disco
Kieron Tyler
Jon Savage's The Secret Public How The LGBTQ+ Aesthetic Shaped Pop Culture 1955-1979 accompanies the titular author/historian/journalist’s book of almost the same name. The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979) and this 41-track double CD each track exactly what their titles say, drilling into what has often paralleled or underlain yet repeatedly influenced a constantly evolving mainstream.Little Richard is seen on the cover of the book and the compilation. Other figures crop up twice on the CD set: British producer and songwriter Joe Meek (with Joe Meek Read more ...
joe.muggs
This album has a lot to live up to. Its predecessor Future Nostalgia came along just as the Covid crisis was properly kicking into gear, and it became, in its way, era defining. As we said at the time, it was “the sound of a musician finding their own voice and revelling in it”: Lipa hitting a groove as a very charming avatar of disco/house glitterball vibes, just at the point we most needed them in our lives. Though she was no obscurity before, it catapulted her into the megastar firmament, with its singles achieving streams in the billions, and its status as a classic Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A few records changed music. One such was “The Love I Lost (Part 1)” by Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes. Issued as a single by the Philadelphia International label in August 1973, its release introduced what would become a major characteristic of disco music. This was the first time a particular groove was heard; the percussive use of the drum kit’s cymbals with an emphasis on the hi-hat.The inventor of this soon-to-be ubiquitous signifier was Earl Young, a studio-based drummer who since around Autumn 1971 was regularly booked by Philadelphia International producers and songwriters Kenny Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Back in 1979, Koko operated as The Music Machine. As such, the Camden Town venue lent its name to the film Music Machine, marketed as the British equivalent of Saturday Night Fever. Buying into this vision of the North London setting as a hot-bed of dance-floor action required a suspension of belief: at the time, the then-grubby Music Machine’s staple bookings were metal, punk, post-punk and the emerging Two-Tone bands. This was no disco.Flash forward to 2024, and the New York-based Say She She are headlining the recently refurbished Koko. With their roots in late Sixties soul, mid-Seventies Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A decade ago Canadian duo Chromeo had their biggest success with the single “Jealous (I Ain’t With It)” and its parent album, White Women. However, it didn’t presage a move into the mainstream.For over 20 years, Chromeo’s wry-sexy, wordy electro-funk has been more hipster than populist. Their magnificent 2009 appearance, endorsing handwashing, on eye-boggling kids TV programme Yo Gabba Gabba sums up their playful ethos (check YouTube!). Then again, the same could said of their more recent COVID-era Quarantine Casanova EP. They were into all that Random Access Memories schtick before Daft Punk Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In the Light of Time - UK Post-Rock and Leftfield Pop 1992-1998 was unexpected. Collecting 17 tracks, it brought a fresh perspective on a particular aspect of the UK’s independent-minded music. This ground-breaking, agenda-setting release was effectively the soundtrack to what has been written about post-rock.The groundswell dug into by In the Light of Time ran in parallel with shoegazing but what was heard – while as much about texture as shoegazing – came from a different perspective as it embraced elements of Krautrock and techno. This was music which impacted on Radiohead and sigur rós. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Exactly 40 years since Madonna’s first UK hit, “Holiday”, was skittering about the Top Five, she launches her global Celebration Tour at the O2.It is spectacle on the very grandest scale. In the latter half, following a video montage of tabloid controversies that pursued her career, and, to some extent, made it, a banner headline flashes “Age is a sin”. Madonna responds, “The most controversial thing I’ve ever done is to stick around.” The most successful female artist of all time is here to refute the sniping.The show is biographical concept album as dance theatre. It begins, as Madonna did Read more ...
joe.muggs
We Out Here Festival, now in its fifth year (and fourth edition, as 2020 was of course cancelled for Covid), has become an institution. Curated by jazz-centric veteran DJ Gilles Peterson and actualised by Noah Ball – best known for his role in creating Outlook Festival in Croatia which has served as UK bass music’s metting point in the sun since 2008 – it joins the dots culturally through generations of music both strange and hedonistic and attracts a faithful crowd that reflects that.The diversity of the crowd is the first thing you’ll notice about the festival. Though it has grown a lot Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The response to this album will depend almost entirely on whether the listener regards Norwegian electronic musician Hans-Peter Lindstrøm’s Seventies-synth-wizard-goes-disco thing as tasty noodle or just noodle.He’s tried on many hats over the years since the righteous hype around Oslo’s “cosmic disco” scene thrust him into the limelight a few years into this century, but Everyone Else is a Stranger sees him return to core territory.One gets the sense that Lindstrøm simply pootles along in his country retreat studio, tinkering, the vagaries of musical fashion an irrelevance, as he indulges in Read more ...
Cheri Amour
You could say the catalyst behind it all was Rocketman himself. During his Apple Music Show, celebrated CBE Elton John named Gabriels’ self-released EP, Love and Hate in a Different Time, one of the most seminal releases in the last ten years. At that time, little was known about the US-UK trio. When they eventually signed a major record deal a few months later, there wasn’t a single photograph of the three of them in the same room.Despite the inconspicuous start, the band has already racked up a performance at The Royal Albert Hall (for Letters Live). They supported Harry Styles in Texas and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“It all started with a June 7, 1976 article in New York magazine about Queens, New York working-class young adults who flocked to a local disco in platform shoes and outlandish clothes to perform organized dances. [Bee Gees manager] Stigwood read Tribal Rites of Saturday Night, and immediately bought the rights from the author, seminal rock critic Nik Cohn.”America’s Library of Congress entry for the copy of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack album it holds lays it out – the 1977 film was based on a magazine article which began “Over the past few months, much of my time has been spent in Read more ...
joe.muggs
There’s been a good deal of discussion on “the socials” about how much Janelle Monáe’s sexy image is a new thing or a big deal.Casual viewers, still stuck on the suit-wearing image with which she crashed into public consciousness in 2010, have acted shocked at her going almost or completely unclad in recent videos and shoots. In turn fans have pointed out the obvious – that her outré sense of fashion and costumery has manifested in many ways over the years, including in plenty of flesh-baring. However, while her looks may have pre-empted it, artistically Monáe really has made a Read more ...