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)

Tensnake, hanging out with Samuel L. Jackson

K, so I had this whole blog post planned here, where I was going to take the names of certain DJs and producers totally literally, like, what if Rub-n-Tug was actually, literally, a massage parlor handjob that was a DJ, and, like, what if Mudd was actually just mud, that, like, made music, or, you know if DJ Harvey was Jimmy Stewart’s invisible best rabbit friend. But it turns out it wasn’t all that funny and got kind of tired after the first couple jokes and besides it might be kind of offensive in the case of Air France, what with the plane that crashed last year, and how some people hate the French.

The real reason for this “joke” was that I was going to post some tracks by Tensnake, and then (you might be able to see where this is going), write about how what if all these tracks were produced by a group of ten snakes, and each one was operating a different element of the production, like one snake was on the faders, and another snake was hitting the drum machine, and this other snake was, like, singing, or something, and wouldn’t that be funny. And to be honest, I still stand by the idea that a singing snake is pretty funny (actually I’m kind of laughing at it right now, in my head. The snake is singing, guys! Singing!) But y’all: I know the drill. I get tired of my dumb jokes too, probably more even than you guys get tired, because I literally live with my own stupid jokes, whereas you guys are mostly just comment spammers and, for some reason, British people.

Plus, if all these tracks were actually produced by ten snakes, they probably wouldn’t name themselves Tensnake, because then their secret would be obvious, and no one would listen to them, because, you know, snakes. They would probably call themselves something like, “DJ Tom” or “Tables and Chairs,” or something more traditionally stupid and boring. Possibly “DJ Frederick Robot.”

Anyway: we already posted some Tensnake for you earlier this year—the delightful title track from the “In the End (I Want to Cry)” twelve-inch—but because I’ve been on a kick with this dude (or, possibly, these snakes), I wanted to post a couple more tracks. “Holding Back (My Love),” a gorgeous, shimmering late-night/early-morning bit of wobbly house, is from the “In the End” 12; “Battlehymn for the Children (Tensnake Dub Remix),” a glorious disco-ball explosion, is a remix of everyone’s second-favorite midwestern goths the Faint (the first-favorite, obviously, is Insane Clown Posse); “Congolal,” which sounds like the score to the best 80s action-comedy never made, is from the internet somewhere. I don’t know anyone besides Aeroplane doing the pop-house-sheen as well as Tensnake right now, so get “on the snake” before you look stupid for being late to the game.

Tensnake – Holding Back (My Love)
The Faint – Battle Hymn for Children (Tensnake Remix)
Tensnake – Congolal

Lindstrøm, circa yesterday

Do you you remember the first time you heard “I Feel Space,” and thought, “Gee, wouldn’t it be great if, instead of just referencing Moroder in a way some terrible critic will eventually describe as ‘cheeky,’ Lindstrøm would just straight-up make a Moroder album, but, like, the twenty-first century version?”

Ha! How young you were: because what you really meant was: “I wish Lindstrøm would make album after album of 10-minute-plus space-prog-disco jams influenced by a variety of Germans from the 1970s, and Vangelis.” And he granted that wish, because he heard you, inside his space igloo orbiting Oslo, where he entertains guests and uses marijuana freely, by making such albums as Lindstrøm and Pris Thomas and Where You Go I Go Too and Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas II, which is the second album he made with Prins Thomas, a frequent guest of the Oslo-orbiting space igloo.

And yet, if you did, in fact, say, “Where, and when, will I be able to hear Lindstrøm do Giorgio, instead of Vangelis, or Jan Hammer, or fucking Cluster?” you can be forgiven, because your question is answered: you can hear it in the comfort of your own home, on January 18, because he is releasing an album called Real Life Is No Cool with Christabelle, who, God knows why, used to be called Solale, and is probably actually Prins Thomas.

(You’ll notice that I’ve made the unbelievably sexist assumption that this is Lindstrøm’s album more than it is Christabelle’s. This is partly because I don’t know anything about Christabelle, and also because I am confused by my feelings for Lindstrøm in an exciting way, and how can I be sexist, if I am gay, or at least bi-curious?)

Now, I can already hear your disco-nerd boners sucking blood from your pot bellies as you get ready to yell at me: “This isn’t Moroder! This doesn’t sound anything like Moroder! Your blog is terrible!” All of which is true. I mean: it does sound like Moroder, in the same way that WYGIGT sounded like Vangelis, which means, sort of, in fits and starts, here and there. But the Moroder comparison is the way in to the record, for me; it’s how to start listening to it and thinking about it. Because, let’s be honest, you don’t put your name on a synth disco album with a female singer without paying tithes to Moroder and Donna Summer. Lindstrøm is doing his own thing here the way he’s always done his own thing, which is to take his favorite records (or what I assume are his favorite records) and reimagine them: what would this sound like if it were released in 2009? And also, if I made it sound like we just drank a lot of cough syrup in the studio?

As you can guess, the whole thing is fucking ridiculous. Every day I have a new favorite track; the missteps are few and far between. “Lovesick” sounds a little bit like that N.E.R.D. song “Lapdance” (LOL, obviously), but is mostly its own stuttering, stomping beast; “High and Low” is a radar-pinging slow jam with a smoking guitar solo; “Baby Can’t Stop” sounds like the funnest night out, ever. Truth is, I might like it more even than all those blunted synth jam sessions, and that’s saying a lot—I mean, the real truth is, there are a couple tracks on here as good as “I Feel Space”—and that says everything.

Lindstrøm & Christabelle – Lovesick

DFA Records has been on a crazy awesome rampage of releasing outstanding 12″ singles these past few years, as Max confusingly proved just a few days ago with that excellent new Still Going jam. A ridiculous proportion of my favorite recent tracks have been released by or affiliated with the label- Tiedye’s remix of DJ Kaos, the Holy Ghost single/Classixx remix, Walter Jones, Altair Noveau, Rub-N-Tug’s remix of Capracara, tons more. Their hit-to-miss ratio is getting better with each new release, so I was a little worried when I heard that they were putting out a remix bundle for LCD Soundystem‘s 2006 album and ode-to-Nikes ’45:33′. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the album/loooong-ass-song, or even LCD Soundsystem for that matter- quite the contrary. I just always wonder why it takes 3 or more years to gather up a release of any kind, especially since parts of the album were already revisited on 2007′s ‘Sound of Silver’ and I DUNO IT’S BEEN THREE YEARS GUYS.

They at least gathered up a pretty impressive crew of remixers, including Prins Thomas and Prince Language but sadly not, y’know, Prince. Out of the eight (!) total remixes of the album/track provided on the release, Padded Cell‘s ecstatic remix deserves top honors in my opinion (The mp3s had been mislabeled btw, and apparently I was digging this Padded Cell mix all along lol, way more than the Theo Parrish mix). There’s nothing not to love about these eight minutes of wigged out modern italo complete with James Murphy’s spacey ramblings, jammy bongos and a lovably-appropriate hook; I’m not sure it was worth years of waiting and hyping but I am sure you’ll have a nice little voyage regardless.

LCD Soundsystem – 45:33 (Padded Cell Remix)

I am puzzled: what is a “Spaghetti Circus”? Is it a “gay thing”? Is it the name of an “underrated” late-70s Italian disco DJ? Is it “drug slang”? Is it a super-exclusive party that James Murphy throws on alternate Wednesdays in Bushwick? Is it just “nonsense”? Guys: how can I listen to this song if I have no clue what it means? For example, what if I put it on a mixtape for one of my best bros and it turns out to mean that I want to do him, in the butt (there is a dude singing on this song, so it is probably about gay “sex”).

The fact is, a lot of nu-disco acts have names that are really difficult to understand. It used to be that DFA would put out a song, and you’d know exactly what it meant: “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House” is a “fanfic” song about James Murphy illing with Daft Punk, in his garage. “Losing My Edge” is about the time James Murphy lost his edge. But then the label went into its “Revolver” period, and now nothing makes sense—what is “The Sounds of Silver”? James Murphy: silver doesn’t have a sound. Now they have a band called “Shit Robot,” which is a curse, and this band, “Shit Robot,” have a song called, “Simple Things (Work It Out),” which is just a bunch of words, like, in a row. More like “Complicated Song Titles (Work Them Out),” am I right??

For this reason, I recommend you never download this song or listen to it. Even if you “get” the title. Sure, it is a dance song with pianos, which is basically the best kind of dance song, and probably babes will ask to dance with you if you play it. But what if they’re only asking you to dance because they think you’ll serve them spaghetti in some kind of, like, circus setting? Socializing is hard.