Disco Horror

I have a Whole Foods down the street from me and on Saturdays I like to go free-sampling in typical poorgeoisie fashion.  I can usually get a good fill by making my way around the store, but when you’re baked on a Saturday morning and you haven’t eaten anything, free samples can’t always satiate your hunger.  Plus I’m a compulsive shopper so I usually end up with a few items in hand and when I’m checking out, the cute hipster girl working the Express counter asks if I brought my bags.  A flicker of guilt sparks in the back of my mind and begins to creep over me.  I didn’t bring my bags because I was stoned and wasn’t going to buy anything, but I AM eco-conscious TRUST ME.  Not like in the I-crap-in-my-backyard-to-fertilize-my-organic-garden-Berkeley-eco-conscious, but I ride my bike places and I recycle.  But now it’s decision time and I just bought orange juice, eggs, chips, salsa and some weird marinated cheese item that was a free-sample.  Admirably I refuse the paper bag, hoping on some level she will acknowledge my sacrifice for the planet and go out on a date with me.  But instead I end up carrying all this heavy shit I bought up the hill back to my house.

I guess that was a bit of a Sedaris-esque post, but I couldn’t really think of a lead-in for this record.  Peep “Bagwan Boogie” from The Soft Rocks EP off of the impeccable Blackdisco.  This is the second most recent release from the label and has some real winners.  More recent is Abel’s EP, but I think the Soft Rocks release really kills it.  Definitely worth the buy so seek it out if you dig the track.

Soft Rocks – Bagwan Boogie

Then another track for you that has been on repeat for me recently.  A change of pace to Abe Vigoda‘s melancholy noise rock.  The album Reviver from earlier this year is pretty fantastic in my opinion and “Wild Heart” in particular is great.

Abe Vigoda – Wild Heart

Soft Rocks has been tearing up recently. Actually, the Brighton-based group have been releasing funky music for a few years now. I have several of their records and while some are off the wall to the point that you probably wouldn’t play them unless you were DJing and odd art gallery, others are incredibly inventive dancefloor-friendly monsters. I put “Slow Down” on my last mix from Umut 2000 because it was an amazing storm of acoustic guitars that made you feel like you were caught in the center of a virtuoso flamenco guitarist pissing competition. Other tracks are much more mellow, see the hypnotic african gospel of “Black Magic” and “Is This The Best Step For Father Africa” from Disco Power Play III, actually just see that whole release because it’s rad. OR just check out some of their remixes of late for MGMT’s “Of Moons, Birds & Monsters” or their remix collaboration with Kathy Diamond for Low Motion Disco’s “Love Love Love”, that for me was overshadowed unjustly by the Aeroplane remix that came out at the same time.

Their tracks are really all over the place so maybe it’s no surprise that their new release heads in an entirely different direction. I can’t really place where this lies genrewise but who cares, I think it’s a beautiful track and the piano has been run through so many chorus, reverb, flanger and delay effects that it’s ghostly repetition propels the whirring of percussion guitars and synthesizers that surround it to create the best nighttime, top-down, driving-in-your-convertible-on-an-LA-summer-night-contemplating-life-and-love music I’ve heard in a while. Enjoy this masterpiece and check out the rest of the release, it’s called Essra.

Soft Rocks – Essra (Instrumental)