The Disco Appreciation Thread!!!

I've never been a liker of electro music, Moroder was probably as far as I went to saying I like it. What he did with Donna Summer is still to me some of his best work ever. After that it became too gimicky and everybody started doing it.

Moroder was great, it was certainly Disco though quite far from the American black-based soul music that issued from discotheques and that people were sweating to and snorting copious amounts of cocaine to.   Ironically disco began in gay clubs: the lights, glitter balls, loud clothing, all started with underground gay dance scenes.

I'm a big fan of that Automat album, quintessential electronic progrock.   My review - -

****   It seems to me the important thing about electronic music, the heart and drive of the form, is in how it sounds.   Sure the compositions are crucial and thematic direction vital, but it's the depth of a recording, how it vibrates, hums, quavers and trembles, that makes the difference between common and outstanding.  It should penetrate you physically, reach down into your heart.   You should be immersed, enveloped.   Consumed.

And since Automat was a singular project led by one of Italy's best low-budget scorers, Claudio Gizzi ~ using Mario Maggi's never-actually-manufactured Memory Controlled Synthesizer built in 1977 ~ you know there's going to be a transmission worth receiving.   Nuanced chirps tug on monster title cut 'automat', taken up by the alloys of the MCS70 describing the cybernetic landscape and pulling us through a long flight over alien murals of unknown colors.   Present is Giorgio Moroder, Goblin, and other suspects but as is often the case with a one-off, Automat is more satisfying than any of its influences, more pure of purpose.   Better.

Granted the twenty-minute title resides within the dance-beat tempo and reflects ZYX's Italodisco of the early 80s, but it's also a deliberate piece of movement in sound that develops with texture, atmosphere and mood. 'Droid' has high strangeness as a machine comes undone, 'ultraviolet' enters the Mutara Nebula with us in tow, and cybernetic 'mecadence' is industrial one moment, light & astral the next.

A record that is both terribly dated and a perfect starter for the Electronic Prog virgin, Automat is well worth investigating for anyone quietly curious about, or not normally drawn to, the electronic subgenre.





Edited by Atavachron - January 04 2018 at 17:35

This 1984 song, from the under-appreciated The Blue Nile, which I have loved from the start, has a funky, dicso-like groove, no? I especially like the vocals. I hope you dig it, Logan:
The Blue Nile - Tinseltown in the Rain

This remake (disco) extended version by Uptown of the Rare Earth song I'm Losing You, was theee song on the dance floor back in the 80's. I vividly remember when this song came on with the siren, the fog machine started the lights went nuts and everybody got on the dance floor. Normally this was the last song of the night, or early Sun morn :) , and it was great!!

And finally one of my favorite funk/R&B bands who also did the disco thing in the late 70's....The Bar-Kays with Move Your Boogie Body....The funk bands did not have too much issue with the transition to disco sound, they already had the horns and percussion, add in the synth sounds, simple 4/4 on the floor pattern and yea...It's good!

Catcher10 wrote: I'm a huge EW&F fan......they had their disco era that started with Boogie Wonderland off the album I Am, backing vocals by The Emotions. The songs you note from TtWotW are more R&B/Funk traditional in my mind. But yes that song is brilliant with an amazing message.

Thanks for the support and I agree with your categorization. I guess I prefer their earlier era--"That's the Way" just made me tear up... again! Stone-cold sober, too! I love it when music moves me like that.


Edited by Peter - January 04 2018 at 18:57

Peter wrote: Catcher10 wrote: I'm a huge EW&F fan......they had their disco era that started with Boogie Wonderland off the album I Am, backing vocals by The Emotions. The songs you note from TtWotW are more R&B/Funk traditional in my mind. But yes that song is brilliant with an amazing message. Thanks for the support and I agree with your categorization. I guess I prefer their earlier era--"That's the Way" just made me tear up... again! Stone-cold sober, too! I love it when music moves me like that.

I like a lot New Order. In the seventies it mostly funk, Funkadelic, Parliament, Sly and the Family stone. And yes, I have the Best of the KC and the Sunshine Band!

Logan wrote: ^^ Keishiro, so many people here focus on KC (King Crimson) that they forget about KC and the Sunshine Band. I sympathise with that elderly comment, but I like to think, even if I don't really, that age is just a state of mind to complement a saggy behind. ;) Certainly the older I get, the more nostalgic I feel. Peter, while outside of my usual musical purview, I enjoyed Tinseltown in the Rain, and it definitely has a disco groove. I like lots of funky music, by the way, and I'd say pretty much anything counts that has some discoesque relation. Herbie Hancock is one of my favourite artists, though particularly for his earlier Mwandishi trilogy, not that I'd count that as disco (Mwandishi, Crossings and Sextant), but he was solid up to and including 1975. His Death Wish OST is something of an underrated (as in not many ratings) gem in PA per my tastes.

I am very gratified that you took the time to listen, Logan. I first heard that track on late night FM back in 84, and it hooked me immediately (love the bass, impassioned vocals, the strings, and immaculate production & arrangement), so I bought their first, A Walk Across the Rooftops, most of which is more subdued than that track. The title track is quite progressive. When I read about the Blue Nile, I see they were highly regarded. Great singer Annie Lennox (a lot of her Diva album is good for dancing - Precious, Little Bird) did a lovely, stirring cover of their Downton Lights (from their second album, Hats) on her fine cover album Medusa, and it's as good as the already powerful original. I recommend both (not so much as disco flavoured, just as great, moving music).

Thanks also for the feedback on Herbie Hancock-- his funk stuff (Thrust, Headhunters, Manchild, Secrets, the one funk side on the double VSOP Live) led me to backtrack into his earlier work, and more straight jazz in general.
I will check out the Deathwish album. I did not know it. Thanks!
Good thread that I originally came to be flippant about, BTW--the title worked! And I AM listening to all that is posted here. None of if "sucks."


Edited by Peter - January 05 2018 at 03:36

No lovin' on the Bee Gees? RIP Robin and Maurice.