Overfitting Disco

Sounds From The Future Past

saucer_people — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:13:28 +0000

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…

Spring Dance No 3

jussi — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 05:20:27 +0000

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 Spaced Out Disco Session - September 2010

Administrator — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:28:38 +0000

The Robot Scientists - The Spaced Out Disco Session - September 2010

The first hour of The Robot Scientists’ DJ set at Magnet/Comet Club, August 20, 2010.

The Wonder Of Woman

saucer_people — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 00:30:00 +0000

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.

Souvenier De La Mer

jussi — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:41:41 +0000

Sonoko - Souvenier de la Mer

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

Exposition 5

okay_awright — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:45:54 +0000

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.

Dancing In The Moonlight

okay_awright — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:22:50 +0000

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.

Disco Needs No Introduction

saucer_people — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:51:49 +0000

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

01 Richard Strauss/Deodato - Also Sprach Zarathustra (Theme From 2001)

02 Discotheque - Intro Disco

03 Village People - Y.M.C.A.

04 Rod Stewart - Da Ya Think I’m Sexy

05 The Animals/Santa Esmeralda - Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

06 The Jacksons - Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground)

07 Shocking Blue - Venus

08 The Rolling Stones - I Cant Get No Satisfaction

09 Discotheque - Intro Disco

10 Chic - I Want Your Love

11 The Beatles - I Feel Fine

12 Cat Stevens - Matthew And Son

13 Boney M. - Daddy Cool

14 Shirley & Company - Shame, Shame, Shame

15 Michael Zager Band - Let’s All Chant

16 Discotheque - Intro Disco

17 Cerrone/Belle Epoque/Baccara - Black Is Black

18 The Rolling Stones - Miss You

19 Macho/Chicago Transit Authority/Spencer Davis Group - I’m A Man

20 Doobie Brothers - Listen To The Music

21 Patrick Hernandez - Born To Be Alive

22 Roy Orbison - Pretty Woman

23 Discotheque - Intro Disco

There we have it, the magickal 23 which has been drilled into my head ever since reading William S Burroughs and the Robert Anton Wilson & Bob Shea Illuminatus trilogy as a young teenager. What is worse it the fact that after spending over 30 minutes writing the tracks down, I found they had already been posted on a Discogs entry! Actually, I am glad I saw it as I completely missed out on Shirley & Company’s Shame, Shame, Shame classic and the embarrassment would have been too much!

Some_Beezar

saucer_people — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:43:18 +0000

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.

How_Beezar is a former punk, indie & trip-hop drummer who spent ten years playing in a variety of Russian bands before sucumbing to the cosmic disco. I first came across How_Beezar via his 2009 bootleg compilation, the wonderfully named ‘Tracks That Left Their Time Behind (1977-1983)’ released on his digital label ‘Ctrl+Z Records‘. and still available to download for free via his LiveJournal page. Anyone who has the good taste to include tracks from Robotwerke, Hott City, Shock and Kikrokos as a way of mapping out the precursors/roots of house/techno/electronica without simply relying on the usual suspects, was someone worth checking out.

Since then How_Beezar has released a steady stream of diverse mind & body provoking re-edits, some of which are gathered together as a single digital release called ‘One Year Of Re-Edits 2009-2010‘ (along with a couple of well selected original tracks). It’s available for free via the above link and comes as a single unmixed 320 MP3 with cue file (so you can either burn it to disc or create single tracks using freeware like the nifty Medieval cue-splitter).

It has been difficult to choose any single re-edit to give a flavour of what to expect from How_Beezar so I have settled for three. The first one comes from the well-known (amongst cosmic space cadets anyway) Russian electronic artists Zodiac and is taken from their 1983 ‘Music In The Universe‘ album. The re-edit pumps up the afro-infused drum workout and slap-bass signature into a JP Massiera like frenzy before launching the signature zodiac synth melody into the stratosphere.

Zodiac - Mysterious Galaxy [How_Beezar Re-Edit 2009]

The second choice is an edit of one of my all time favourite tracks of any musical genre, Jesse Henderson’s 1977 masterpiece ‘I Did It Again‘. Sometimes a successful edit is knowing when not to mess with perfection but simply expand on what makes the track truly great and on hearing the extended drum breaks, it is clear How_Beezar knows this lesson well. If anything it reminds me of a Larry Levan live mix, high praise indeed.

Jesse Henderson - I Did It Again [How_Beezar Re-Edit 2009]

Note: because of server file size limitations I have had to re-encode this MP3 at 256 however the full 320 version can be downloaded below:

Jesse Henderson track 320 via Mediafire

The third and final track takes us back to Russia & 1980 with a re-edit of artist/composer Yury Antonov’s ‘I Remember‘ (or ‘I Reminisce‘ depending on the translation) which features on the soundtrack of the 1981 Russian film ‘Take Care Of The Women!‘. How_Beezar kindly provided a Youtube clip from the film (check out the background dancing, clearly Russian and European nightclubs of the early eighties shared the same ‘crap dancing’ aesthetic). It is worth watching just to hear how the track has been radically reworked.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The re-edit is a total heads-down no nonsense boogie kind of affair that burns the guitar licks deep into your soul and long after you have heard it, that hook will still be swirling around your brain.

Yury Antonov - I Remember [How_Beezar Re-Edit 2010]

How_Beezar has done two different edits of the above track and the 2009 version can be found on his re-edits compilation album).

To contact How_Beezar or keep up to date with his ongoing releases, here are the all important links:

MySpace

Soundcloud

LiveJournal

I would just like to thank How_Beezar for kindly offering to share his material with Overfitting Disco and I hope in the future we can share some more of his re-edits.

Babylone

jussi — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 05:00:44 +0000

Babylone - Shalom and Salem

France 1977.

We’ve Gotta Get Out Of This Place

saucer_people — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 01:31:18 +0000

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.

It’s The Monkey

okay_awright — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:52:32 +0000

Strada - It’s The Monkey (1984)

Coming up this Friday: the first hour of The Robot Scientists’ live at Magnet/Comet Club, exclusively for the webradio, in place of the regular Spaced Out Disco Session. Beware, no MP3 copy afterwards this time!

Auringonmaa

jussi — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:06:04 +0000

Anneli Pasanen - Auringonmaa

“Auringonmaa” is Finnish and means Landofthesun, written for some reason as a single word. This 1977 track stomps foward from the Y Viva Espana school of cheap package holiday exotica, with lyrics about getting swept away under the sun. I can’t locate the present whereabouts of this vocalist, I just HAVE to get her to perform the song live over the track before I’m thru.

Takin’ It Straight

okay_awright — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:46:38 +0000

Cori Josias - Takin’ It Straight (Dub) (1983)

Lots of new tracks to be added to the webradio database tomorrow night.

Autumn Leaves

okay_awright — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 22:00:50 +0000

Hana + Dana + ORM - Autumn Leaves (Okay Edit) (1982/2010) (± 7′30”, VBR max, right click to save)

The ORM duo (Petr and Pavel are not brothers, despite what most people say) also did that. According to their biography, they now own a psytrance (sic!) record label, funny.

Credo

jussi — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:45:56 +0000

Missa Disco - Credo

Against all odds, this 1978 French/German mock-ecclestical mongrel gets down, with screeching brass and an accelerating sense of hysteria. Handy during your next exorcism or while performing vile solo acts with a crucifix, and subsequent bouts of self-flagellation.

Black Inferno

saucer_people — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:46:50 +0000

In my last Guido and Maurizio De Angelis post I mentioned a rare 1983 12 inch single released on the German Kangaroo Team Records label with the title Black Inferno. It features two tracks which were taken from the soundtrack the brothers did for the 1983 Ruggero Deodato film I predatori di Atlantide (known alternatively as Atlantis Interceptors or Atlantis Inferno).

I have yet to see the film myself but the basic plot seems to revolve around a team of scientists who discover an ancient Atlantean artefact while raising a submarine from the ocean floor. In the process of it’s recovery they somehow bring about the re-emergence of Atlantis which in turn triggers a giant tsunami, destroying most of civilisation except of course for the mandatory b-movie “small band of survivors“!

The twist seems to be the fact that the Atlanteans far from being a benevolent race of advanced spirtual entities are in fact a group of blood thirsty rampaging rambo types hell bent on wiping out what is left of humanity!

Anyway, this is not a film blog so on with the music! I have not been able to ever locate a copy of this 12 inch and as it has never been re-released or on any compilation or bootleg (as far as I know) this is the best rip I can find.

The music is really special in my opinion, a wonderful blend of seventies vocal based Italian progressive rock elements fused with the melodic groove of early eighties Italo-disco and synth-pop. I hope the two tracks inspire one or two Overfitting Disco contributors to join in the hunt for this ultra-rare release.

Black Inferno - Black Inferno [1983]

Black Inferno - Black Inferno (Instrumental) [1983]

Million Dollar Melody

okay_awright — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:21:37 +0000

Bernard Estardy and his magic synthesizers.

Sexy Soxy - Million Dollar Melody (1982)

And yes, the pressing sounds that muffled. It doesn’t appear to be specific to this record, that’s really a shame.

And yes, it’s maybe not worth one million dollars but it’s yet another one hundred euro track programmed in the webradio for your listening pleasure.

Zanzibar

jussi — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 04:57:30 +0000

Minx -Zanzibar

Germany 1978.

Traditional? Real? Authentic? What label communicates what we all perceive about culturally themed music and visual arts? Certainly we have a sliding scale based on our experiences but there is definitely a factor that makes a place like seen above (and the music heard in the background) feel like the real thing.

Formula Uno

saucer_people — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 01:28:37 +0000

I know Guido and Maurizio De Angelis need very little introduction for most people who are reading this post but just in case you don’t recognise the names here is a quick recap :

Born in the 1940s, the two Italian brothers were barely out of their teens before they had struck a deal with RCA Italiana and became one of the label’s leading in-house musical arrangers as well as composers and artists in their own right. By the time the 1970s came around they had recorded dozens of albums and soundtracks under a variety of names, including the very popular Oliver Onions.

You don’t have to be a DJ, record digger, library head, beat fiend or cosmic/afro disco lover to have heard the music of the De Angelis brothers, there is a good chance (if you are a 70s/80s child) that you have already come across the pair through their soundtracks to such animation series as Around The World With Willy Fog and perhaps most memorably (for me anyway!) Dogtanian & The Three Muskehounds.

However, for anyone who thinks they are in for some cheesy seventies or eighties kids TV pop music, I think the two tracks below will be a pleasant surprise. Both tracks are taken from their 1978 soundtrack album Formula 1 - Febbre Della Velocita released on the German Kangaroo Team Records label (who also released many of their eighties records including the 1983 cosmic killer Black Inferno 12 inch for the Atlantis Inferno soundtrack ) and while having a listen, it’s worth bearing in mind that though these tracks sound curiously contemporary (to my ears anyway) they are in fact 32 years old!

Guido & Maurizio De Angelis - Box [1978]

Guido & Maurizio De Angelis - Speed Fever [1978]

Whenever I hear music like the tracks above I am always struck by the irony of cultural history; namely, the very records categorized in the seventies and eighties as having high aesthetic value & being serious and socially worthy are the very vinyls that sounds the most dated to me.

On the other hand some of the music that was deemed at the time of having low aesthetic or marginal cultural significance such as obscure disco records, soundtrack recordings, library records or strange avant-garde electronica are the very records that today sound the most fascinating and weirdly enduring in my mind.

Overfitting Disco

Sounds From The Future Past

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