Various Artists

Disco Not Disco

Post Punk, Electro & Leftfield Disco Classics 1974-1986

(Strut)

Record Review by Sean P. Lambert

I wanted to review this album based almost solely on the strength of Delta 5 jamming hard on “Mind Your Own Business,” a bass-driven piece of butt-shaking delight that draws it’s strength from disco while nodding heavily to new wave convictions. It’s this kind of inventive pairing that ties all these tracks together, albeit with widely varying degrees of musicality. It’s hard for me to hear how “Crunch Cake” by Isotope has anything to do with disco, sounding more like an outtake from a late night Herbie Hancock or Miles Davis 70’s jam session (not a bad thing, mind you) than what you might have heard grooving beneath a mirror ball. Whereas the following “Contort Yourself” by James White & The Blacks owes a huge dept to the kind of rhythms the pop charts were registering during those halcyon days.

Maybe the title of the album says it all? Just when you think you might hear a more familiar walking bass line with high hats slick funk guitar, in comes Gina X Performance doing a take on the Jewish prayer for the dead known as “Kaddish.”  We get a heavy dose of '80s keyboards with robot voice manipulation on Material’s “Don’t Lose Control.” “Binary” by Kazino exploits the period synth with a simple refrain, over and over again. The fun, pulsing but comically dated drum machines of Liaisons Dangereuses’ “Los Niños Del Parque” set a fine groove for the female shrieking and repetitive Spanish narrative that ultimately carry the number through. “Beat ‘Em Right” by Six Sed Red misses the mark, coming off as no more than fluffy filler. Maximum Joy’s “Silent Street / Silent Dub” is, however, an intriguing mix of lo-fi Jamaican production values mixed with horns, piano, wandering vocals and echoed drum crashes unlike any dub I’ve ever heard before.

There’s a ranging degree of groups and songs all thrown onto one disc not quite suited for play at a raging party, unless the invited guests are unabashedly open to a near schizophrenic guided tour of yesteryear’s truly weird art rock. It’s a mixture of sounds covering over a decade of underground creations that are strangely satisfying when taken as a whole, but might not stand alone as strong individual cuts. Take it as it came to a select group of listeners so many boogie nights ago. I guarantee there’s not much like any of this getting made today.