Digging for gold

The 20JFg psycho-geologists stand on the spot in space and time that they have been allotted and behold the history of dance music as it surrounds them, glorious highs and abysmal lows, lovely fountain springs of joy over which birds of colourful plumage swirl free, arid taigas covered in snow where almost nothing moves, fractal beat configurations raising in the grey distance.

And then, places of particular interest where tectonic plaques collide, often fierce and raucous with the ensuing eruption of volcanoes (the most fertile of grounds!), other times in a surprisingly smooth way, like the pieces of an organic rubik cube sliding seamlessly into something that couldn’t have been any other way, if you think about it a posteriori. Either way, these are spots which bring us perhaps the most extraordinary gems. As we hope you are aware of, in this humble blog of yours we cultivate a taste for the hybrid and the mutant, for those things which are a bit difficult to pin down inside a particular school, genre or era, because it is in those outer frontiers of the well established where freakish accidents happens, this music.

It is the case that I have come by all these songs by chance, serendipitous coincidences and interesting places which I have left, often in the small hours under the stern gazes of the well-to-do citizenry, hoarding a treasure they couldn’t imagine, probably wouldn’t appreciate either, a couple of mental notes in my head, or scribblings on a piece of paper, things to look into, things to write about.

It is also the case that in spite of the haphazard way in which these gems have, as it were, fallen into my explorer’s pouch, in spite of their heterogeneity and variegated origin, they all sound surprisingly coherent when put together in the etheric spaces below, it might be because they were all recorded in the 80s, which as you also know is an era that we love, the rich sound and hysteric pre-post-modern pop attitude, or because they are all endowed with most excellent and uplifting female vocals, something that one rarely finds in dance music these days. Yes, it might be all these things, but it is also, in my opinion, that in their disregard for boundaries they sound fresh, excited and exciting, feet well grounded in the dancefloor but hands raised ecstatic in the air, and pulling crazy shapes. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Enjoy.

This post goes to Hugo, because he totally gets it. Go and check out the psyche disco mix that him, T.Keeler and Nomad recorded live at the Broken Hearts Club kraut-rock celebration, and the lovely folks at Allez Allez are hosting right now. Because that’s the way.

Tom Tom Club- On the Line Again

Brennan Green is a man well trusted in these parts, and it is through his edit that I eventually arrived at this Tom Tom Club nugget from the ‘Close to the Bone’ album (see, edits are good for something). What he did in it is  mostly lengthen the intro and outro looping up the chorus, and leaving the rest more or less untouched, which is a wise move as I’d be hard pressed of ways of improving the sexy & dislocated late nite funk vibe of the original. I hear a pack of stray cats were playing this in a back alley while Martin Scorsese shot After Hours.

Z-Factor- I am the DJ (Club Mix)

Z-Factor’s ‘Dance Party Album’ is credited as one of the seminal records that spawned the Chicago House sound so we know we are gonna like. It does definitely tick all the right boxes in 20JFG’s requisites for the hall of fame: a belting jacking beat, crunchy acid bassline, trademark 80s rap with some nonsense about being a DJ and anthemic girlie vocals (Blondie ain’t got shit on them!), just press play. Note the fade out into Fantasy at the end (bass!), yes, they also made that and you should definitely check it out, easy task as it was reissued by Cititrax a couple of months ago.

Freeez featuring John Rocca- I.O.U. 86 (Latin Rascals Club Mix)

Arthur Baker really did rock Nitefreq with his 1980 NYC set. Alas, we were outside smoking a cigarette when Alexis came out all excited saying that the man had played John Rocca, I don’t know if it was I.O.U. but I am sure I missed out. In any case, here you have Freeez’s Freestyle anthem as bongoed up by the Latin Rascals, everything in this song is absolute classic – particularly the epic arpeggiated breakdown, sitting exalted somewhere in between Kraftwerk, Ennio Morricone and good old school Madonna. Killer.

Jellybean Benitez- The Mexican (Short version)

I saw this in Hugo’s record bag the other day and I was like, woah check it out. Babe Ruth’s the Mexican is one of my favourite tunes ever, and if there was someone able to muck around with it, that must surely be Jellybean Benitez. Witness him turning the expansive ur-hip hop of the original into a percussion-fest that sounds like he brought a couple of Puerto Rican families into his studio and asked them to bang him into anything they could frantically, just so that some nerds could lose their shit way into the future. Good stuff, I tell you.

Second song featuring castanets in the post, we should do this more often.