Disco Horror

My dudes and ladies. The vast amount of rad progressive disco and house and electronica that has been released over the past year can only mean one thing: the dudes producing this music cannot be from our planet. They must actually be shape-shifting disco prog demigods disguised as humans to live among us. The music they make is their means of communicating with their home planet and with my remote viewing abilities I have been able to decipher the messages hidden within their music. They are planning an invasion and our only hope lies in a pregnant woman, Dennis Quaid and a non-descript English actor whose mild success in films has qualified him for a lead role in our apocalypse. This is the only plausible explanation. That or I fell asleep to the trailer for Legion after taking too many painkillers.

Either way, I decided to give you guys some tracks so you could have a soundtrack to dance your apocalyptic troubles away. Only the best will do, so first off let’s start with Joakim‘s massive new remix of Naum Gabo’s Pictur. This remix only affirms the Frenchman’s standing as one of the few extremely capable producers who can successfully bridge the gap between disco, house and electro. The 12″ comes with Joakim’s remix as well as a Naum Gabo’s own reworking of his dark nudisco. But Joakim’s strung-out epic of warped wobbly synths is what you get today. Beautiful artwork as well on the sleeve.

Naum Gabo – Pictur (Joakim Remix)

The other track comes from one of my favorite disco edits labels, Moxie. These dudes have really figured it out and have released so many quality edits from a celebrity panel of dance producers. The latest is no exception and comes from an unknown audio assailant. Two edits of a Prince-inspired space disco track come in Male and Female Versions. Today I share the Male Version, so get it while it’s hawt.

Unknown Artist – Holy “Invasion” (Male Version)

UPDATE: YALL I ADDED THE JJ CALE VERSION IN ORDER TO BE ‘COMPLETE’–THANKS TO GROOVYPANDA FOR THE HEDZ UP

This is what I would wear if I hung out with A Mountain of One

Guys, when you’re lying awake at night, trying not to think about how your life is a crushing disappointment, do you ever wonder what it would be like to hang out with your favorite bands, like Nickelback, or A Mountain Of One? Sometimes I will write little “fanfics” in my head, about meeting up with famous musicians, and then maybe act out small plays, alone, in my room, where I play all the parts, sometimes in costume.

I bet if you “kicked it” with A Mountain Of One, you would probably start calling them “A Mountain Of Fun,” because they would be fun, to hang out with. First of all, based on the YouTube videos I can find, there seem to be about sixty people in this band, including some women:

This means that hanging out with them is kind of like being in a gang, but less dangerous, probably, and you don’t have to only wear one color. Secondly, as you can see in the video above, the band plays acoustic guitar, which means they definitely smoke pot. Probably, they would even let you smoke some of their pot. Thirdly, if you listen to their songs, they are definitely “deep thinkers,” so you could probably have some really great conversations, about how, like, society is just an illusion, and how we should tear down all prisons, and also, how great does, like, your hair, feel.

So, in summary, A Mountain Of “Fun” is probably the best band to hang out with, besides Amy Winehouse. I am even more convinced of this due to this excellent “Rework” (that’s British slang for “Remix”) of the world-famous Dr. Hook song “Clyde,” called “Bonnie and Clyde.” The song is a “Ballad,” which is a kind of song that tells a story, about a man named Clyde, who plays “electric bass,” which is a four-stringed guitar, and probably does some other things. It has a “stomping riff,” including a bass line that plays at least two different notes, or possibly the same note, at two different octaves (the Dr. Hook version is its self a cover of a JJ Cale song, though note that JJ Cale is not a doctor, and Dr. Hook is.)

It rules.

JJ Cale – Clyde

Dr. Hook – Clyde

A Mountain of One – Bonnie and Clyde

My dudes, this is what I feel like today:

Do you feel me on this one? We’ve all been there, right? Going through the DTs in Spain, and wishing you were banging some frizzy-haired Irish chick, and all you want is a pint of Harp, and maybe a fucking egg, so much that you start writing letters, to people you don’t really even know, and you’re obsessing so hard over your Harp, and your goddamn egg, that you keep writing it, over and over, in your sweat-stained, hand-written letter, where is my Harp, and why can’t I find an egg, just a single egg, to fry on the sidewalk. It is humid as fuck today and even walking around the goddamn house feels like jumping into a hot tub filled with sweat. It’s like ninety, ninety-five zillion degrees, and I am afraid I will die if I walk outside, of some kind of heat-related disease, such as burning to death. Also, there is no more beer. What a day! Is this what it’s like to go to prison? Probably. Even more, though, this is what it’s like to be Irish in Spain. You could fry an egg on the sidewalk!! If you could find one.

The fact is, most of you will never be as bad off as I am right now. I am on the front lines of the blogging phenomenon, and I make it my duty to sustain myself, even though it’s hot out and I can’t find an egg. Plus: guys: I am listening to some rad music right now: Lugnet.

I don’t really know what “lugnet” means, except that when you Google it you turn up a lot of websites about Legos, so I’m going to go ahead and assume, as I usually do, that these edits, released across two different twelve-inches, were put together in some kind of Swedish sweat lodge staffed by small yellow cylindrical-headed people whose paralyzed, cup-shaped hands painstakingly created a half-dozen super-sweet tracks out of songs that I don’t recognize. I heard their joint “Tralla” in the super-fuckin-great Ronny & Renzo cosmic disco mix, which sounds like a midnight hike through the jungle ending at a sweet early-morning beach party, and it is, you know, great.

And Lugnet are great! If I am in the mood, I can get pretty annoyed at the whole release-an-edit-under-your-own-name thing, partly because, you know, why not credit the dude who wrote the bulk of the song, but also because, you are not that cool, skinny Swedish/Brooklyn beardo, you are just raiding your acid-damaged uncle’s crates and chopping boring parts out of songs. But you know what? It’s too hot to be annoyed by things like that. I’m hitting you up with Lokomotiv, which is some kind of smog-addled-spirit-journey joint: enjoy this. And the pint of harp.

So in just another week Beards of a Feather are taking flight again to bring you beardo magic from Laszlo in the Mission. The night is FREE as usual and you should come by because we are stoked to be back on a Thursday night for this party! Jason and I will be supplying the music so come on by, grab a drink and we will have you dancing until the morning light. Ok well not until the morning light, but at least until the place closes. Join Beards of a Feather on Facebook for more info on upcoming parties! Details:

Beards of a Feather @ Laszlo, Thursday, July 30 9-2

And in order to prepare you for our party I’ve decided to share some tracks that are guaranteed to send your night spiraling off into another dimension of cosmic reality. First up is a new rework by The Revenge of Atmosfear’s jazzy disco classic “Dancing In Outer Space” off of the first release from Wolf Music Recordings out of the UK. The release features some of the best funky deep house I’ve heard in a while and introduces us to KRL, whose track “Recession Beat” is a heavy slo-mo mover that funks.  It also features a couple clean edits from Greymatter. But today I want you to hear this deep, deep pounder that warps a clip of the original into journey through an interstellar quilt of lights and music. It’s much more than a rework and I can’t wait to hear this on a real system.

Atmosfear – Dancing In Outer Space (The Revenge Rework 1)

Check the video for “Recession Beat” too, it’s a rad rework of some classic disco footage.

Next we have a track that is one of the biggest tracks off of DFA right now and of course it features one of our favorites, the impeccable Todd Terje. Seriously, how does this guy keep doing it? I don’t think he’s human. I think he’s some norse god incarnated in the form of a dance warrior of time sent to crush our inhibitions and bend our bodies into little dance puppets of his will. Enjoy this and find it and come next Thursday, we will make you dance.

Shit Robot – Simple Things (Work It Out) (Todd Terje Version)

You’re probably tired of me apologizing for my long periods without posting, but this time I’ll just hit you with some of the amazing tracks I’ve been compiling for the past few weeks.

Untracked is a UK-based label run by Steve Morris and Christopher Tubbs I have been following more and more closely for their slo mo house and disco edits.  I first happened upon the label when I picked up Hot Coins’ You Can’t Pray For Your Soul 12″, which I highly recommend for those of you who love pounding funky loops from the sub 100 galaxy.  Well it turns out Steve Morris and Tubbs operate an act of their own under the moniker Atlantic Conveyor and have been releasing material for a while now.   I bought their Fantastic Incidents EP, which actually came out in 2004 and was recently repressed this year.  But to be honest I couldn’t really tell the difference because these edits are superman fly.   Here’s the first track which is a complete burner.

Atlantic Conveyor – We Are

Now out of left-field, or more like Belgium circa 1988, comes and awesome groover that will set the night off like no other.  Technically this track is New Beat, which was weird slower industrial/cosmic version of dance that melded with acid house pretty much solely in Belgium in the late 80s.  Typified by  lots of weird samples and effects, this track is definitely the funkiest I picked up (I picked up some other awesome tracks, but I haven’t ripped them yet so stay tuned).  This track is by Erotic Dissidents and absolutely kills it.  They loop a slowed down sample of Yello’s “Bostich” (I think) and grind it out under the raddest instructive vocals I’ve ever heard until the funky breakdown at 4:25.   That’s the part that sends me off the deep end into a legitimate freakout.

Erotic Dissidents – Move Your Ass And Feel The Beat

Oh and check out the Yello video for “Bostich” just in case you havent seen it cuz it’s incredible.

So we’ve been heavy on the edits lately here, and I wanted to contribute one of a slightly different fashion. In his Red Bull Music Academy interview Prins Thomas mentioned that he likes edits with a little bit of dirt to them. An organic feeling where the goal is not necessarily to seamlessly reconstruct the song, but have some fun and play around with different cuts of the track. I couldn’t agree more, and it’s not just because I have a huge boner for PT. Sorry PT if you’re reading this (fingers crossed).

Anyways, edits and remixes from the late 70s by the likes of Larry Levan, Ron Hardy, Danny Krivit, etc. had some real character, probably because they were doing it all on tape. But this track reminds me of that. It’s chopped in ways that leave you searching for where that drop is coming in, which is great because one problem with newer edits is their tendency to become entirely predictable. I’m clearly overgeneralizing seeing as we post a ton of edits here and I love each and every one of them. But change is good! And sometimes it takes a look back to 1984 to jog us out of our focus on making things feel untouched. This track is Fredrik Ramel’s (another musically talented Swede? go figure) remix/edit of the 1975 original.

So without further ado, here is, from what I hear, a 39 Hotel classic that might as well be about that last whiskey coke I had last night.

Stretch – Why Did You Do It*

*Thanks to Future Times for turning me onto this with their Lifeguardians mix.

Choosing your ringtone, like choosing your wife, or your first murder victim, or the dude you would have sex with if you were gay (John Goodman) is one of the most important choices you can make. The fact is, so much of what people think about you is based on your ringtone: if you use the default ringtone, it means you’re old and out of touch with modern technology (maybe you are Amish, or my grandparents). If you choose the song “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent, it means you’re gay, or maybe fat. If your ringtone is a hit song from the 80s, such as “Touch Myself” by the Divynils, it means you’re annoying. If your phone plays a rap song when it rings, it probably means something complex about race, class and popular culture in America, or maybe that you think “Magic Stick” by 50 Cent says something pretty meaningful about your life.

For a long time I owned a Nokia phone originally manufactured out of ivory and whale fat by Alexander Graham Bell. It was not a ringtone-friendly phone. I answered that phone to a ringtone called “Sticks” that sounded like this:

DIT

DIT

DIT
DITDITDITDITDITDIT.

I liked “Sticks” because it made me feel like I was in the Nature Company store (RIP), and also because everyone I knew was really weirded out by it. “Change your ringtone, Max,” they’d say, “or we won’t hang out with you anymore.” I never changed my ringtone, and guess who’s laughing now? I certainly am, and probably none of them are, though I don’t know, because they stopped hanging out with me.

I now own an iPhone, given to me personally by Steve Jobs (engraved on the back it says: “Max, I love Disco Horror — Steve Jobs”). I’ve gone through a lot of ringtones on this phone–an exciting one called “Crickets,” that sounds, excitingly, like crickets; a snippet of the song “My President is Black,” by Young Jeezy, that helps remind me what color Young Jeezy’s president, and Lamborghini, are. But recently I’ve settled on one that really speaks to me: “You Make Loving Fun” by Trailmix.

I hope my Fleetwood Mac fandom is well-enough documented on the pages of this storied blog that my appreciation for a 4×4 edit/mix of the Rumors classic is not particularly surprising. The Mac, being hip in that impossible-to-tell-why way, have received their fair share of classic mixes–Arthur Baker’s mix of “Big Love” being, you know, like, the greatest use of pianos, in any song, I guess, ever?–but I think this Trailmix version is pretty easily one of the best. None of Lindsey’s rad guitar work is cut; it just soars over the churning beat & distorted bass while Stevie’s [NOTE: CHRISTINE] vocals echo in the distance; the slow-down chorus gets cut right the fuck out in favor of more of that pulsing rhythm & wonky guitar. Really the only problem with using this as my ringtone is that I just want to dance to it instead of answer the phone.

But I do know this: when my phone rings, everyone around me thinks I’m fuckin’ rad. “There,” they say, “is a dude who knows how to choose a ringtone.” I don’t want to suggest that you copy me, but know that if you make this your ringtone, you will probably have sex within twenty-four hours. Enjoy.