Saâda Bonaire was a shelved EMI project comprised of songwriter-vocalists Stefanie Lange and Claudia Hossfeld, producer Dennis Bovell (Fela Kuti, Orange Juice, The Slits, whatever), jazz saxophonist Charlie Mariano, and a slew of backing musicians “culled from the local immigration center.” Dub-funk-disco-ish on top of a Turkish-African instrumental conglomerate. Dark and dancy perfection circa 1983-ish. Captured Tracks recently put out an excellent compilation with a whole lot of never-released material, which we’re not posting for download because you should just buy it. A favorite track below.
Nothing challenging or high-brow here, just 34 minutes of string-streaked, four-on-the-floor delirious disco perfection. Opens with the epic ten minute classic “Supernature,” and while the album slows down for a few breaths (“In The Smoke” is straight-up new age with a muted heartbeat drum pulse), there isn’t a weak spot to be found. Make sure to take a good, long, hard look at that album art. Happy dancing, and happy new year!
Black Devil’s Disco Club falls in the heavily mythologized, mysteriously resurrected music-of-nebulous-origin category, in the vein of Lewis or Charanjit Singh. Purportedly released in 1978 by Bernard Fevre under pseudonym “Junior Claristidge” (cool), Disco Club went completely unnoticed–was the world not ready for deep, dark, sublime disco hypnosis?–until Aphex Twin rereleased it on Rephlex Records in a series of 12″s in 2004, to the sound of critics tripping over themselves to make sweeping statements about this being one of the most important electronic records ever released, et cetera. The music was so ahead of its time both in structure and in production that many cried foul, suspecting an Aphex-Twin style hoax. Fairly so: I’m still skeptical of the release date every time I hear it. It’s too tasty, too prescient and too perfect.
All six of these tracks are similar in length and feeling, differing in a few BPM, shifting drum patterns, and vocal lines–but several of them move seamlessly between each other, making this a half hour disco meditation track rather than an album. You can hear “The Chase”-era Moroder all over this thing, but this is (dare I say it) less cheesy, slicker, and with a contagious, restless percussive spinal chord stretching throughout. So much dark Italo-style disco is trampled by heinous vocals, and gleefully so, but Disco Club‘s vocal treatment is restrained, effectively lyricless, and often totally absent, excepting a mantric chorus of skittering “dee-dee-doo-doo”s. Everything is exactly where it should be, fleshed out in high-resolution with heart-racing textures, laser-sharp synth pads, and thrilling percussive ornamentation. There’s a huge, dark, beastly thing throbbing just beneath the surface that never quite rears its head. The tension is there, simmering, and in hopes of exorcising it all you can do is hit repeat again and again.
In 1990, Mustafa Ali had little under his belt before he began recording his sole 8-track LP as the perfectly suited nom-de-plum New Age Dance. Predicting several of the new decade’s themes and tones for Detroit, it’s not hard to imagine this as the precursor to Drexciya’s subaquatic sensibilities; here, however, synth washes that would be reserved for diving instead mimic interstellar flight. Displaying an otherwise distinctly American sound for a British record, Dawn of a New Age cameod his native isle’s bleep techno before Warp established a serious audience. It was prime for reissuing on Rush Hour, following the like-minded Virgo Four, Larry Heard, and Dream 2 Science.
On Dawn of a New Age, disillusionment with the modern world, primarily its spiritual state, runs rampant. Each composition opens and repeats a bar emulating archaic visions of cosmic technological disclosure in sound, strewn with a variety of samples from dinosaurs to the day the earth stood still. Tracks like “Everything Seems Different” and the eerie coda “Let There be Light” emulate the hauntingly simple NES sci-fi side scrollers. “Soul Search” delivers even bleaker synth waves, yet also draws attention to how N.A.D.’s narration co-dependently pairs to its musical counterpart: his repeated mantras weave in and out of the track’s minimal flourishes.
Much of this album plays like a disaffected, dystopian sermon in one’s own private diary. At its end, Dawn of a New Age leaves you exasperated, carnal, and dispirited. While the masses may never sip this brew, part of Dawn‘s ambitious thesis has triumphed by predicting spiritually imbued curation all throughout dance music culture. Mustafa left behind the sense he’d die more than happy pouring his soul into this recording, placing it as an unknown artifact never to be found again. Lucky for us that wasn’t the case.
I feel sort of fraudulent posting this record since I know so little about techno. What I do know is that this record is very much ahead of its time. It’s strange, skewed, sputtering, and impeccably produced. Hard, abstract, and squelchy all the way through. Has a sense of humor, whereas a lot of techno feels humorless and alienating to me. A human made this. PS: this is the first 90s record that we’ve posted!
One of the most organically freaky records I’ve ever heard. Totally serendipitous experimental pile-on of traditional Congolese singer Bony Bikaye; Algerian-born French producer Hector Zazou; and Claude Micheli and Guillaume Loizillon, mechanics of a massive wall of early 70s analog computers who called themselves CY1. Calling this “east meets west” is totally reductive; this thing is man meets machine on another planet.
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