No.1 x 2013

Mindless Boogie was a true trendsetter in the early years of the disco edit-boom. With a concept that set aside traditional genres and re-edits as simply DJ tools, they went looking for the right vibe no matter what the BPM counter said.
The label was run between 2006 and 2010 by Dirk De Ruyck (who also worked with Eskimo Recordings) & Tonic out of the small city of Ghent, Belgium. Size doesn't matter though, since Ghent has been a source of great dance music dating back to the New Beat-movement of the 1980's. Besides hosting some now classic edits by big names such as Prins Thomas, Lexx, In Flagranti & Todd Terje (under the pseudonym Wade Nichols, which was the real name of gay porn-actor turned disco singer Dennis Parker), the label made their name with some great edits by Tonic himself. Under three different names (Tonic, Skinny Joey & Rubber Room) and altogether six 12"-releases he stirred up an interest for both the leftfield as well as the mainstream (especially the discovery of everything Hot Chocolate made EXCEPT "You Sexy Thing"). The choice of original tracks was always the genius of Mindless Boogie.
Tonic recently put up an archive of his works on Soundcloud:

No. 17 x 2012: The Secret Disco Revolution

The new documentary (or video essay if you will) by Jamie Kastner on the (secret) history of disco as the title indicates, is making its way around the cinema circuit in fast pace. The position of the film (stated in the press release) is that disco has been "gravely misunderstood" and that "revisionist historians now argue the era was in fact an important time of protest: liberating gays, blacks and women". They key historian referred to is Alice Echols, author of Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture. Peter Shapiro, author of Turn The Beat Around: The Secret History Of Disco, is also featured and interviewed in the film.   And while most of the films narrative takes its facts straight from these in my opinion very reliable sources, Kastners ambitions with the film as a whole obscures these facts in favour of a quite complex - but in no way uninteresting - stance regarding both the story and the craft of documentary-film making. By claiming that the film is a "comical investigation" and a "satirical exploration" Kastner relieves himself of taking any kind of position, and instead plays a kind of critical bystander, leaving almost everything up to the viewer. Yet the main arguments and sentiments of Echols & Shapiros research are without hesitation used as the backbone to promote the film, which Kastner explains to CBCNews: “rather than challenge these theories in any kind of direct or head-on way, I decided to take a more playful, roundabout, ironic approach that was, in tone, agreeing with them 150 per cent”. This could explain the senseless choice of topics and interviewees that make up the rest of the film: why, for instance, Nicky Siano is the only DJ featured (no mention whatsoever of Mancuso, Levan or Grasso). 

This satirical approach to Echols & Shapiro also makes for some rather tasteless paradoxes, as in the feature about Kool & The Gang for instance. We see Robert Bell shrug his shoulders while explaining the shift in sound from Jungle Boogie to Ladies Night, a scene purposefully pointing out the demise of musical quality as the record companys steered their artists into disco. In an interview by Bill Brewster for DJHistory, Echols however points out that one of her strongest points was to challenge the assumption that disco and rock (as well as other "serious" genres like funk & soul) were antagonistic. Many artists (like David Bowie, Rolling Stones, Jeff Beck, Luther Vandross, Sly Stone) had no problem breaking these invisible boundaries (which were usually set in the minds of journalists). Kool & The Gang is an exception not because of the overwhelming force of the disco-crazed industry, but simply because they got bad and trusted their company too much.
Another example is that of Saturday Night Fever, the 1979 movie that exposed the world to disco in an unprecedented scale. The movie is of course mentioned in Kastners film, but not the secret history of it as described by Shapiro. The script for Saturday Night Fever was in fact based on an article written by british journalist Nik Cohn and published 1976 in New York Magazine. However, the whole story was a hoax since Kohn knew nothing about disco and had just moved to New York. He simply took an old article of his about the Northern Soul-scene of England and changed some details to fit the scenery of 1976 New York. The movie thus introduced disco to the world as a white, straight & sexist cultural phenomenon with Kohn as its alibi, making way for the following perversion of disco culture with Studio 54 as its beacon of light.

For someone already in the know, this is a therefore a quite meager and unfocused tale of the history of disco, but none the less it's a story well worth telling, as most people would still fully disregard disco as a meaningless fad. The Guardian review deems Kastners proposals "an unexpected school of thought" and warns viewers that the "thesis of revolution (...) be treated with the scepticism it initially deserves". For CBCNews Kastners film "offers a stunning new revelation", which is also their ironic way of dismissing Kastners methods of mixing fiction with fact as unprofessional for documentary-film makers in a feeble attempt to protect the average viewer that they deem too stupid to understand the difference. The Star even calls Echols an "egghead" for her feminist interpretation of Donna Summers Love To Love You Baby. Way to go guys. In a media-consensus like that, I guess we're supposed to be lucky for films like that of Kastners.

Simon Eliasson, 2012.

No.18 x 2011

Earlier this year saw the release of an album made by a group of musicians who had worked with the late Arthur Russell. Under the name Arthur's Landing they put together some great songs in the vein of what we can imagine Arthur would have had them do. The result? Some kind of balearic jazz-pop soft-rock jams, mixed with a nu-disco feel by Breenan Green.
The band is comprised of people mostly involved in projects and recordings Arthur steered besides the disco oriented efforts, with the exception of Peter Zummo who did the amazing trombones on the Dinosaur L-classic Go Bang! Also a noteable inclusion is guitarist Steve Hall who has collaborated with Daniel Wang on many occasions.
Although none of these people were part of the recording of the Dinosaur single Kiss Me Again, the legacy of Arthurs sound and vision is unmistakeable when listening to the 12-minute plus version issued as a B-side to Nicky Sianos polished disco beast on the first two or three imprints of this single. Some free-spirited psychedelic disco-soul if one should need a description.



DINOSAUR - KISS ME AGAIN (VERSION)

No.15 x 2011

Earlier this summer I took a visit to New York, the Big Apple of Disco. And it was not disappointing, seeing almost every record store organising their crates according to the labels: West End, Prelude, T.K., Millenium Disco, Marlin etc. The store I found myself spending most of my time in was A-1 Records around the corner from First Avenue. As it turns out, DJ Harvey is admittedly also a regular at this joint. Hearing him spin on the magical soundsystem of Santos, playing one of my favourite records (Danny Darrows Doomsday) at peak time, was truly an experience. But hearing him chatting it up with Sweeney on BIS the same week was equally mindblowing, as he mentions a stock of records over at A-1 with some anonymous stickers with the name "DAVE" hand-written on them. According to Harvey, these records once belonged to none other than David Morales. And yes, one of these records had made it into my bag. The classic T.K. 12" of Queen Samanthas Take A Chance released in 1979. That same year, Morales was only 18 years old and under the mighty wing of Larry Levan, spinning at the Garage, the Loft and the Sound Factory. A piece of history that has formed the future of dance music ever since.



QUEEN SAMANTHA - TAKE A CHANCE

No.7 x 2011 / Hauenstein Special No.1

One of the greatest heroes of cosmic disco has passed on to the next level. Musical genius Kurt Hauenstein left this world yesterday, at the tender age of 62. But his life offers a rich and comprehensive history in the creation of some of the greatest music ever made. Which surely served as a spark for another Disco Academy Special. In the upcoming posts we will explore some of the most interesting productions signed by this Austrian musician, starting off with his most prolific creation: Supermax.
The title track of the 1977 album Don't Stop The Music (the bands first or second depending on which sources to trust) is a tribal psychedelic trip of epic proportions, featuring the blocky synth-chords that became a trademark of the Supermax sound.

Before the word wigger entered the dictionaries and denounced the efforts of any respectful popcultural exchange between ethnic groups (i.e. whites and blacks), Kurt was the proud posterboy of a multicultural approach to music and to inter-racial relations.
One of the songs of this albums, Watch Out South Africa, Here We Come, can clearly be interpreted as a prophecy of the bands 1981 tour of this apartheid-ruled region. As the story goes, they "were the first multiracial band to tour South Africa. Despite near constant death threats, they played 21 shows causing quite a political scene and earned Kurt 'no-entry' status to several countries"(quoted here) In a self-documented video from the tour, the headlines of daily newspaper Star reveal the bands involvement with the socialist organisation AZAPO.

The swedish balearic rock band Tiedye (responsible for last years summer anthem, the "remix" of DJ Kaos Love The Night Away) announced over a year ago that their full length album would feature a guest appearance by Hauenstein on vocals. We're all hoping that this now posthumous release will make its way to the public soon.


SUPERMAX - DON'T STOP THE MUSIC

No.48 x 2010

The central piece from the exhibition at Makeriet was as you could tell the record Boonoonoonoos by Boney M (yes, that's eight very good uses of the letter O, nine if you count the one in Boney).
German svengali-like mastermind Frank Farian took on the music business with perhaps the most postmodern of approaches in the making of a band since the debacle surrounding the Monkees. He would later go on to outdo even himself with the creation of Milli Vanilli (I think you know the story).
But let's put aside whatever can be said and thought about Farians commercial strategies concerning Boney M and focus on what's really important: the music of course.
The credit list of musicians for this particular record reads like a who's who of international studio whizz kids of the 1970s disco scene. Curt Cress & Keith Forsey on drums, Mats Björklund on guitar and Christian Kolonovits as arranger. With a dream-team like that no wonder they pulled off the balearic kraut-epic Boonoonoonoos, the italo style electronic Silly Confusion (re-cut by Todd Terje by the way) and the laidback funky disco rock of Breakaway.

BONEY M - BREAKAWAY

(Sorry, this was taken down for copyright reasons)

No.6 x 2010

There was a time before disco hit Sweden when so called dance bands ruled the nation in terms of nightlife entertainment. It's hard for someone unfamiliar with scandinavian culture to fully grasp the impact this culture had and continues to have as the main supply of music in many peoples lives. To describe this very simply put, these dance bands are orchestras of very skilled musicians in a category somewhere inbetween cover band and house band, performing a very slick and romantic take on everything from soul, pop and country, usually with swedish vocals.
Around 1979, disco was a fact in Sweden, with the introduction of the concept that one DJ can replace a complete orchestra, to the effect of what has been called "the death of dance bands" (There is a very entertaining news broadcast from the time of this process here)

However, many acts of the dance band scene tried to get with the times and recorded and performed what they believed to be disco music, often with hillariously awkward results.
Except for one of these exploits, being the studio project Laser, which was based out of the highly succesful dance band Sten & Stanley. With this side-project, they set out as early as 1977 to cash in on the cosmic trends of disco that were emerging, and recorded covers of such hit singles that had broke the mold. Including of course Giorgio Moroders anthem I Feel Love.
Leaving out the vocals completely, this version takes on a much more wobblier feel that is as funky as it is freaky.

LASER - I FEEL LOVE

No.5 x 2010

On the 13th of February 2009 the Disco Academy first set up shop here on the internet and in the celebrated recordstrore Rundgång in central Malmö, since then we've sold a bunch of records that have satisfied the disco cravings of both locals and out of towners.
Supplying mainly unknown gems from the sidetracks of the late 1970s disco-boom to the whacked out album fillers of major international artists, as well as overlooked efforts from the Swedish music scene of the 1980s, we hope that the Disko Akademin sticker of approval will in time earn a value of its own.

Here on the blog we've had the pleasure of introducing the skills of producers & DJs like Albion, Vidderna, Lugnet, Giulio DJ, Dompteur Mooner, Phantom Dogs Disco, Schmami, Tobinski, Bogdan & The Robot Scientists, just to name a few. Under this year we have connected dots, passed along praises, made wild associations and accusations and probably stepped on some toes along the way.
We hope to keep doing what we're doing for another year, and hopefully improve this blog and our skills in hunting for the cosmic & far out exploits of dance music.

This saturday we will celebrate our bithday, conveniently enough, at the Vinyl Bar of KB.
DJs Tobinski & Rizzolo will keep your mind on its toes through the evening from 22:00 to 04:00.

This is the link to the FB event for more info.

IT'S A BOOGIETHON!?

Behind pretty face Tina Charles stands the long-haired indian guy and disco producer Appaiah Biddu, known and praised among record collectors and disco beards for his own project The Biddu Orchestra and his work on Bollywood soundtracks.
Although he often stepped aside from his more cosmic ambitions to bring in the green with works like Carl Douglas Kung Fu Fighting or producing for Tina Charles, he managed to slip in an odd delight on this one originally from one of his own albums, Eastern Man with The Biddu Orchestra, namely Boogiethon.
Which as the title implies combines boogie and marathon into an amazingly funky rhytmic-driven boogiethon of slippery sythesizers and hard-on horn sections, with Tina taking the back seat on this one with a minimal of singing efforts that simply just cruise along with the groove.

TINA CHARLES - BOOGIETHON

THE ITALIAN MASH-UP

Mash-ups was a terrible gimmick of a trend in the early 21st century, preceeded by the great DJ boom in the 1990s that led people to believe that anything that was conceived by a DJ and written about in magazines like The Face or Dazed & Confused was the shit. Which it was of course, until the hangover came and sober ears shivered at the sound of 2 Many Djs.
What might have slipped our attention though, is that long before the word mash-up was the coolest word to spit out in a club or record store, some crazy italian dudes were making money off the same concept, but for the simplicity of things merely calling it medleys.
Only with the difference of less available technology and harder legal issues on their plates, they did what the early hip hop scene had done before them and rounded up a bunch of studio musicians to play the stuff they wanted to hear.
Whoever idea it was then to have a band record cheesy italo mash-up covers of Deep Purple and Ten Years After (Smoke Like A Man) or Michael Jackson and Greg Kihn Band (B. Project) is something for the historians to figure out. Stefano Pulga was however the main force behind this pink project, and did manage to pull off a few pretty funky creations. This is my favourite:

PINK PROJECT - DER DA DA DA

DISCO ON THE SWEDISH AIRWAVES

Last night the swedish radio station P3 aired a 2-hour documentary by the programme P3 Pop about the new swedish disco scene, shedding light on some wonderful friends of mine here in Malmö as well as colleagues in Gothenburg and Stockholm. A big thanks to Josefina & Dennis of Prejka for mentioning the Disco Academy, which in the show gets a lot of attention from reporter Sara Martinsson. If you're fluent in swedish, you can listen to the programme here for the next month.

The show closes with this wonderful re-edit of one of Swedens most worn out hits of the 1980's: Freestyles Vill Ha Dig. A song that brings up bad memories of cheesy high school parties and sweaty palms for almost every young swedish generation since its release, but in the care-free hands of Bear Funk founder Stevie Kotey becomes a simply astounding piece of wonky & melancholic funk.

BIG BEAR - I NEED YOU (BABYLOVE'S DISCOMIX)

GAY LEATHER VIDEO

I was just informed by my friend Nora that the probably happiest gay man in Berlin, Mr Daniel Wang (who I by chance happened to mention in my previous post), is playing here in town just two weeks from now! All thanks to the ambitious and broad agenda of our local techno patron Adam Lundberg (of Röda Rubinen).

The California-born dj, producer and record label owner has become synonymous with the renaissance of the classic disco sound of the bathhouses and Fire Island of the late 1970s, starting off in the mid-1990s by adopting a strictly analogue approach to producing and releasing dance music on his Balihu imprint, as well as through his work behind the dj deck defending the legitimacy of the dramatic & joyous disco sound away from the mere patronising grips of "cheesy". This ongoing love affair extends into a very perceptive vision of a dancefloor that has more in common with the social ethics of predecessors like David Mancuso or Larry Levan than most of his contemporary dj collagues. This is quite evident in a recent piece he wrote for Self-Titled Magazine, listing his favourite choices in this category.
The links to gay culture is also obviously relevant to this musical legacy, and in Daniel Wangs case the connection between the two is constantly blurred. Most notably in the 2002 release of the 12" Panoramic, featuring as a B-side Two Tracks We Made In 1999 For A Gay Leather Video, which by its title pretty much tells the story straight up. (...did you get the word-play pun on that? A bit cheap, yeah?)
What might chock you though, at least if you are straight, is that this is not an energetic or sleezy display of effective grooves & hooks that we commonly associate with pornographic soundtracks, but a rather sensual, melancolic and even romantic track composed with simple, delicate synthesizer melodies and drums.

DANIEL WANG - TWO TRACKS WE MADE IN 1999 FOR A GAY LEATHER VIDEO

(On the vinyl release, both tracks share the same title. This is only the second track, b3.)

SPECIAL GUEST: COSMIC DUDES

The slogan in swedish that you see under the Academy logo can roughly be translated as: the hunt for the cosmic vinyl.

No one has taken that quite as litteral as the two longtime friends Charles & Mitch, who run the independent online webshop Cosmic Dudes, a place where the most obscure records ever produced finally see the light of day, and end up in the hands of true connaisseurs ready to spend that extra dime.

The Academy has the honour of hosting a current Top 3 courtesy of the dudes themselves, kicking off in epic proportions with this disco bomb picked by Charles:

"I picked a very great track to start with, which had amazing success in our store and which I believe has everything you’d expect from a good disco dancer.
Victor Bach has been behind some silly disco material, then delivered this supercool disco monster that i found a few years back and then re-discovered when looking up records for a possible compilation last year.
I shared this finding with my soulbrother John (http://johncampoxford. blogspot.com/) who recently did a fantastic edit, tightening the whole bitch to the max. The edit will be released on vinyl soon. This is the original full lenght track, ripped directly from my vinyl. Some of the vocal parts can be missed, that's why we did an edit, but overall this is a very timeless, slick, unearthed track , which leaves you wondering why this wasn’t huge
back then."

VICTOR BACH - LIVING IN HARMONY

GUEST MIX: DJ SEAMLESS

Hold your phones! Pass the smokes! Put on your boots! Because there's a new mixtape in the house. This time from my friend Olof, or Seamless as he is known behind the wheels of steel.
The Academy is all about introducing and inspiring new perspectives on disco, but I have to say we have strayed pretty far from the conventional definition of disco.
Good then that there are DJs like Seamless who have a fresh, youthfull (and dare I say not so nerdy) take on the disco sound.
Crate digging jocks might be turned off at the sight of titles such as Play that Funky Music White Boy, the stuff of gas station compilations. But it just takes a pair of ears and feet to appreciate that good music is simply good music.

The Source - Elektrons feat. Pete Simpson
Sing Sing - Gaz
Love Sensation (Rough Mix) (Dim's DJ Friendly Re-Edit) - Loleatta Holloway
Don't Give Up - Elektrons feat. Holly Backler
Seconds (12" version) - The Salsoul Orchestra feat. Loleatta Holloway
Play That Funky Music White Boy - Wild Cherry
Push Push - Brick
Nefertiti - Wisdom
Doin' The Dog (Extended) - Creme D'cocoa
War - Edwin Starr
Moment Of My Life - Inner Life feat. Jocelyn Brown
Super Funky - Amigos Invisibles
Disco Lights - Dexter Wansel
Ladies Night (Extended) - Kool & The Gang

DJ SEAMLESS - LADIES NIGHT MIX

ANOTHER BLUE PLANET

As it turns out, our friend Giulio DJ put together an edit of the Karat track just a few months before the Lunar Jam version came out. He in turn first heard the track in a mix by Lindström from two years ago, where the vocal parts were cut out.
Which is probably were Ticker & Cristoidz got the idea for the Lunar Jam project.
With some stuff that's out there, it seems the sheer potency of the grooves is just waiting to be picked out of some dusty bin, that it spreads like a virus when discovered thoughout the collective mind of the cosmic connaisseurs.
The same fate that befell the Christian Bruhn-soundtrack to Timm Thaler last year, resulting in a multitude of reissues and re-edits (including my own of the Wetten, Dass? track)
Our friends Parlour of Gothenburg experienced the same effect when a now well-known Phoreski edit hit the shelves just as they had placed the order with a vinyl pressing company for a release of the same material.
Such is the nature of the re-edit "industry" so to speak, it's a jungle out there.

GIULIO DJ - BLAUER PLANET EDIT

P.S! Be sure to check out Giulios monthly mixtapes on Myspace. Overflowing with cosmic delights and original material.

ARPADYS LIVE

In case you haven't heard, the biggest event in contemporary disco history this year is only a few days away. The french studio assembled group Arpadys, featuring the cosmic disco pioneer Sauveur Mallia, are playing live for the first time ever on the 30th of April in London.

This group of musicians were the backbone of almost every disco production in France during the 1970s, and have become legendary in their own right for their work with the library record company Tele Music, cooking up a cosmic stew of records under the names Arpadys, Spatial & Co and Disco & Co to be used in film and television.

The original records are solid eBay material, unless you dig deep like my friend Kinski and find cheap copies in Mexico, but with modern day bootlegging most disco freaks have their neat pressings of cut like Stone Roller and Monkey Star safely on the shelves.

And thanks to the true Disco academics Bill Brewster, Frank Broughton and Alexis LeTan of DJHistory, the catalogue of Tele Music is being reinvented with the aid of todays equivalents in disco pioneering on the Tele Music Remixed record, which we hope to see on vinyl as well. These guys (who wrote the biblical Last Night A DJ SAved My Life) are also the ones responsible for bringing this french group out of the shadows of history to perform under the Arpadys name, along with the launch of the Vince Aletti book The Disco Files.

Here's an edit by Filippo Moscatello of the laid back Funky Bass:

ARPADYS - FUNKY BASS (BERLINMACHINE EDIT)

...and my favourite Sauveur Mallia cut from Automation Vol. 2:

SAUVEUR MALLIA - REGGAE DIRECTION

THANK GOD IT'S EPIC

One of the poster slogans for this well known but less loved 1978 film was: "After 5000 years of civilization, we all need a break." And yeah, I can agree with that even though it means tacky renditions of discos stocked with white straight people in sitcom-situations involving drugs and computer dating.
When disco music can sound this good, you really don't need any excuses. This Diana Ross cut was one of the few from the soundtrack that wasn't released as a 12" single, which is a shame.
It's an epic Moroderesque production signed Hal Davis, slightly pitched down here at the Academy for extra enjoyment.

DIANA ROSS - LOVIN' LIVIN' & GIVIN'

TO PULL A COWLEY

When Glasgow-based Maelstrom caused a buzz two years ago with his reworking of Metro Areas already famous Miura, it was a stroke of genius that gave the then little known producer a head start on the international disco scene.
However, this move was pulled and proven sucessfull way back in the day by the legendary Patrick Cowley, when the young San Fransisco DJ played around with tape loops of his favourite song, adding his own synth impovisations to fill out the middle parts.
The bootleg of Donna Summers I Feel Love he released was duplicated and played at all major discos on the west coast, and later even released by Casablanca Records, who were persuaded by none other than Donna & Giorgio Moroder (who were both fans of Cowleys version).
So to pull off a Cowley is the lesson of the day here at the Disco Academy.

DONNA SUMMER - I FEEL LOVE (PATRICK COWLEY MEGAMIX)

METRO AREA - MIURA (MAELSTROM EDIT)

IT'S THE MAIN STEM

To rummage through David Bumpstead's (of Disco Not Disco) public MediaFire account is the electronic equivalent of exploring a really nice record store, you're bound to find something. 

As did I in the overlooked efforts of Main Stem, the cosmic cowboys who apparently rule the city streets of Birmingham and Stafford. 

I am not sure what the original is behind the re-edit Creative Use Of Space, but it starts out as a wierdo space-disco journey and ends up in something reminicent of Hot Chocolate, so I would have to say the title is apt in its description. 

Kick Uri on the other hand is a dubby edit of Ciquri by Material. 

The legendary Swedish disco DJ Sydney Onayemi (first to use two turntables over here!) had a plaque on the wall of his club Big Brother with a quote from this song: THIS DANCE IS NO WHITE MANS BUSINESS. This was in Stockholm, in the early 1980s (!!). When it comes to legends, that's on a crap your pants-level. 

MAIN STEM - CREATIVE USE OF SPACE

MAIN STEM - KICK URI