Twenty Turbans and a See-Thru Suit.

2008-09-29T00:58:00.000-07:00

A slew of excellent records have landed in the last week or so. Rather than start blathering on about why each is so fantastic, I'm just going to get straight into it today. More important to get the music up, me thinks; that and the fact I'm plain lazy.

Swedish DJ/Producer, Kool DJ Dust released his debut album, The Disco Opera, a couple of weeks ago on the increasingly impressive Service label, coming out of, you guessed it, Sweden. Normally, we'd leave it alone after this long, safe in the knowledge a record as good as this will be jumped on by bloggers months before its release and given the love and respect it deserves. But no, the response, to date, has been muted to say the least, and we just can't let it go - I'm actually offended. It's a great record and has been on heavy ipod rotation round here for well over a fortnight. What's wrong with people. Sheeeeeet!

The Disco Opera is to disco what DJ Shadow's Entroducing is to hip hop. OK, it's nowhere near that monumental, sheeeeeet (sorry), but it's a fair indication of the records intended scope and attention to detail. There's a fanatical love and encyclopedic knowledge of disco at its heart, which makes us weak at the knees; so nuanced and sonically authentic, you'll be forgiven for thinking you've woken up in 1979.

A crate digger extraordinaire, Dust has crafted 19 tracks of expertly sampled, chopped and blended disco rarities and flat-out obscurities that will have you dancin', while your inner geek obsesses over the tracks he's plundered. The result: a sublime slice of spacey italo and disco funk - emphasis on the spacey - with knowing nods, nuances and cosmic scintillations, worthy of a place at the top table of today's disco edits scene.

If you had to pick one member of the Nordic disco fraternity to sit him next to at this hypothetical banquet in the sky, it'd be Rune Lindbaek. We reckon they'd have loads of stuff to chat about, you can just tell; have a listen.

I realise this probably counts as blathering, but, whatever. Sheeeeeet!

Kool DJ Dust - The Magic Record

Kool DJ Dust - Mighty Mighty

Kool DJ Dust - Knowledge to Knowledge

More to come shortly. Loads more in fact and some other writers to help out and give their ten pennies worth of insight. So hang tight.

2008-09-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

Been over a week; wondered where we were? No! Well you should you ingrates because we're busting with musical treats for you.

September is a great time of year for music. Loads of new releases hit the shelves as labels start unleashing their post-summer offerings, and this year's crop is particularly exciting.

Californian cosmic disco is not a term you hear too often, is it? San Francisco producer Sam Grawe - aka Hatchback - should change that, though, with his debut album, Colors of the Sun. Released on the ever brilliant Lo Recordings - home of quality electronic disco - it's a hugely accomplished debut and regardless of genre, one of the years highlights: stunning stuff.

The California distinction is important here. Comparisons to heavyweight Scandinavian contemporaries: Lindstrom, Prins Thomas and Studio, etc., should be saved, at least until giving the man his dues. Subverting preconceptions, Colors of the Sun isn't the usual exercise in minimalism and restraint - a requisite for a lot of Nordic "Nu-Disco". There's the obligatory meandering Vangelis-esque synthscape, Horizon, and some Scando-epics in there too, but the sluggish inertia that leaves you wondering what the hell you got yourself into sometimes, is wholly absent, replaced with a warmer, more melodious and optimistic disco sound.

Lindstrom et al's slow burn, chuggin' cosmic carpentry is wonderful, but, as autumn abruptly replaces summer, disco loving inhabitants of this fair isle look to music for sonic escapism, and Hatchback's sunny disposition delivers in spades. The contrast between record and the Tupperware-gray British weather couldn't be more marked.

To these ears, Grawe is of the original Baledelli school of cosmic - Drawing on early Kraut electronics, New Wave, Italo, slo-mo disco and afro-percussion. Listen under a sun lamp sans pants for best results.

This is too damn sexy for tan lines.

Hatchback - Jetlag

Hatchback - Comets

Hatchback - Nesso

2008-09-05T02:23:00.000-07:00

Disconaut du jour, Jacques Renault takes the helm of the starship RVNG for the sixth in their genre defining RVNG OF THE NERDS edit series; beaming laser cut grooves through cosmic prisms and spacey funk, Renault's captaincy taps both celestial and terrestrial disco and we just can't stop listening to the results.

Sticking our necks out here, but we weren't crazy about Wade Nichols' - aka Todd Terje's - RVNG OF THE NERDS Vol 5. It got a lot of blog love, which is fair enough, the Norwegian edit-meister turned in an impressive collection of swampy psych-rock tracks. Nice, not too obscure so no one knew what the originals were, but peripheral enough to keep them interesting - perfect re-edit material right?. Well yeah, but coming after series highlight, Lovefingers' Vol 4, this fifth offering just felt a little flat in comparison.

Fear not, because Mr Renault flat out kills it with Volume No 6. His rising status, both at home in New York and abroad, as a leading light in the world of disco is confirmed further with this sublime example of musical knowledge, educated taste and that rare insight required to know exactly what will make a great edit.

Enough! You get it, we're fans. Get your lugs around this cosmic bouncer, it sounds like the soundtrack to the alien casino in Battlestar Galactica, brilliant. Boing!

Jacques Renault - bad skinned

Flick ze Switch!

2008-09-01T13:10:00.000-07:00

Fujiya Miyagi return with the release of their third album, Lightbulbs. Yay!

With the permanent addition of Lee Adams on drums, the newly percussive four piece continue the avant-kraut-pop of acclaimed sophomore, Transparent Things, and don't disappoint.

The relentless motorik beats, David Best's surreal polysyllabic wordplay and Damo Suzuki-esque vocals, produce a vividly authentic Teutonic sound. Pterodactyls and Pussyfooting evoke the metronomic funk of Can's 1973 classic, Ege Bamyasi, while awesome Neu inspired lead single, Knickerbocker, revels in hypnotic Klaus Dinger-style repetition. Their best work to date? Yup!

The obligatory "Neo-Disco" chugger, Sore Thumb, sounds like something you'd expect from their last label, Tirk Records - they're now on Full Time Hobby -; it's really good, of course, just not where this album's gold lies. The same can be said for the punk-funk of Uh: great track, but there is much better to be had.

Lightbulbs' Krautrock is a genuine homage. Fujiya Miyagi are the real deal. In the same way Stereolab and Broadcast are the real deal. Hugely important bands who mine the same Germanic retrofuturist seam, and with whom Fujiya Miyagi should be compared in the light of this brlliant record.

Fujiya Miyagi - Pussyfooting

Fujiya Miyagi - Pterodactyls

Fujiya Miyagi - knickerbocker

Up to Rot and a Rant.

2008-08-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

We're not entirely sure what the aim of Twenty Turbans is at the moment. Fundamentally, it's to explore the music we love and share our new discoveries while also learning from you the lovely readers and, if we're lucky, from labels, artists, promoters and anyone else who might like to steer us in the direction of cool music, film, fashion and assorted cultural ephemera.

Not, you understand, that we're presumptuous enough to think we have any readers yet (Hi Ange!). But we live in hope.

Oh God! I'm going to stop using this ridiculous royal 'we' for a second and come clean. I'm sat here scouting around some of my favourite blogs and I'm panicking. I think my four measly posts mirror their posts too closely (subject, not editorial). I've had a blog five minutes and I already feel like I can't do it right because I share the same musical tastes as other people in the world. How ridiculous is that? The whole point is, it's self-indulgent. I can do what the hell I like and you can't even see me - your bad luck by the way, cos I'm gorgeous. A reet hunk.

Wholly unaccountable (sort of), this is exactly what has got the paid up hacks in such sphincter puckered strops. We sit about coffee shops waxing idiotically about fixies, music, vintage sneakers and other hipster nonsense, with little regard for the precious journalistic practice their parents paid thousands for. And, as is so often the case, blogs can offer more unrestrained, insightful and entertaining comment too. Read 20 Jazz Funk Greats if you don't believe me.

That's better.

Just quickly, to say thanks for sitting through the rant: the new White Light Circus single, Break The Circuit, is out, and it's good. Really good. In fact, I'm cock-a-bloody-hoop. It's ace.

I love everything DC Recordings release - easily my favourite record label -, all their artwork is done by the incredible La Boca 'design circus', which is worth the cover price alone and this little ditty is no exception. Like The Emperor Machine, White Light Circus makes sinister H.P Lovecraft-style cosmic-horror disco: very eerie and very funky.

The B-side, Up to Rot, is what you're getting here. It's a bug-eyed, Giorgio Moroder meets John Carpenter, coked-up panic attack. More twitchy and claustrophobic than the pop and lock, proto-hip hop of Break The Circuit, it has that vintage soundtrack aesthetic, filled with the signature analogue synths and cosmic scintillations we associate with this guy. Dystopian dance music for robots taking over planet earth. Boing! Love it.

Buy it here.

White Light Circus - Up to Rot

Expect Acid Reign.

2008-08-28T02:38:00.000-07:00

It never rains, but it pours. After yesterday's Richard Norris themed gush, he and Erol Alkan are back on our music radar with the release of Ark 1, a collection of the pairs highly sought after Beyond the Wizards Sleeve edits, taken from the four very limited 12"s released over the last three years.

Suffice to say this is seriously heavy-duty psyche-kraut-freakbeatery right here. The album is a coup de grâce to the re-edit detractors and their accusations of a lack of originality - we just don't get it either. Norris and Alkan are virtuosos who, with their encyclopedic knowledge of music and genre cross-pollination, prove re-edits, in the right hands, make for sublime musical experiences far exceeding the sum of their parts.

Ark 1 is a great way to get your mitts on tracks you may have missed the first time around, but more importantly, if this is your first Beyond the Wizards Sleeve trip, sit back, clear your mind, and prepare to have your third eye squeegeed and your chakras shook. It's potent stuff.

Buy it here.

Beyond the Wizards Sleeve - Don't cry girl

Beyond the Wizards Sleeve - Path through the forest

Beyond the Wizards Sleeve - Bubble Burst

It's a Freakout!

2008-08-27T06:24:00.000-07:00

Despite being released a few months ago, nothing much has been said about Richard Norris' awesome solo EP, The Time & Space Machine Volume 1, out there in blogland.

An ex-member of The Grid and one half of psyche-kraut edit gurus Beyond the Wizards Sleeve, Norris deserves some attention. So, in an attempt to remedy this, here's a post full of hyperbole and glittering adjectives presented as a token of our love for the man and his music.

Personally this record still has me really excited. It's the kind of music that makes you feel 10-feet tall; makes you bound instead of walk down the street.

Its sound is not far from his work with Erol Alkan as BTWS. Eight psyched-out, neck-snapping groovers that will give the trainspotters brain-strain trying to figure out where that organ, riff, drum break or vocal comes from - we know we did.

Spliced and diced from all over, Mr Norris - like we Turbans - clearly loves huge propulsive percussion and knows exactly where to find it. Driving Kraut/motorik, heavy funk breaks and epic prog drums are employed to devastating effect. Bring in the fuzzed-out guitars, big chubby-chunk baselines, some suitably lysergic lyrics and you've got yourself a freak-out, baby.

Zeitghost sounds like an early Krautrock jam. The post-psychedelic experimental stuff, when bands first started tinkering with electronics in basements in Cologne, while still keeping things funky. Listen out for The Flying Lizards' Money sample too - at least that's what it sounds like to us. Lesson One on the other hand, hits you like a double-dipped blotter of Haight-Ashbury acid-rock. There isn't a great deal to say here, those drums speak for themselves. Unbelievable.

A quick check of the Phonica website tells us it's still in stock, so go buy it immediately.

The Time & Space Machine - Zeitghost

The Time & Space Machine - Lesson One

Fan Death.

2008-08-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm going to start nice and easy here. Fan Death are a shoo-in for one of the year's most exciting and, judging by these two tracks, talented disco outfits. The girl duo craft wonderful sultry synth-laden disco with added pop zest reminiscent of Glass Candy. While it is a comparison leveled at far too many bands these days, here we're sure you'll agree, it is justified. Mining the same late 70s - early 80s vein of influence as Johnny Jewel and his contemporaries on the Italians Do It Better label, it's a wonder Mike Simonetti hasn't snapped them up already. It will be interesting to see who does because right now they don't appear to have a label.

Veronica's Veil is a statement of purpose: lascivious female vocal, orchestral strings and popping analog circuitry, sits atop a rolling synth baseline in a gorgeous slice of Cerrone-style disco. It couldn't be more perfect. The Best Night is slightly more chilly and European in flavour but a poppy warmth stops it dropping too far below zero. There are moments where the groove gets subtly spacey - in a Human League kind of a way. Both tracks define everything we love about good disco at the minute.

If you like what you here - and why wouldn't you? - be sure to head over to their myspace for more music.

Fan Death - Veronica's Veil

Fan Death - The Best Night