Tuesday, July 8, 2008  12:02 am 

R.I.P. Hedonizm Records

It is with a sad heart that we bid farewell to Hedonizm Records, Brighton’s premier dance specialists, who finally closed their doors on the 29th of June after years purveying vinyl nerds, including at least one of your trusty 20JFG types, with unhealthy doses of mindblowing music. Another nail in the coffin of this town’s scene, I guess they’ll open a Starbucks or Tesco Express in the site this wonderful shop used to occupy, I surely hope that if they do, it will be haunted by all kinds of Acid House poltergeists and wailing disco diva revenants. Now that’d be a fitting vengeance.

Anyhow, many tunes we have been posting here were first heard in Hedonizm’s turntables. Heading down there on a Saturday morning and getting all excited over those black slabs of vinyl which most excellent Matt Pond handed from over the counter had become a bit of a ritual, one that sadly will be no more. Here you have a couple of tunes from the last two releases I bought there, and a bonus from some time ago.

Before I leave you in the hands of this pretty music, I would like to ask you to do something: if you love anything we post, do buy it. And check first in your independent local record store, it might be more expensive than shopping online but, at least, that is a price I am (was) happy to pay.

God, I’m sounding like the cartoon version of Mr. T: recycle kids, and don’t do drugs. Bring it on.

Brighton-based Soft Rocks’ edits are the best I’ve heard of late, like that wondrous Mr. Terje they seem to come up with the goods every time. Of course, their emphasis on filling sides up with oddball psyche trips, drum freaking out and awesome tributes to the source, Africa, is a trick sure to earn a few feathers on your cap in the hall of fame of thee 20jazzfunkgreats.

Anyway, their last release, Disco Power Play III is bristling with goodness, fall in love with the luxurious vibrations of ‘Black Magic’, which ebb lazy and sexy like the tongues of the green and frothy Atlantic sea, licking the bronze legs of a sleeping goddess as she lies in a hidden sandy beach of the West-African coast, something primal is awakened, these bassy, dreamy cadences make us think of Ozo’s Anambra and Earth-era Vangelis, starry skies whence a mystery silhouette enveloped in a beautiful shawl of luscious strings descends through a silver spiral staircase of keyboard steps, delivering a message that sends our astral selves spinning ecstatic across the vast corridors of narcotic disco heaven.

Soft Rocks- Black Magic

The last C.O.M.B.i. edits 12 is killer, this mystery Japanese wizard gets the party going like the old skool was N.O.W. on one side, and get down well nocturnal on the flip, which is what we are bringing you: a metronomic disco funk beast that slides menacing across streets of a deep blue which resemble, for a moment, colossal coralline reefs across whose ancient underwater surfaces flicker hallucinatory shadows, the echoes of a dramatic score to make all Chromatics fans lose their shit do spread like blood spilling from wounds inflicted with frantic strings that stab the soul of a beautiful ghost of unbearable loneliness and mad longing.

C.O.M.B.i.- It a Late

Jose Loves Manuel remix of Jose Manuel’s ‘Fascino di Altri Tempi’, included in the 12” of that same name (released by Black Pepper records) has all the right ingredients: trotting rhythms amongst which you can surely hear hooves clop clopping, it advances demurely like an old horse of gentle eyes, across dusty fields populated by colourful swirling butterflies, those twin melodies again. This is the sound of Babe Ruth’s ghost haunting the dancefloor of a Balearic discotheque after everyone is gone, the echoes of Rey de Copas fading away in the distance, that is a sight both sad and beautiful, one suitable to end today’s post.

Jose Manuel- Fascino di Altri Tempi (Jose Loves Manuel Remix)

labels >> C.O.M.B.I., Jose Manuel, Soft Rocks