Touchdown in Paradiso, continuing their iconic sound for the first time on 12 inches. Disco Mortale (aka Daniel Monaco) and Sauvage World team up for a world of Italo, EBM & New Beat. Pulsating arpeggios, vintage drums and a killer dark energy backed up with remixes from Curses and Freudenthal, welcome to Destroy Inc.
Arp Frique’s second album on Colorful World, exploring the globe via a concoction of sounds that takes in disco, synth boogie, funk and the sounds of the Caribbean, West and East Africa. The result is an album that feels potently alive, sonically exploring the globe via a concoction of sounds that takes in disco, synth boogie, funk and the sounds of the Caribbean, West and East Africa. The album radiates the feeling of a lost gem, the kind that a crate digging aficionado may find in some far flung place that ends up with a re-release. Whilst Arp Frique expresses a real fondness for such classic sounds – “honestly I wouldn’t even know how to make modern stuff, I am stuck in the 70-80-90s and I love it there” – a tired exercise in retro nostalgia this isn’t. Instead, the album feels more like a fresh take on sounds that once ignited dance floors across the world.
XXX The Label brings for its 13th release a collaborative EP between Split Secs, an electronic music production and DJ duo from LA, and Franz Scala, the head of Slow Motion. On the A side we have two original tracks while on the AA side the artists remix each others tracks.
Balearic. Disco. Italo. House. These are the styles that forged Filippo Colonna Romano, aka Modula. The diverse musician has always drawn on a rich musical seam for inspiration. His latest album, Sounds from Montenuovo, calls upon a spread of sounds and styles. From the birdsong of the title piece, the listener finds themselves in the stripped electro-wave of “Party Crime” and “Night Warrior” with Pamina Chauveau offering impassioned vocals. The colder edges of emotions are exposed in the unsheathed funk of “The Anger” before the summer brightness and overarching warmth of “Looking At The Horizon”. Modula island hops from genre to genre, dipping into one sound before diving deep into another style to resurface with audio pearls. Tribal tones and melodic bursts come together in the exotic “Malicumbà”, a track which anticipates the pure synthesizer joy of the instrumental version of “Looking At The Horizon”. A vivid collection of imaginings from Romano’s studio, sounds that arrive via the clear waters of the Caribbean and the cinematic echoes of the 1980s. A voyage from beginning to end.
Seminal early 80’s HI-NRG / Synth disco emanating from the gay clubs, bath houses and discotheques of San Francisco. A truly original and groundbreaking sound and style helmed by studio genius Patrick Cowley. Heavily informed by sonically charged science fiction fantasy and the darkest corners of nightlife, ‘Mind Warp’ is a cornerstone of electronic music that still astonishes today. Originally released on Cowley’s own Megatone imprint in 1982 the album marks a definitive change in direction of post-disco dance music, undoubtedly inspired by European artists such as Kraftwerk, Moroder, Yello and more. A huge influence on what was to come through in later years via house and techno music, ‘Mind Warp’ is a bonafide classic and every single self respecting music lover or DJs home should have a copy. Celebrate 40 years of the label with this unmissable reissue package beautifully presented on wondrous coloured vinyl by your friends over at Unidisc.
Let’s Dance – 08PM – by Reda Saiarh is a 10” release on AM Records. Four oddball “New Beat – not – New Beat” tracks produced by this young dj from Geneva (of the duo Ramin & Reda) for renewed appetite for dancing after the lockdowns… title track Let’s Dance is Reda’s 2021 take on the classic Bowie song, followed by an original new production Quinz Lord, in which he samples his girlfriend’s cat. On the flip he worked with Thomas Lavanchy on E-O, a song constructed around traditional Gabonese chanting before finishing off with an ode to Yello medley, mashed up to the deepest kick of the record.
Shkema’s debut EP ‘Kronikos’ is a double release with four originals and four remixes. The author describes it as ‘world news show, where each song represents a different story’. Some of them he has experienced himself, some are hearsay from TV news programs, and some are actually imaginary. Stories are not really related – just like in the news. ‘Ispanija’ was created during a friend’s band rehearsal. Psychedelic vocals sounded interesting in Shkema’s headphones while he was watching soundless singers and the muted musicians. The true reason why this track is called ‘Ispanija’ is still unknown to this day. According to Shkema, ‘Ola’ is an allegory of Plato’s cave. It’s a story about prisoners, chained in the cave and the only moving thing they could see was a passing shadow – quite deep, uh? Justin Strauss and Max Pask recently have joined up to form new project Each Other. True dance floor legends delivered bass-busy remix of ‘Ispanija’. It could probably be best described as ‘juicy distorted badboy from New York you don’t want to mess with’. Moscow’s finest – Simple Symmetry – joined the pack and went back to the roots. Their remix for ‘Ola’ is future clubbing classic, four to the floor banger with a drop perfect for pogo.
Disgo is a new project from Frank Timm AKA Soundstream and his the first release on his new Disco To Go label. Supreme overlord Disco House decree.
Residentes Balearicos is a musical project founded and carried by Luca Averna and Ale Doretto, both Italian residents in Ibiza since many years. When they met in Ibiza, they decided to try to make something together, and it was easy to see that these two different approaches to Music were complementing perfectly in the studio. As wide and vague the term Balearic can be sometimes, their vision is to create the different soundtracks whether for a restaurant, a beach or for the dance floor. “Break the Cookies” is def for the dance floor. On remix duty are Munich’s Permanent Vacation mastermind Benjamin Fröhlich and Sirsounds own SIRS.
Private Records presents „Let’s Go Into Space 6“. The collector series continues with another collection of scarce and unreleased 1980’s Italo Disco, Electro, Cosmic Disco songs.
Volume III, the return of Lo Joe Soul and Electro Wayne as Circuitry.. 10 track LP of midwest madness, tweaked to its limits during 2020 lockdown. Featuring vocoder-funk classic ”Sexy Body”, the lost slo-jam ”This Is Dedicated”.. and unreleased electro bomb ”Arrested By The Funk”. Badass electrofunk album.
SIRS presents a selection of edits in the memory of the East German music available for download on his bandcamp.
Lerosa adds to his esteemed discography with an EP composed entirely during the summer of 2020. Several of his musical influences – I.M.S., Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, James Stinson – can be heard across these four diverse tracks, as he jumps nimbly from italo to dub to house to electro. As always with Lerosa, though, the sound that emerges is distinctively his own, the result of daily cat-assisted studio time at his home in Dublin. Lerosa has a flexibility in his sound which can reach from immersive techno pastures (as on his album for Acid Test) via exquisite deep house on to true-school electro and Italo.
Megatron Man is the second studio album by American disco producer and musician Patrick Cowley, released in 1981. Highlights include the vocoder-driven title track and the relentlessly funky “Get A Little.” Cowley is most famous for his collaborations with American disco vocalist Sylvester.
Unidisc continue to bring us anthems, classics and groundbreaking hits from their vaults, reimagined, reworked and re-presented in celebration of 4 decades in the game. None come much bigger than the pairing of legendary synth alchemist Patrick Cowley and the incredible gay icon Sylvester. ‘Menergy’ is such a classic record, a slamming piece of HI-NRG funk that will have everybody within the nearest vicinity on the dance-floor in a heartbeat, the sound of early 80’s gay San Francisco, unashamed, proud and ridiculously ahead of it’s time. Pair this music with the skills of cult producer and editor extraordinaire Purple Disco Machine and you have a potential new classic on your hands.
Heavy South African cut, unearthed by Dene from La Casa Tropical. The origins of Amajika is a tale of two worlds colliding at the perfect moment and begin in KwaMushu Township outside Durban. Here would be where a young Tu Nokwe would set up a school to help teach other aspiring youngsters like herself in music, dance and acting. This would become known as the Amajika Youth and Children’s Art Project and would be run from the Nokwe home, a common hangout for artists at the time. Some boast 2000+ pupils going through this program while others claim it wasn’t more than a backyard dance group, but for the lucky group of kids that were members in the mid 80s it would be their chance at stardom. Fast forward 30 years from the original release to a smokey club where ESA hears Got My Magic Working played by Rush Hours Store’s own Bonnefooi. Instantly he inquires about the track from his homeland and feels it a perfect addition the repertoire of the Afro Synth band he is quietly cooking up. Here you have compiled the two title tracks from original Amajika singles along with the instrumental version by ESA’s Afro Synth Band.
American label Peoples Potential Unlimited has cared out its own superb niche in the world of heart aching, lo-fi funk. But here a new catalogue number seems to suggest a new series. It kicks off with French collective Spaced Out Krew and their timeless, boogie driven disco funk. The music was written during 2020 by Spleen3000 and Marius Cyrilou of Cee-O-Funk. There are starry-eyed melodies, rasping basslines and curious vocals that all add up to a nice cosmic disco sound.
The Hipodrome Of Music 