Kirby, Paul's Boutique, Lakeside discotheques, Lil' Louis & The World, Beck Hansen, Harlem River Drive, Night Moves, Scott Weiland, Wild Style, Terranova, The Parallax View, Innerzone Orchestra, Spoonie Gee, Radio Mettrex, Steely Dan, Fender Rhodes, the Op-ART Hall Of Fame, Calypsoul 70, Opinionated Diner, Kirk DeGiorgio, Sly Stone, Sam Mangwana, The Isley Brothers, Glenn Underground, BBE, Parliament/Funkadelic, Ubiquity, Gram Parsons, The Honey Bee Hive, G-Street, East Village, Warren Zevon's Night Time In The Switching Yard, and of course Woebot. |
Footnotes |
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1. |
Granada Reports. Ian Dury Speaks About Spasticus Autisticus inc. The Bus Drivers Prayer. Granada Reports, Ian Dury, 1981. Interview. |
2. |
Jones, Grace. Pull Up To The Bumper. Nightclubbing. Jones, Grace, Kookoo Baya and Dana Manno. Island, 1991. Music Video. |
...
Disco is dead.
Long live disco.
Garden Grooves 003
With Spring beginning to take flight, it was high time for the crew to get involved in some horticultural escapades at the Parallax Gardens. Consequently, here is the third edition of Garden Grooves (aka the music we played). Spanning a casual week of afternoon work, here's the selection as it played out:
Toyan How The West Was Won
Greensleeves 1981
Kicking off the whole affair was this bass-heavy deejay record, Toyan's proto-dancehall tour de force. What sleeves these records have! Ranking Toyan does his thing over crisp, dubtastic riddims laid by the Roots Radics and mixed by Scientist. A Henry "Junjo" Lawes production.
Grace Jones Living My Life
Island 1982
My second favorite Grace Jones LP by a country mile. Unlike my #1 pick (Nightclubbing) it's comprised almost completely of Grace-penned originals (the one exception is Melvin Van Peebles' The Apple Stretching). Boasting killer tune after killer tune (My Jamaican Guy, Nipple To The Bottle) and the descending neuromantic boogie of Unlimited Capacity For Love (choice), Living My Life rounds out Miss Jones' Island trilogy with aplomb.
Jah Wobble And The Invaders Of The Heart Invaders Of The Heart
Lago 1983
Discovered this record only recently over the course of formulating the whole Terminal Vibration trip. This rounds out another trilogy alongside Full Circle and the Snake Charmer mini-LP, featuring Wobble in collaborative mode (this time with the Invaders Of The Heart, who he'd hit full stride with in the 90s). Hauntingly exotic post punk/post-disco moves inna My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts stylee.
Indian Ocean School Bell/Treehouse
Sleeping Bag 1986
Arthur Russell's abstract disco freakout, knocked out with rolling percussion and seemingly improvised vocals. You hear these Arthur Russell records and they really opens up the whole idea of 80s music, straining at the confines of the predictable collective memory of the era to inhabit similar climes to Hindustani music, cosmic jazz and krautrock. Much like King Sunny Adé's Ma Jaiye Oni, my favorite part is when the keyboards take the reins about 2/3 of the way through.
Tom Tom Club The Man With The 4-Way Hips
Island 1983
Sumptuously three-dimensional new wave disco from the Tom Toms' second album Close To The Bone, the 12" gives the groove room to breath with those sublimely detailed synths and tactile percussion. The flipside's dub version is a real treat, and like Wally Badarou's Chief Inspector plays like a proto-house instrumental (once again, those synths!). Clearly, there was something in the water down at Compass Point.
Maximum Joy Station M.X.J.Y.
Y 1982
Shiny post punk funk on the Y imprint and featuring prior members of The Pop Group and the Glaxo Babies. I always want to give this, along with The Slits' Cut and Come Away With ESG to every 15 year old I know. Coming on like a left-footed, untamed English Beat circa Special Beat Service, its brilliant skanking rhythms square the circle between new pop and punk funk better than anyone else. Shame that it isn't more easily available...
...and with the closing bars of All Wrapped Up!, we put away the tools and kicked back for the evening. The following day found the clouds rolling in, and the overcast skies had a decided impact on the playlist as it unfolded...
Liquid Liquid Optimo
99 1983
New York crew get down and dirty with storied 4-track EP, wringing magic from the whole affair only to get ripped off by Grandmaster & Melle Mel's White Lines Don't Don't Do It. As much as I love White Lines, the original loping groove in Cavern is where its at. Plus, you've got Optimo's Central Park conga jam and the rolling clockwork downbeat groove of the post rock-predictive Out. A true gem of a record. And non-stop props to Señor Lavelle for putting out the Liquid Liquid comp on Mo Wax back in the mid-nineties.
Ian Dury & The Blockheads Do It Yourself
Stiff 1979
— Sophomore full-length outing from old Ian and co., this is often classed as a disappointment but have you heard it lately? Sounds to me like a worthwhile follow up to New Boots And Panties!! and the slew of ace 7"s The Blockheads spat out over the course of the late seventies, with a heavy emphasis on post-disco rhythms, a couple quasi-reggae tunes and even shades of Lodger. Something like Sink My Boats is utterly original, definitively seventies — like watching six hours of The Rockford Files and then falling asleep to a fever dream where Barry Newman, Rudy Ray Moore and Peter Wyngarde wander into The Last Of Sheila — and somehow manages to sound unlike anything else around.
Various Artists Babylon: The Original Soundtrack
Island 1980
Rock hard reggae soundtrack from the 1980 film starring Aswad's Brinsley Ford. Scored by the great Dennis Bovell, it also features Aswad's Warrior Charge (a Parallax staple). Great cloudy day reggae (see also Horace Andy's Dance Hall Style) this was the perfect way to wrap up the second day, with darkness settling in on the Eastern horizon.
Forrrce Keep On Dancin'
West End 1982
Forrrce's slap-bass odyssey kicked off the third day, the proto-raps unfolding over dub disco production as we cleared our way into the herb garden and the various banana groves scattered about the premises. The awesome Keep On Dubbin' With No Commercial Interruptions takes matters even deeper into left field with François Kevorkian dub-inflected hall of mirrors approach in full swing. At this point, the sun was hanging heavy in the sky and the 4/4 pulse was in full effect.
Lino Squares The Role Of Linoleum
Humboldt County 1997
Moody minimalism from Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood on temporary holiday from their Two Lone Swordsmen project, at this point gaining full steam. Neuphrique is like a dress rehearsal for No Red Stopping and is very much in the 2LS deep house vein. A quintessential '97 record, you could take this, Moodymann's Silentintroduction and Primal Scream's Echo Dek and have a decent thumbnail sketch of where I was at the time. Blue Pole Dancer always reminds me of 44's Groove Station, even if it came out a couple years earlier.
William Onyeabor Anything You Sow
Wilfilms 1985
Sparkling guttertronics from Nigerian synth wizard William Onyeabor (his final record in fact). This is very much in the chipper bubblegum Kraftwerk vein of Depeche Mode's Speak & Spell (or latterly Hot Chip's latest record), but shot through with a distinct highlife flavor. I picked this up seven years ago (at Amoeba Records in San Francisco) on my honeymoon.
His records were extremely hard to come by at the time, and I absolutely adored Onyeabor's Better Change Your Mind (as featured on the Nigeria '70 compilation) and the Body And Soul 12" with the Scientist remix (which I did have). I couldn't believe my luck at finding this ace reissue and upon returning home and dropping it on the turntable instantly fell in love with the sounds contain therein. Fast-forward a few years and Luaka Bop releases the lavish Onyeabor box set (containing his entire discography), and the world rejoiced.
Hot Chip Why Make Sense?
Domino 2015
As if to drive the point home, here's that latest Hot Chip LP. I quite like this sound they've arrived at, perched midway between Cowley/Moroder synth-disco pulse and twinkling bubblegum electropop. There's even room for the odd surprise, like White Wine And Fried Chicken's slow-motion country ballad. Good stuff.
Patrick Cowley Menergy: The Album
Fusion 1981
The conventional wisdom on Patrick Cowley seems to have always been that his album ventures like Megatron Man and Mind Warp were disappointing and that his productions (Sylvester's Your Make Me Feel Mighty Real) and remixes (Cowley's psychedelic Mega Mix of Donna Summer's I Feel Love) were where it's at.
Well, sure it's hard to top those highs, but I quite enjoy these full-length electro-disco excursions (think Cerrone and Moroder). What with the recent reissues of his cosmic synth music (School Daze and Muscle Up) and abstract post punk (Catholic), he seems almost like a West Cost, mechanoid Arthur Russell.
Andrew Weatherall Qualia
Höga Nord 2017
Last year's Weatherall solo shot plys a sort of instrumental electro-inflected krautrock. This very much reminds me of Death In Vegas' Satan's Circus, in that it plows a similar furrow with live drumming and spiral sequences that conjure up a sound that strikes me as ever familiar and yet I'm unable to place it. Mr. Weatherall's been on a roll this decade, with four solo LPs, The Asphodells' cosmic disco extravaganza and The Woodleigh Research Facility record, all of which I've enjoyed immensely.
Holger Czukay On The Way To The Peak Of Normal
Welt-Rekord 1981
With the sun setting and parties split off to procure dinner from The Tako Factory, Czukay's haunting solo endeavor seemed a natural choice. Ode To Perfume is quite simply a masterpiece, eighteen minutes of low-slung imaginary soundtrack music that rides a loping rhythm as guitars tears into the mix sounding like some distant cousin of Can's Deadlock. Czukay even works in his beloved French horn.
Can Saw Delight
Harvest 1977
Back in the mix with late-period Can — we're pulling Winter weeds, turning the Northside lawn into a putting green — whose liquid rhythms pour over the morning dew-covered grass and out into the palms. For me, this record is in the upper echelon with Ege Bamyasi and Future Days, it finds the band spooling out that Moonshake sound across an entire record. If I've said it before, I've said it a hundred times: if this were by some new band called Jar or Receptacle, and not coming in after Monster Movie and Tago Mago, we'd all mention it in the same breath as the Talking Heads' Remain In Light and the Meat Puppets' Up On The Sun. Exquisite.
J.J. Cale 5
Shelter 1979
Mr. Cale's music is one of the great understated treasures to spring from the 1970s. This the fifth of his LPs from the decade, and you'll want all of them. His rhythm box is still fading in and out of the mix — perfectly integrated with the live instrumentation, like in a Moodymann record — with some tasteful synth licks creeping in here for good measure. Like the four records to come before, the production is otherworldly, exquisite. Alongside Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson, one of the great songwriters of the era.
Prince Far I Under Heavy Manners
Joe Gibbs 1977
Prince Far I's classic platter found us back on the Southeast Terrace to work some landscaping magic. This is one of the deejay records (alongside things like Dr. Alimantado's Best Dressed Chicken In Town and Dillinger's CB 200), with Prince Far I's stentorian delivery front and center over peak-period Joe Gibbs backing. A stone cold classic, this record.
Incidentally, I got turned onto Prince Far I via the instrumental Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter 1 dub outing (mixed by Adrian Sherwood), owing to Long Life's featuring in a Rockers Hi-Fi mix.
Various Artists Calypsoul 70: Caribbean Soul & Calypso Crossover 1969-1979
Strut 2008
This compilation of (put crudely) Caribbean funk and disco is an unmissable romp, put out by compilation heavyweights Strut. Highlights include Amral's Trinidad Cavaliers Steel Orchestra's instrumental version of Gwen Guthrie's 90% Of Me Is You and Cedric Im Brooks' Blackness Of Darkness. There's even a cover of Barrabas' Woman!
Some tracks veer quite close to afrobeat territory, nevertheless I suspect that this contains the germ of the Compass Point/Parallax Pier sound. It's all quite evocative to me of time spent on the island back in the day, especially the way influences will run to and fro between the islands and the mainland. It's all very cosmopolitan in a casual way. Upon reflection, I suspect that some of these sounds were still hanging around when I first visited Puerto Rico, such is their lingering familiarity.
Sweet Talks Hollywood Highlife Party
Philips 1978
The Sweet Talks were a Ghanaian highlife band that sprung up in the mid-seventies and developed something of a profile, touring the world and ultimately winding up in L.A. and recording this little album, full of sparkling guitars and driving 4/4 rhythms. It's nearly impossible to overlook this music's compatibility with contemporary disco. I wonder if — like Manu Dibango's Soul Makossa — it made it's way onto any of the era's disco dancefloors?
The Beginning Of The End Funky Nassau
Alston 1971
Crack band from the Bahamas cut killer funk LP, on par with James Brown and Cymande's contemporary output. This very nearly made the Golden 200. Funky Nassau is one of those great 7" singles, and you get the whole thing right here at the record's opening. Interesting to think that this band were doing their thing in Nassau about a decade before the Compass Point All Stars coalesced into an institution.
Osibisa Getting Hot
Chic 1987
Discovered this only recently thanks to the Singles As Bs & 12 Inches box set put out by Repertoire (check out the excellent Roger Dean sleeve). I have the Black Ant and a handful of their LPs, so this anthology filled out the gaps quite nicely. I had no idea about the band's 80s output, and this record clearly stood out as something special and I tracked a copy down accordingly.
Featuring BIG production, like ABC's How To Be A Zillionaire! (in fact, that very well could have been the next record played — if this hadn't been the last), it could slot right into a contemporary soundtrack during some montage scene. It's all about the Bush-Fire-Mix. I was momentarily certain that the getting hot, getting hot chorus showed up in Ice Cube's No Vaseline, but that notion appears unfounded (it was just a (sample) mirage).
Appropriately, this provided the grand finale as we wrapped up work on the Parallax Gardens, the assorted terraces and groves now properly prepared for summer just around the bend...
