Thanks to Waxidermy & The Growing Bin blogs for bringing this album to my attention. Released in 1980, René Roussel’s Rubriques on the French Editions Montparnasse 2000 record label is the sound of the future all the way from 1980. After listening to the tracks, my immediate thought was, where did René Roussel get his ideas from?

The first track Caramel sounds like it could have been recorded last week never mind thirty years ago. It is almost eerie how the minimal drum loop and stabbing synth sound anticipates the future sounds of Chicago and when the broken piano melody comes in near the end, you suddenly realise, René Roussel not only duplicated the sound and structure of house music but anticipated it by at least five years.

Rene Roussel - Caramel [1980]

If the first track echoes the music of Marshall Jefferson and Jamie Principle, then the second track Manigance sounds like nothing less than the sound of Detroit techno and more specifically, the third wave techno futurism of Derrick May, and Cybotron with its strange Strings Of Life neo-classical beauty.

Rene Roussel - Manigance [1980]

If it were not enough that René Roussel engaged in an act of sonic precognition with two different but intertwined genres of music; Chicago house and Detroit techno, this third offering Noctilucque sounds closer to and has more in common with the early nineties ambient music paradigm of Peter Namlook, (and other horizontal sounds coming from the Fax label) and the UK’s Mixmaster Morris AKA Irresisitible Force than it does to Roussel’s electronic contempories such as Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze or Richard Pinhas. There is a curious early nineties feel about the minimalist synth sounds and the way the rising and falling tones are repeated.

Rene Roussel - Noctilucque [1980]

So there we have it, sonic anticipations of  future music recorded by someone called Rene Roussel (who I can find no information about whatsoever), released thirty years ago on a relatively obscure French library music label and retrieved from the memory hole by some cool bloggers. I think that for anyone who thought albums like Black Devil Disco Club and Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat were just amusing anomalies, they should start wondering how many more records like Rubriques are out there just waiting to be discovered? Enough to start re-writing the linear causal narrative of late 20th century western electronic music perhaps…

Video Dance Orchestra - Spring Dance No3

Synth skronks made in France, 1980. ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else.’ -Yogi Berra.

The Wonderland Disco Band AKA The Wonderland Band were a short lived commerical novelty disco project by Morrie Brown and a flagrant cash-in in on the late 70s comic super-hero phenomenon. Speaking personally, I am really glad they jumped on the disco band-wagon as they left us with some amazing spaced out tracks including two similar versions of  their 1978  ‘Wonder Woman Disco’ release. The first track is the shorter ‘American‘ version and the second track, the longer ‘European‘ version.

I find it hard to choose between the two tracks and both are amongst my favourite seventies space disco numbers for the simple reason they manage to touch base with every disco style imaginable and whats more, it is done so seamlessly. If I had a gun at my head and had to choose a single track then I would have to go with the European version and its breathy Euro-sleaze spoken word interlude plus the extended space lasers barrage at the nine minute mark!

Wonderland Disco Band - Wonder Woman (American Version)

Wonderland Disco Band - Wonder Woman [European Version]

The Wonderland Disco Band also released a couple of other singles including the 1978 double A side Superman/ Thrill Me (With Your Super Love) and you can hear the latter track here on Overfitting Disco. They also released the excellent Wonder Woman album (under The Wonderland Band name)  in 1979 which features both tracks from the aforementioned single as well as the 12 inch ’American‘ version of Wonder Woman.

The  cover from the album is featured above and I included it so you too can marvel at how they so creatively got around the DC Comics copyright on the Wonder Woman character! (though they do seem to have borrowed heavily on the lyrics and song structure from the theme of the TV adaption of Wonder Woman if my childhood memories are at all reliable).

Actually I prefer the Wonderland Wonder Woman to the all-American Wonder Woman; though I was a huge DC/Marvel/2000AD comics collector as a seventies kid, I never liked the Captain America/Superman macho costume-hero types, I always preferred the existential angst of Silver Surfer and the cool amoralism of Judge Dread!

The Wonder Woman Disco album is available pretty cheaply and a near mint copy can be picked up for around 12 Euros. Likewise, the 12 inch with both the American & European versions can be found for 5-6 Euros.

Sonoko - Souvenier de la Mer

Belgium 1987. Full name of the artiste is Sonoko Yasuda.

Phillippe Laurent - Exposition Partie 5 (1983)

Taken from this compilation. It appears that the original recording (like most minimal wave-ish stuff from this period) was only available on home-made cassettes, it also means that longer versions are most likely forever lost if they ever existed.

Tonic - Dancing In The Moonlight (1980)

Bouncy, unpretentious… and Belgian. Sold for as low as €0.5 on the Net. Thanks to Antoine Bonan from Belgium for the hints.

Francis Goya is first and foremost a classically trained guitarist but like many artists during the seventies, the urge to go disco was clearly overwhelming and along with Bart Van De Laar formed Discothèque in 1979. They produced a series of Stars On 45 style disco medleys including an album called Discothèque Party, a release called ‘Intro Disco‘ and finally in 1982 a version of The Yardbirds ‘For Your Love‘ four years after Chilly’s version!

This track is the 12 inch version of  ‘Intro Disco‘ and while cover version ‘medleys’ are not usually my cup of tea, this one really works in my opinion.

Discotheque - Intro Disco [12 Inch Mix 1979]

Of course I did spend at least 30 minutes writing down all the tracks and for those amongst you who would otherwise not sleep at night agonising over the name of a particular six second burst of a track, here they all are (more…)

One thing I can thank the rise of music blogs and websites for is the exposure to sounds and artists I probably would otherwise have never heard in my lifetime. As an English person, this is especially true of both communist era and post-communist Eastern European/Russian music and in recent years I have become fascinated by the ‘otherness‘ of the sounds coming out of these vast territories.

From the film soundtracks of Russian composers such as Eduard Artemyev & Alexey Rybnikov to strange seventies disco courtesy of the Bulgarian Balkanton record label via the tripped out vintage “space” sounds of the 2002 Kosmos - Soundtracks Of Eastern Germany’s Adventures In Space album and right up to date with the current disco/house/electronica/edits produced by people like Pnk.Discorp from Poland, the Slovenian duo Ichisan & Nakova and the remixes and edits of Russian music-makers Alien Delon and How_Beezar.

I recently got in touch with How_Beezar and he kindly sent me some re-edits to post on Overfitting Disco as well as some information about himself. (more…)

Babylone - Shalom and Salem

France 1977.

Inspired by this April’s post from Jussi of Steve Bender’s storming 1978 Good Lovin’, Good Feelin’ track, I dug out the We’ve Gotta Get Out Of This Place album where it’s from and chose the title track. It is of course a cover of The Animals sixties classic. What I love about this song is the way it retains the dramatic Eric Burden vocal style delivery even when it’s been filtered through the magic Munich disco machine.

I have only just discovered that the late Steve Bender (he sadly died of  cancer in 2006) was also in one of my favourite seventies over the top teutonic disco outfits Dschinghis Khan who were in the grand tradition of  70s disco cash-ins formed as Germany’s entry to the 1979 Eurovision Contest but went on to have world-wide success before falling down the memory hole; only to be revived by the power of Youtube as a result of their wonderful Moskau song from their debut album (with an equally wonderful cover). Anyway, I will dig out the album and post some choice Dschinghis Khan at some point soon! In the meantime, if you have not already experienced the singular pleasure of the Moskau track here it is sung both in English and German. We are good to you!

Steve Bender - We’ve Gotta Get Out Of This Place [1978]

Sorry for the odd vinyl crackle, it is the only copy I have

I also noticed that fellow contributor Kundalini posted a 12 inch instrumental version of another track from this album called The Final Thing back in 2008 and it is well worth a listen.