By luring the likes of Pilooski, Toby Tobias and Retro/Grade to deepest darkest Dalston, the Disco Bloodbath gang have built by word-of-mouth their monthly fixture which has helped to shape the phenomenal global renaissance of disco music within underground club culture. You would be hard pushed these days to find a club which does not have some kind of disco tinged offering on at least one night of the week. This is true not only in London, but in Sydney, Barcelona and now thanks to We Love, Ibiza too. However, it’s well known that the Bloodbath crew are responsible for bringing disco back from it’s trainspotter status to the hip, young and gender bending hordes of East London.
Expect everything from screaming high-energy bangers to sleazy downtempo morning music, classic New York into Italo and deep, repetitive proto-techno-disco. Things should be as balearic as they come, a speakeasy feel with a tight-knit but large turnout and no grumpy collector types stroking their beards and demanding original French pressings. As Dan describes the party in London, “all of London’s tribes are there; There’s the fashion crowd, music heads, people that mainly go to gay clubs, or indie clubs or minimal clubs, there’s no one tribe that dominates our dance floor. I think a lot of people are fed up of what “club music” has turned into … the music policy does it’s own job of filtering out that dickhead element.”
As the flyer says, Disco Bloodbath will be taking over our neat little back room El Salon on the 20th of June alongside the likes of Hercules & Love Affair and the 11th of July, also appearing on that day are Hot Chip and The Juan MacClean. The Bloodbath lads have kindly provided us with a mix described by a wise man thus, “Gay vampire disco for the blood sucking hordes!” … download it here.
We love music. We also love throwing parties at Folk, and those long, lazy days sat in the sun with a cold drink and lots of like minded people with nothing much else on their minds other than a forgotten melody drifting on the breeze…Our parties are relaxed affairs, although we do like dancing.
There’s no pressure at our parties. You don’t have to be fashionable or part of a scene. There’s no pressure on the DJs, they have the freedom to play whatever they want, when they want. We believe in a spirit of independence and individuality. We still believe in love.
Holding these values above the desire to make money has allowed us to experience some very special moments. If you share these values, let’s come together to create a magical experience at the very source of the original Balearic vibe. See you on the beach…
Folk up on the wrong side of the bed?
If the Manchester contingent of party starters and music lovers can keep the Balearic spirit alive in the grey north of England then surely in their spiritual home of Ibiza things will be proper buzzin’. The term Balearic is bandied around as all things to all men, carrying a sense of an eclectic but refined taste. The team from Folk have chosen a selection of locations around the island to host a mini-festival of sorts. Running from Thursday 22nd to Monday 26th of July in a diverse but kindred set of venues such as Boutique Hostal Salinas and Sunset Ashram. The folk from Folk will also be making appearance on our hallowed roof terrace, the Premier Etage on Sunday the 25th of July.
Folk me!
The night in question promises to be maybe just a little bit special, with Detroit natives Jeff Mills and Derrick May keeping things rolling in the Discoteca while the European contingent of Miss Kittin and Steve Lawler promise an epic back to back 5 hour set of deep and beautiful house music on La Terraza. There’s also “digital disco” vibes in El Salon from Matty J and his crew from Tirk Records. As for that roof terrace expect the likes of Balearic Mike, Lexx, Be and Naive Melody to be spinning bizarre things that aren’t getting played on the radio. You can check out some mixes they have kindly provided to us here, including a session by Phil Mison at the Cafe Del Mar way back in 1993 during his residency at the original sunset bar. We’ll leave you with this little video which seems to encapsulate crossing the Balearic spirit with something quintessentially English.
In the eighteen months since its inception, testpressing.org has become the go-to archive for cherry-picked music and interviews best described as Balearic in the broadest sense. Whether it’s eclectic mixes from seasoned professionals or photocopied features from long since recycled magazines (Ibiza vibes in mixmag ‘93 anyone?) that draw you in, Test Pressing is the net’s ultimate musical curiosity shop.
Wither me testings
Particular gems are the old magazine scans which crop up on the pages of test pressing. An article from The Face in 1985 reports on ‘E’, taking stories from The Ranch, a gay club in Dallas, Texas where you could apparently get the drug over the counter for $20 plus $1.23 sales tax. Also worth checking out is their ‘Producers Series’ which focuses on a different notable music producer. Have a look at the Brian Eno and Andrew Weatherall selections to get an idea. They compile a mix of the producers work for your aural pleasure – it’s wonderful, have a listen. Joins the dots between Bill Withers and acid house. Thanks to Dog for the heads-up.
PDF magazines are a promotional tool used by companies and collectives in a similar way that ‘zines led the way of underground media in the latter half of the 20th century. PDF mags are usually independent ventures showcasing international creativity and culture. Most downloadable magazines like this are art and design based in their content (such as the fantastic photography magazine Romka, which you can read all about and download their inaugural four issues here). For some online magazines there appears to be very little editorial control for the scope and quality of work displayed. There is often an interesting mix of splendid effort and mediocrity. This can not be said however of our featured magazine this week – Cuemix.
Cosmic Mole
Cuemix is a magazine both for and about DJs. There is a sublime mix of excellent writing, colorful layouts, and good content. What initially caught my eye was interviews in the current issue with one of electronic music’s more eccentric characters The Mole – a highlight of Burlington Project’s Red Box residency at We Love… Space 2009.
Baldelli
The above is a photo of Danielle Baldelli who along with Marco Dionogi has mixed and compiled the fantastic “Cosmic Disco? Nah… Cosmic Rock!” album for Eskimo Recordings. He is from before the age when genres were rigid and terms like house meant cool (in the ’80s) or a genre (in the ’90s), his DJ sets knew no boundaries. He pitched down disco records as far as they would go and gave birth to the slow chugging Balearic sound.
All in all it’s a great read and one we can’t recommend enough, download that latest issue here. Incidentally, The Mole provided one of the best interviews this summer (also interviews with Busy P, Riton and PBR Streetgang and performances from Busy P, Ben Korbel, Hot Chip, Paul Woolford and Felix Da Housecat) check it out below…
The ubiquitous smiley face. A stylized representation of a human smile. The first recorded depiction of the form was in the Ingmar Bergman film Hamnstad in 1936, although not technically a smiley since the suicidal factory girl protagonist in fact draws an unhappy face on the bathroom mirror with lipstick. Sunkist oranges used smileys in a 1930s ad campaign, but the crude black and white stick drawings bear little resemblance to the finished work of art we recognise today.
Photo by Frank Weyrauther - Phrank.net
The smiley face craze is the work of two brothers, Bernard and Murray Spain. They were in the business of creating fad items and in 1970 recalled the smiley which had by then been floating around for years in the advertising business. Looking for a peace-like symbol but with more general appeal, while surrounded by protests, war and hate – what they wanted was a symbol of happiness and love. The brothers say with admirable frankess, it was also to make a buck. In essence they did little more than add the phrase “Have a nice day” to the smiley, the fad lasted a year and a half and the number of smiley buttons produced by 1972 was estimated at 50 million.
But who invented the original smiley face? In December 1963, State Mutual Life Assurance initiated a merger campaign which had bad effects on company morale. They wanted a way to “promote friendship” and turned to Harvey Ball, a graphic artist in Massachusetts. Harvey, clearly not a man to waste ink initially drew only the smile but realised it could be turned upside down to become… a frown! He added two eyes, so that if it was now turned upside down it would mean… I’m standing on my head – a more ambiguous sociopolitical message. He made it yellow for a sunshiny look and State Mutual upon realising the buttons were a hit, began to hand them out by the thousands. Mr Ball’s take home pay: $45 art fee. State Mutual, clearly not quick on the uptake, didn’t make any money either.
Seig Howdy!
The feel-good symbol of freedom and experimentation hit the American masses at just the time of post-1960’s malaise: a traumatised American public turning to visual soma in order to forget the Vietnam war and presidential meltdown. The smiley represented such a blank childlike form of contentment it was ripe for subversion. In 1979, Bob Last and Bruce Slesinger put together a collage of Californian Governor Jerry Brown and a Nuremberg-style rally to illustrate the UK Fast Records release of the Dead Kennedys’ California Über Alles. Behind the podium were large red, white and black banners: in place of swastikas were large Smileys. In the comic Watchmen the smiley is used as a visual metaphor for megalomania. Then came the explosion. In February 1988, Bomb The Bass released a 12″ record using the blood-stained Watchmen smiley face as cover. A month earlier, Danny Rampling has used the smiley for his infamous club Shoom. The symbol took only a few months to catch on, but when it did, it swept the country as the logo of acid house.
Bomb Dis Bass
The initial media response to acid-house culture was positive. In the UK the smiley had been loosely associated with psychedelic scenes since the 70’s. The emerging movement of the second summer of love in the 80’s cemented it’s counter-cultural status by engraving the smiley logo on ecstasy tablets of the time. Like most youth cults, there was soon a media backlash – connecting the symbol to immorality and vice. The smiley began to be associated with “evil ecstasy” and drug barons. The negative associations continued into the 90’s with Nirvana using it in their iconic “corporate-rock-whores” t-shirt with crossed out eyes and a drooling mouth.
As you might expect, the Smiley has also been surrounded by copyright controversies ever since the early 1970s when a Frenchman, Franklin Loufrani registered the trademark as Smiley World in some European countries. He claims to not only have created “the smiley” but also own the concept as an international trademark. It can be factually proven that the symbol was conceived long before his trademark claim, so surely this is just profiteering on a cultural phenomenon of which he has no honest right to possession. In 2006 Wal-Mart tried to trademark the smiley, but lost in a court case with Loufrani.
Faces everywhere
In terms of Ibizan folk-lore. It is said that Alfredo popularised the smiley face with a collection of stickers he got from a friend working for an Italian children’s charity at the time. After his marathon daytime sets at Amnesia, people would beg him for copies of records he had played. The Balearic master would stick the smiley face stickers to the label of the 12″ before handing them out to revelers. Thanks to Mat Playford for that little piece of info.
It may seem weird that such a bland symbol should be used to convey emotion, in such a way that creates as much distance as real empathy. But then there is something powerfully archetypal about an image of a happy face that resembles the sun. Infantilisation or greater communication, joy or horror: the Smiley can encompass everything. It pretends to be our servant, but it will rule us all. – The Guardian
If you haven’t heard of Pilooski and his D.I.R.T.Y Soundsystem then prepare for something a little bit different. Purveyor of all things balearic-kraut-disco, this blog is a spontaneous explosion of leftfield 80s-tinged electronics. However, it’s creators are perfectly at home in delving into everything from avant-folk to cosmic drones.
It’s not only MP3’s on offer here. Esoteric Youtube videos populate most of the page, ranging from clips of an early documentary on New Order to the pop perfection of Split Enz.
If you like what you hear, for home listening you should definitely look into their compilations. Why release a compilation when everything is already available? Dirty Soundysystem have been answering this question since 2003. Their selections of little-known and hard to find recordings can be listened to from start to finish and lend themselves to repeat listening. Their latest: “Dirty French Psychedelics” is a compilation for classic rock radio with names our parents would recognize. In reality, it is a hallucinated voyage through the land of French pop psychedelics to be listened to in one sitting, eyes half-open in the heat of the summer of 2009. Certain experts will tell you that Bernard Lavilliers or Brigitte Fontaine are not psychedelic, and they are probably right. Who cares? It’s for people who want to discover or rediscover the music of the seventies, for those who want to listen to music without really paying attention and for those who want to listen attentively through their headphones. Have a good trip.
The MP3’s they put up on the blog are only there for a limited time, in their words: “For discovery purposes only. Support the music, buy records, read books, learn to cook”.
At the dawning of time, two mutants were trained by sensei Master Giorgio Moroder, to become synth warriors. From their home in the sewers of Manhattan, they battle petty criminals, evil megalomaniacs and alien invaders, all while remaining isolated from society at large. – Feel My Bicep.
“No one can look down on someone who uses Feel My Bicep as their starting point as far as music blogs are concerned. The British blog has a taste for disco (nu and classic) as well as other related genres such as soul, new wave, proto-house and detroit techno. Eclectic aesthetics and posts which can make heads turn are all part and parcel of this unique resource. If that isn’t enough for you the crew behind the blog are some of the best disco editors around. Their debut 12″ released on Ghost Town NYC sold out in a few days and is about to be re-released while collectors eagerly anticipate their next release.” – Ozon Magazine
Check out the second installment from the Ghost Town posse (the label’s previous outing featured Citizen Cane). “Strawberry” takes the classic soul track “Strawberry Letter” (Shuggie Otis or Kool & The Gang) and gives it a driving Balearic house makeover. Combining a certain urgency and drive with a subtle soul touch, this one’s sure to be a dancefloor burner! Beautiful cosmic string – synth piece – pure 70s Balearica!
Classic cosmic disco jam – namely the Brothers Johnson “Strawberry Letter 23″. Beautifully slo-mo with lush keyes, it’s a paean to the universe! Check it here.
Sticking with all things bearded, original (and Northern) here is a great mix and interview with Balearic Mike. The definition of a DJ’s DJ. He lives and breaths music. He would eat it too but he prefers pizza. Having first made his name back in the 90s under the umbrella of the Luv Dup crew in Manchester, Mike has gone on to become a channel for the spirits of Ron Hardy, Larry Levan, Daniele Baldelli and Vangelis. Mike’s knowledge of disco, Italo, Balearic and house is unparalleled but he matches this with an uncanny ability to read a crowd and give em what they want.
“Ten years ago, people just wanted the big club records,” Mike is quoted as saying in a recent Guardian article on the Balearic sound, “But kids nowadays who are 20 want to hear bizarre things that aren’t getting played on the radio.”
Have a listen to this great mix and check out the interview over at i-D magazine online.
