disco

There is something about the sword and sorcery genre that fascinates the 20jazzfunkgreats. Not the lore, or the tropes. We find lengthy disquisitions about genealogy and arcana tiresome and generally clunky, and roll our eyes at clichés, lazy tropes and Manichaeism.

Yet we come back to it, for those moments that make our heart beat faster, broader, deeper.

The awareness of self trundling snowed-upon wildernesses inhabited by creatures that will eat you, and people who will decorate their dwellings with your bones.

How manna floods from the beyond into this reality, following uncanny thermodynamics.

The hallucination of the battlefield, like being lost in a forest of swords, to kill and maybe die knowing Valhalla lies beyond.

Just three manifestations of an unmediated relationship with the world whole – physical, animal, human, occult, spiritual – a escalation of its steepest cliffs, a dredging of its deepest pits, and a nourishing of its fertile fields with the thickest blood, red or otherwise.

This awe, freedom and mystery we find in Wreathes S/T album, its rhythms pummelling like the march of legions, its chanting a recounting of legendary sagas, or a shamanic foretelling of dreadful omen, its arpeggios coiling like cruel wyrms awakening from their petrous slumber, or pillars of smoke rising from pillars of stone.

We call it world building, the gift of gods, poets and giants.

Wreathes -The Reigns

Wreathes features Nate (Brave Mysteries), Troy Schafer (Rain Drinkers, Kinit Her) and Clay Ruby (Burial Hex, Horrid Red).  It is released in some truly special splatter vinyl via Pesanta Urfolk, go and get it.

Maybe S U R V I V E’s artwork has biased the visions that Omniverse rains upon us like switchblade-winged raven in the black streets of Argento city, for these visions are unremittingly astronomical. If above we communed with our tribe, at the windswept summit of a place of power, here we attempt to navigate a world in tatters after a psychic drive-by by lunar gangbangers.

Think of the general disarray produced by certain stellar arrangements in H.P. Lovecraft’s oeuvre, but taking place in the dance tent of a forthcoming summer festival – hooded silhouettes forever dancing outside your field of vision, crowd levitation, mass shadow of leathery wings spreading through the stroboscopic zoetrope, as the hierophant’s set reaches its delirious climax.

S U R V I V E – Omniverse

S U R V I V E are our Solar System’s finest hope. They are currently incarnated in Austin. Go and get their S/T album from the wonderful Mannequin.

Underground anthem alert (and a limited edition 45, no less). Supadrunk by K Maxx is the track, and I can attest quite simply that it’s smooth and also bangs very hard in the clubs. The track passes the elusive “girlfriend” test that all dance music producers should likely be aware of: that a track will only really stand a chance of having a lasting impact if someone else’s (honest/blunt or uninterested) girlfriend thinks its dope. If she is singing the hook all night after a long, sloppy, drunken night out, and then wakes up doing the same in the morning, you pretty much know that you’ve got a winner. Of course, the type of stuff that the girlfriend in question will be singing also depends on the circles that you run with, as it potentially could be the new Dido track (I realize that Dido hasn’t put anything out since 2008 or so, but the point here was to illustrate the subjectivity of the music listener, and also to show how out of touch I am with current pop music). In my case, the circles that I run with, don’t fuck with Dido (no disrepect to those that do, she may very well be the creme de la creme of pop).

Now K Maxx is not some candy pop concoction; he’s been putting out cuts since the early 90s, worked with a lot of heavy weights, and is deeply rooted in Boogie, Funk, Soul, R&B and Hip Hop. Add on the fact that the dude has got Prince-esque guitar chops and can annihilate a mic in any live setting…out of priniciple I’m backing this release 100%.

Get ‘em before they are gone and going for crazy money on ebay, direct from Sound Boutique… http://soundboutique.bigcartel.com/

Se plonger dans la torpeur.Magda Mayas - Foreign Grey (extrait)

A late post from us today. Many apologies to those expecting our usual midnight arrival. Today we visit the flip of the Lust for Youth / War split that we wrote about earlier this month.

War’s Somme, Maggio has been knocking around various blogs for a while but we’ll cover it anyway because we love AVANT!, because they let us post a downloadable copy and because it’s got that thunderously eerie juxtapositional thing we dig hard at 20JFG.

When we were living out our pastel nuclear nightmares at the dog end of the Cold War, Armageddon was forever portrayed as a hazy world of deafening, far off sounds and hideously distorted music. The theory being, we suppose, that pop was the vessel with which we defined our capitalistic utopias and the worst thing that could possibly happen is for the speakers to get blown out on our sweet Phillips tape player.

That ur-trauma seems to have permitted the bodies that make up War.  Somme, Maggio wallows in irradiated tape hiss and the distant thuds of something nightmarishly energetic hitting the world, over and over again. The simple melody repeats like a numbers station, an ever-present reminder of what we’ve lost; a counterpoint to the megaphone shouts that weave between these two extremes. Pretty horrific, pretty remorseless and definitely worth posting about, even if we’re late today.

War – Somme, Maggio

As we mentioned above, this is the flip to the LFY / War 7″ on AVANT!

…and now, sadly, something completely different:

We never quite understood Donna Summer’s allegedly homophobic awakening at the hands of Christianity (in fairness, she later denied it).  Before that though, she was involved in making some of the greatest records ever.  This is one of them and it pretty much changed my life:

Donna Summer – I Feel Love (Patrick Cowley Mega Mix)

RIP

On ouvre bien grand la bouche en le prononçant.Baauer - Harlem Shake

                          R.I.P.

Repeat, chérie, repeat.

pic: LastNightsParty Tellement bien, tellement bien, tellement bien.

On remercie tous Gunnar pour la découverte.Mix Mup - Transition

I’m having a hard time figuring out which of these two songs massively ripped off the other one’s, bass and synth patches and overall groove. But either way, dude: Melanie Griffith was hella hot in 1984!

Video: “Relax” – Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Video: “High Energy” – Evelyn Thomas

MP3: “High Energy (Club Mix)” – Evelyn Thomas

xx, BvL @luxxury BvL on FB

Il y a bien des jours où je préférerais me faire découper la voix en mille morceaux, plutôt que d'être astreint à la parole. Pandreas - Sirkel (Sag) Et que dire d'autre, vraiment. Oneohtrix Point Never - I Only Have Eyes for You

Our friends at Very Monkey just released some new headbands, so grab the new prints before they're gone! Free shipping Worldwide!

pic: LastNightsParty

Two posts in one today, to make up for a week long absence of illegally distributed music via our ragged looking blogspot page, both with circa 1983 London theme, one from me and another from Tom Thump, perhaps the first rare groove DJ I ever heard after first moving to San Francisco a long time ago. I made contact with him whilst searching for a mixtape of his that I used to play on repeat during my train ride into work around the turn of the millennium, he graciously dug into his archive and hooked me up, as well as agreeing to to grace us with a guest mix.  My contribution today is a one off dance cut by Antiguan expat Wendell 'Del' Richardson, better known as the guitarist in London based Afro Pop band Osibisa. Soul On Fire's hard instrumental is offset by Del's sugary soul vocal, there are two versions of the 12" out there, the Dutch released 'Disco Mix' which I have and am posting here, and a Larry Joseph mixed US release which I actually slightly prefer but unfortunately do not have (have it? get at me, or at least share a rip so I can add it to the post). I'm including the short DJ friendly 'Fire Beats' instrumental seeing as it got tacked onto the recording anyway: Del Richardson - Soul On Fire (Disco Mix) Del Richardson - Fire Beats (D.J Trix Mix)  From DJ Tom Thump: MAXIMUM JOY FROM A BUNCH OF JAZZ PUNKS. I know this is a bit different than most of the great music posted on Beat Electric, but, Rip, Rig & Panic hold a special place in my musical life, there really was no one like them. The 3 LPs have yet to be reissued (there has only been a CD Compilation, that is long out of print) and that is just ridiculous. Rip Rig + Panic were a post-punk band founded in 1981, who broke up in 1983. They were named after a 1965 jazz album by Roland Kirk. They were formed by Sean Oliver (bass), Mark Springer (piano, sax, vocals), Gareth Sager (guitar, sax, keyboards, vocals) and Bruce Smith (drums, percussion) (the latter two formerly of The Pop Group) with singer Neneh Cherry. Their other members included saxophonist Flash (David Wright), singer Andrea Oliver, trumpeter David De Fries and viola-player Sarah Sarhandi. The group strayed from more conventional post-punk, mixing avantgarde elements with jazz and led by Cherry's innovative pop/soul singing style. Their second album, I Am Cold, included a number of tracks featuring jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, who was Neneh Cherry's stepfather. They also appeared with Nico on a BBC radio session. The band notably made a guest appearance in an episode of the British sitcom The Young Ones performing their 1982 single "You're My Kind of Climate". Rip Rig + Panic became Float Up CP in 1985, and produced the album Kill Me in the Morning. The band dissolved shortly thereafter. Mark Springer has continued to record as a solo artist and has a number of CDs available. Sean Oliver died in 1990. Tom's Rip, Rig & Panic Megamix

Mrs. Blythe