Two naked, moustachioed beefcakes sit back to back, eyes averted, linked by wires, resistors, and switches, as if plugged into the same circuit board. Connection, sex, loneliness, and electricity all smashed together — has there ever been a better pictorial representation of Patrick Cowley‘s music? I’m referring here to the sleeve of Cowley’s not-new new album Hard Ware, the latest in a series of releases by California record label Dark Entries that has turned up all manner of wonders from the archive of the pioneering disco producer, who died in 1982 of AIDS.
Cowley lifers will know by now, more or less, what to expect from Hard Ware. Glistening synthesizers and squelchy basslines do battle over drum machines, while vocalists pop up here…
Category: disco
…Bonus four track CD featuring a cover and three live tracks.
Say She She were praised by none other than Chic leader Nile Rodgers after the release of Silver, their second album. It’s impossible to imagine a greater form of validation for an accurately self-described “discodelic” vocal trio whose name is a play on the refrain from Chic’s indelible “Le Freak.” Singers and songwriters Nya Brown, Sabrina Cunningham, and Piya Malik keep riding the wave with their third album, on which they’re backed again by the flexible-as-ever instrumentalists of Orgone. The slick, supercharged “Disco Life” reaffirms their affinity for disco as a crucial subcultural movement while envisioning “a playing field where all are free.” The song uses that and other baseball…
Recording for the Fantasy label, his singles regularly scaled the upper reaches of Billboard’s club chart, truly breaking through with the ecstatic Top 40 crossover hits “Dance (Disco Heat)” and “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),” both of which drove the 1978 album Step II to a gold certification.
Sylvester’s genre-defining disco album Step II arrives on CD for the first time ever, as a bonus-filled Deluxe Edition featuring Tonic Funk’s never-before-heard “Space Funk” Club Mix of “Dance (Disco Heat)”, plus Bright Light Bright Light’s fresh take on “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”, and new liner notes from Joshua Gamson. Described by Pitchfork as “a formative record in the queer canon,” Step II took Sylvester’s from a Bay Area icon, to a national disco superstar whose…
After landing in the Top 30 in their native Australia as well as charting across Europe with their second album, Day/Night (2021), Parcels remain deeply indebted to the sounds of the ’70s on LOVED, an album guided by the theme of unity. What makes Parcels so irresistible here — at least if one is open to some wholehearted brotherly love — is that their particular touchstones seem to include funky disco in the celebratory tradition of Chic, certain civil rights-era classic soul, and the vestiges of harmony-driven West Coast hippie folk-rock, all tinged with modern indie and electro-pop. Not entirely party-hearty, a good half of the album succumbs to a yearning bittersweetness, although it’s relentlessly affectionate throughout, and LOVED kicks off with a dance-funk…
Rodney was the guy that played with The Spinners. He was one of the musicians that had made it out of Indianapolis. Rodney was a step ahead of us because of that. The group that started to rise above everyone was Rapture. They started to take over.
“When I look at my journey, and Rodney’s journey, I see two guys from the same town that took two different routes…. in one sense Rodney is every bit as successful as I am. Because he’s been able to make a living with music. He’s been able to play with people that he respects and he’s played with major artists everywhere. Most importantly, he’s been able to do what he loves.” – Kenny Edmonds
Recorded by Rob Bennett and Jim Duncan in 1977 at Mantra Recording Studio, Chicago IL.
In 1979, Record Player privately pressed and issued a solitary 45 on their Gem City Records imprint in Dayton, Ohio. Though they had recorded a host of other songs, and were on the verge of signing to a major label, their trajectory stalled and the band splintered by the early 1980s.
In the early 2000s, Record Player principle Charles Jackson surfaced with their unreleased songs. To date, only two Record Player songs have been reissued, as part of Now-Again’s long-running Soul Cal series. Now, the entirety of their oeuvre is presented here as Free Your Mind, and their story detailed in words by Bret Sjerven.
From Bret Sjerven’s liner notes: “(By 1984) the principal members of Record Player (had) mainly stepped away from music. Lamar remains…
On his second album Quit to Play Chess, the singer/songwriter and producer Cola Boyy takes a step away from the shimmering retro disco and soft rock sounds that made him a sensation and instead branches out into all sorts of directions, including R&B, hip hop, retro dance music, reggae, and funk. Sadly, it’s also his final album; he passed away on the same day he approved the final mastering. There’s no sense of sadness found in the music though; it’s a buoyantly joyful expression of Matthew Urango’s musical vison and philosophy of life that is meant to move feet and stir hearts. It succeeds on both fronts. Urango recorded the album in his hometown of Oxnard with the help of a batch of collaborators including co-producer Jared Solomon and MGMT’s…
Two years on from Disco Discharge Presents Box of Sin, the Disco Discharge label returned with a sequel of similar scope and quality, another 5-CD set preserving the music that soundtracked gay dancefloors in the U.K. throughout the 1980s.
The selections were drawn from Record Mirror’s assorted disco charts that surveyed DJs across the land. Although Box of Sin 2 goes all the way back to Jean Carn’s “Was That All It Was,” a 1979 Philadelphia International classic that achieved impact at the dawn of the ’80s, the inclusions again favor the more electronic sounds of the middle and latter years of the decade.
They roam through post-disco R&B, alternative dance, Hi-NRG, and house while touching upon other subgenres such as Italo disco,…
Homosexuality has been a part of post-war popular music since its very inception. Until the early ’70s, however, it wasn’t talked about openly in that world: it was coded, hidden, secret.
This of course mirrored society – during the ’50s and ’60s, the gay community felt like outcasts: harassed by the police, demonised by the media and politicians, imprisoned simply for being who they were.
This compilation spans the time before and after Bowie, reflecting both the coded nature about the topic in the ’50s and ’60s and the greater openness that occurred in the early ’70s.
It begins in late 1955, with the extraordinary success of Little Richard; continues through early-’60s pop and pop art; Tamla and Soul,…
Continuing his long-running and highly respected series for Ace, spanning year by year since the germination of his 1966 volume for both Ace and Faber Books, Jon Savage serves us up another of his spectacular insights into popular culture, this time for the years 1983 to 1985.
Born out of the ashes of post-punk, there were plenty of experimental singles during the early part of this period: Siouxsie’s ‘Swimming Horses’, Shriekback’s ‘Lined Up’, Soft Cell’s ‘Heat’, Echo & The Bunnymen’s ‘Gods Will Be Gods’, and the Smiths’ ‘Girl Afraid’ – a perfect kitchen sink scenario. Pete Shelley and Scritti Politti went the electronic route to great effect, while the Special AKA delivered the perfect riposte to ‘Hard Times’ (all those ripped jeans) and having fun on…
The latest release from Analog Africa grapples with a quandary. How can the owner of an independent record label create a project celebrating piracy, normally seen as a curse robbing artists and labels of sales and therefore income? However, in addition to providing an intriguing piece of social history through its accompanying informative booklet, that is what Super Disco Pirata does. It takes us to Mexico City’s dance party scene ruled by the sonideros, a network of mobile sound system operators. Their popularity increased the demand for tropical music and during the ’80s music dealers and record collectors from Mexico City created a series of illegally manufactured vinyl records featuring highly sought after hits from Peru, Columbia,…
Going to the disco might not seem like the most political act, but across the world the dance floor has often been the place where old norms are challenged and new identities forged. In post-independence West Africa, dancing to Cuban music gave young Congolese, Senegalese, and Malians the opportunity to be part of a modern world while embracing their anti-imperialist stance. Similarly, in ’70s America, disco music was intertwined with calls for equality, acceptance, and liberation. The examples are endless, and Soundway’s new compilation Ayo Ke Disco: Boogie, Pop & Funk from the South China Sea (1974–88) highlights this transformative power of music across Southeast Asia in the ’70s and ’80s.
Translating to “Let’s go to the disco” in Malay…
You Can Be A Star! The definitive survey of America’s independent 70s soul scene, and a companion piece to Now-Again’s long-running Soul Cal series.
“(Soul Cal) captures the retro-utopian vision of a past where every smalltown record store or garage in the US might have hidden a virtuosic funk outfit; the thrill of knowing that jobbing musicians might be getting paid for the first time; plus the bittersweet knowledge that those that passed on are getting deserved recognition. And all that before you get the thrill of the music itself.” – Wire Magazine.
Compilation produced, annotated and researched by Eothen “Egon” Alapatt. Mastered by Dave Cooley, Kelly Hibbert and J. Bitner.
Soul Jazz Records’ new Miami Sound 2 is a superlative collection of 70s soul, funk, disco and boogie featuring tracks from legendary artists such as Betty Wright, Timmy Thomas, Gwen McRae, Milton Wright, T-Connection and many more, all released on the mighty TK Records musical empire based in Miami, Florida. Throughout the 1970s founder Henry Stone’s TK Records rose up to be one of the most important forces in black music, successfully pioneering the evolution in musical fashions from the early gritty funk and soul at the start of the decade to the arrival of disco in the mid-70s. This album is a rollercoaster journey across soul, funk, disco and boogie, a party-rocking dancefloor-filling collection of monster tracks that includes million-selling…
March 11, 1979 was the evening that cemented dance superstar Sylvester’s legend. The 3,100+-seat San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, home since 1932 to the San Francisco Opera company, was filled to capacity with fans who’d come to see their hometown hero in his singular splendor. Mayor Dianne Feinstein had sent city supervisor and gay rights activist Harry Britt to present Sylvester, mid-show, with the key to the city. That concert, during which Sylvester was joined by the electrifying duo of Martha Wash and Izora Rhodes Armstead, a.k.a. Two Tons o’ Fun, was recorded by Fantasy Records and released in truncated form as the album Living Proof. Highlights, including the singer’s thunderous “You Are My Friend” and a powerfully…
The “silk roads” of the title refers to ancient trade routes that connected China with Europe through modern-day Russia, the most vital of arteries facilitating the exchange of goods and culture between East and West. By the 1980s, some of those roads rumbled to the sounds of synthesizers and drum machines, as this outstanding new compilation by New York label Ostinato Records, discovers.
The Soviet Union was a superpower of electropop and new wave music, but Synthesizing the Silk Roads: Uzbek Disco, Tajik Folktronica, Uyghur Rock & Tatar Jazz from 1980s Soviet Central Asia zeros in on just one nation — in fact, a specific vinyl pressing plant. After the Second World War, the Tashkent Gramplastinok was established…
1979 was a landmark year in disco, with Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, Anita Ward, and Sister Sledge all conquering the Billboard charts. But the prominence of the dance genre led to a so-called backlash – and it happened in the blink of an eye. On July 21, 1979 – nine days following the Disco Demolition Night held by controversial Chicago disk jockey Steve Dahl and others – the genre dominated the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, with six records. By September 22, there were no disco songs at all in the top 10. But then, as now, people still wanted to dance. Even as the musical merits of disco have been reevaluated and rightfully recognized with the passage of time, other dance music forms…
Compiled by legendary producer Arthur Baker, Breaker’s Revenge is a near-definitive collection of original Funk, Soul, Latin, Disco and Electro classic tracks from 1970-1984. These tracks, a combination of classics and obscurities, have all since become legendary to Breakdancers everywhere. First played at South Bronx block parties, community halls and park jams in the 1970s and 80s, spun endlessly by the first three major hip-hop DJs – Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa – and found in the record crates of any DJ of note ever since.
Seminal funk and soul tracks such as Dennis Coffey’s ‘Scorpio’, The Jimmy Castor Bunch’s ‘It’s Just Begun’, James Brown’s ‘Get on the Good Foot’, The Mohawks’ ‘Champ’ sit side-by-side…
If they were actually played in clubs this side of the Atlantic, L’Impératrice would likely be a darling. The French-French dance group make the kind of groovy tunes that keep your world turning so you can continue looking to the stars. The sextet’s music is spacey, the mood breezy. Sometimes, they’re too slick for any character to stick. Other times, their prog-lite diversions are so playful they practically frolic, along with a formidable core of airtight performers. Their stock has dropped a little this decade since Top 40 went Studio 54 to thunderous acceptance, but purist groups like L’Impératrice should always be cherished when the cool kids take their jokes, lest they stop making them. And yes, there is a Daft character to the group beyond La Marseillaise…
If there’s one constant in producer and musician Will Holland’s varied repertoire, it might be best expressed as warmth. Whether dabbling in retro funk, Colombian coastal folk, tropical jazz, or dubby pop, Holland, usually under the moniker Quantic, infuses everything he creates with a balmy kind of love. In his new album, Dancing While Falling, he continues to bring the light in troubled times, circling back to his early roots in 1960s and ’70s funk and soul with a new sophistication and, perhaps, slightly softer contours from 20-plus years in high-energy circulation around the globe.
Permeating the entire album is a sense of community in terms of sound and production. Beds of luscious orchestral arrangements, gospel vocals, and tempered electro-disco beats…
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