Ah, cosmic disco. We’re not supposed to call it that anymore as the DJs and producers who popularised it half a decade ago don’t like it - but that’s what this is. To cut a long story short, a bunch of Norwegians rediscovered a sound that had been popular in Italy in the early Eighties, disco’s electro-funk groove but extended and spaced out, somewhere between Giorgio Moroder and a big fat spliff. The main names among these Scandinavians were Todd Terje, Prins Thomas and Hans-Peter Lindstrøm. The latter, a quiet bearded studio-bound fellow, can claim to be the premier producer of the three as anyone who has heard the sprawling retro-synth loveliness of his 2008 album Where You Go I Go Too will attest.
He’s tried a variety of other flavours in recent years, perhaps trying to evade, as all artists must, the sound with which he’s primarily associated. He made an Eighties-flavoured straight pop-disco album with the singer Christabelle a couple of years back and earlier this year reappeared with the crunchier, more experimental Six Cups of Rebel, but with Smalhans he’s returned to the cuddly, layered grooves for which he’s best loved.
The album provides a small feast of six tracks, mostly about five minutes long, that each build and bubble as if the distilled essence of Jan Hammer, Vangelis and Jean-Michael Jarre had been recalibrated for a 2012 nightclub at six a.m., ploddy but sweetly more-ish. It’s so easy-going, it would be just as welcome as an after-hours soundtrack, grooving along as the sofa-sprawl begins. In fact, even completely disconnected from the clubbing experience Lindstrøm hits the button since this will inject rolling good cheer into any old evening. He makes pleasing, pulsing instrumental electronica that doesn’t make stern aesthetic demands of his listeners or, at the other end of the scale, treat them like five year-olds, music that could be listened to on a loop for some long time before it grew tiresome.
Listen to "Rà-àkõ-st"
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