Dance into the past.
This compilation brings together a bunch of tracks recorded from 1974 • 1986 and claims to span “Post Punk, Electro and Leftfield Disco Classics” from that period; however the vast seem to consist mainly of funk based cheesy electro with shouty female vocals sporting Kate Nash-esque accents and /or an overabundance of brass instrumentation. I couldn’t truthfully tell you if any of these tracks were disco classics of the time because I was born in ’74 and a little too young to be heading to the kind of discos that would have played tunes like this; the only discos I was allowed to go to were in the school hall and they only played Wham! and Black Lace as far as I can remember.
The tracks in the collection are certainly of their time; take the new romantic twang of Shriekback with the excellently titled ‘My Spine Is In The Bassline’; the Kraftwerk-esque Konk and ‘Your Life’ with its unfeasibly cheesy low tenor vocals and brass section which is so eighties it hurts; Isotope have a funk based melody which sounds like the incidental music from a Dirty Harry movie mixed with the theme from Starsky and Hutch. One of the best tracks is by James White and the Blacks who have an interesting Post Punk entry which sounds eerily like The Clash do experimental Jazz, it’s pretty danceable and fun.
This isn’t the sort of album I would usually go for, having a huge aversion to electro in all its guises, however, even I grew to appreciate the retro charm on display here. Some of these tracks are actually really good and the ones that aren’t are just so cheesy they go beyond bad and into some kind of kitsch zone where they become acceptable again. All in all, this is a perfect party record • you might not remember any of these tunes but they sum up the era so perfectly that it’s like you’re there living it for yourself, just stick it on and dance stupidly with your mates.