Everyone who’s been exposed to it acknowledges that Ariel Pink and His Haunted Graffiti’s new album, ‘Before Today’ is one of the best things to come out this year so far. You know that 20jazzfunkgreats like to be contrary bitches, but in this case we have no other option than surrendering to join the shoal of mildly psychedelic mermaids as they skip through the kaleidoscopic coral reefs under the slurping waves of a cough syrup ocean.

We already raved about ‘Round and Round’, which will be rocking the best spring discotheques in lethargically intense styles- well, the rest is as good. No post-modern in-jokes or knowing recombination of references, nay, this is a man at the height of his instinctive alchemical pop powers on a mission of love and innocence. The track we leave with you today is perhaps the cutest of all, it sounds like an advert of the afterlife as broadcasted via Poltergeist’s unruly TV set. Let the ectoplasmic soul barrage begin, the world needs it.

Ariel Pink and his Haunted Graffiti- Fright Night (Nevermore)

Another cool thing about the blooming of a thousand weird labels out there is that bands have the space of experiment in different directions through a myriad outlets. Look at Blank Dogs, who have in previous releases marauded the shores of river Stix like murky ghost wave predators, and then tripped over each other in jangly anthemic delight.

In their latest EP, ‘Phrases’, out in Captured Tracks, they set the synthesisers to rejoice and deliver a collection of breezy springtime jams where warm harmonies glide free over tinny electropop rhythms. They close it with their most robotic tune yet, ‘End of Summer’, which sounds like one of the cassette experiments in NEU!72 as undertaken by Oppenheimer Analysis on a good hair day. One for those less keen on the electroclash side of the cold wave revival.

Blank Dogs- End of Summer

The good folks at Permanent Vacation never fail to make us happy. They are soon to put out Sally Shapiro’s ‘My Guilty Pleasures Remixes’ collection, where renegade disco stalwarts such as Lovelock or Bottin  give our adored snow fractal diva a dancefloor makeover.

We leave you today with Low Motion Disco’s remix, which ends the affair in a most epic manner. This is no cosmic workout or codeine stereo rocker. No, it is a total eclipse of the heart which sets Sally in a context of heart-throbbing drama, you can almost see her walking down the boulevards of Paris towards a fateful rendezvous, secret princess hailed by trumpets only we can hear while the crows bear witness indifferent from autumnal trees. And then the drums kick Bonnie and Clyde style to bring it all home. What happens next? 20jazzfunkgreats gasps, we will never know.

Sally Shapiro- Let it Show (Low Motion Disco Remix)

We very much enjoyed Smith & Mudd’s contribution to the wonderful Computer Incantations for Word Peace 2 comp, in 24/7 they deliver another piece of ecstatic balearic bliss that sounds of pink, orange and turquoise, feels like golden sand spilling between your fingers and, if you could sip it, would taste of smooth gazpacho drank from a clay bowl in the terrace of a small Mediterranean pueblo during one of those evenings when things grind down to a halt, and the sun-tanned peoples of the coast witness colours changing in a limpid sky while the friendly sea hums its gentle lullaby not far away, so that the white-washed houses can go to sleep in what, for a moment, feels like a perfect universe.

Smith & Mudd- 24/7

Its the height of lunar summer on LV-426, homeworld to the alien scourge that will tear through the chests of hundreds once colonisation begins – but this is a time before the slaughter, before Ripley sets down with her pulse rifle and her team of military meathead followers. A cooling breeze is coiling along the plains of the desert as the xenomorph party is in full swing, Malibu flows from the neck of the faux-80′s white bottle. The vicious creatures seem lethargic today, maybe its the pollen in the air, or maybe its the sounds unfurling from the speakers where Low Motion Disco are creating wormholes in space with each effortless synth ripple and pulsation:

Low Motion Disco – Frantic Low Moment

In future years to come when our ancestors rediscover balearic disco and compile it for reasons of nostalgia and collect-ability, Low Motion Disco will feature on all the essential playlists of the new guys in the know, highly regarded as the woozy sun gods of double-figure bpm “dance music” who were able to harness the powers of the solar sphere and re-imagine that power into shuffling atmospheric ambiance, like a certain Mr. Eno if he’d of had Jamaican descendants and been raised in a hut on a secluded area of Miami beach.

Swiss 33 disco pioneers, Low Motion Disco, are pushing things forward and have released a double 12″ of new single ‘Love Love Love’ by way of Eskimo (that’s 6 x Love, wow!). The actual original track is the sound of the Miami Vice cast touching down at LAX and having an impromptu disco in the arrivals lounge, getting all the sexy ladies to wildly girate and fling off their smart air stewardess uniforms while champagne froths from the overhead sprinklers. All this filmed in slow motion and transferred to black and white. Then Still Going build it up real slow, until suddenly by way of electric guitar solo your soaring through the molten stratosphere of an alien planet and the sound is boiling out from your ears. LSB coil out a strings and synths calypsoscopic theme tune to the resurrection of Studio 54 on a remote Caribbean cove. Soft Rocks show the track a good time in an underground NY sex bar.

Just to buck the 20JFG trend, we are going to share with you the excellent Aeroplane remix, because due to tastes and planetary alignments we dig it the most.

Low Motion Disco – Love Love Love (Aeroplane Remix)

Why? Well, for the pure reason that its hot and sultry like a coy Sorayama robogirl, coiling her titanium frame around the stars of Andromeda. Plus, with every hand-clap we edge ever closer to the confirmation of our theory that the meaning of life is actually just Disco.

Yet more proof of this undeniable fact comes from the stables of Permanent Vacation, with the release of 40 Thieves new 12″, the Hot Chocolate cover, ‘Don’t Turn It Off’ – which sounds like a live disco performance on a vast black perspex stage built on the Moon.

Its the b-side that we are hooked on, its throbbing and propulsive in all the correct and obliging places. The percussion searches the immediate cosmos for a bassline and eventually finds it off the shoulder of Orion, plays with it a little then gets caught like a rabbit in the headlights as the universe falls away to reveal a wall of subtle lasers that herald a pack of Shirow designed cyborg dolphins, wearing Casio branded SWAT team suits, that swim through space in exaggerated and compelling strokes through a bleeping landscape of red LED stars. see the dolphins:

40 Thieves – Theme from Nutrider

Love x

More things

Discoteca Oceano have kindly put us the Heaven & Earth mixtape which we prepared as a bit of a soundtrack for El Guincho’s gig last month. It is mostly about the Drums and the Heart, we hope you like it.

HEAVEN AND EARTH MIXTAPE

Tracklist:

1- Atlas Sound- A Ghost Story
2- No Age- Things I did When I was Dead
3- Sun City Girls- The Shining Path
4- Manu Dibango- Soul Makossa
5- Dinosaur L- Go Bang
6- Oorutaichi- Misen Gymnastics (extended version)
7- Daniel Wang- Like a Dream (I Can’t Stop Dreaming)
8- Group Inerane- Tenerte
9- Foot Village- Bones
10- Mi Ami- African Rhythms
11- Liquid Liquid- Bellhead
12- High Places- Golden (Brenmar Remix)
13- Teeth Mountain- Ghost Science
14- Black Dice- Manoman
15- Studio- West side
16- 20th Century Steel Band- Heaven and Earth

EPIC FAIL if you missed Chromatics last night: They were magick.

You still have time to get on the Italian train with Glass Candy on the 13th of May, it’s going to be awesome.

Get tickets in the usual shops, or HERE

If you can’t wait to enjoy some more disco/synth/boogie/cosmic/italo action get down to Heist on Sunday, where we shall be celebrating the second coming of Love Saves The Day. Sexy stuff.

Dave Liteyear and perhaps some more guests will be with us, getting down proper.

HEIST 8-1
FREE ENTRY
DRESS CODE- Dance

And then of course 13 Monsters returns bad-ass as usual next Saturday. Good good times.

(Thanks to Kathryn for the wonderful Chromatics and glitterball photos featured above)