Asha Puthli
Disco Mystic: Select Remixes Volume 1

2 heavy funk slappers from 1000 fingers man Duktus. Maximum Synth Madness

Leisure Dub and Armanious return to follow up their debut release ‘Weekend Waiting’ (one of Gilles Peterson’s records of the year in 2021). It’s electronic late night soul on the A side with a heavy baseline mix made for sound systems on the B side.

Sensational – that’s Frank Hatchett! These words can be found on many of the 16 albums credited to the legendary jazz dancer, choreographer, and teacher to the stars. At the height of his fame in the 1980s, Hatchett’s classes in New York City at the wildly popular Hines-Hatchett studio (now renamed the Broadway Dance Centre) attracted celebrities including Madonna, Brooke Shields, Olivia Newton-John, and Naomi Cambell. Though he hated flying, preferring to cruise in a Corvette from Massachusetts to Manhattan, each week saw Hatchett jet setting for classes and performances around the world.In the highlights compiled on this expansive double LP set, the sounds of Hatchett’s albums run the gamut from disco and funk in the 1970s to electro and proto-techno as they glide through the ’80s. Like many albums in the dance instruction genre, nearly one third of the songs are covers (Prince, Paul Hardcastle, Earth, Wind & Fire, Billy Cobham) and most clock in at a brisk 2:30 – the ideal length for Hatchett’s classes or his students’ recital performances. Fans of library music will find a similar focus on immaculate performances, while the tightly coiled drum breaks, Afro-Cuban rhythms, and thumping 808s will send rare groove collectors into a state of head nodding bliss.

Pillow Queen, the production duo of D. Tiffany and Vani-T, continue their sonic, sensous charting of the dancefloor in their new 3-track release Calling Me, a collaboration with the vocalist, writer and sex worker Ruin. Sexual drive has always been in the alchemy of Pillow Queen’s music, but at the fore is a wider, more encompassing erotics – one of the spirit and uninhibited body. Such is the force Ruin and the girls incant on this record.The opening track, which also gives the release its title, begins with wide, introspective chords. “Calling Me” is spacious, and takes its time to build over 10 and a half gorgeous minutes, riding on at 118 BPM. Akin to some works of Robert Leiner or John Beltran, it’s a track situating spirituality in the genre of trance via the builds and flows of the music itself, rather than gimmicky cues of “Eastern” Goa vocals or overblown psychedelic drama. As always with Pillow Queen, the vocal samples are pitched and twisted with the greatest care.By their third release, one can begin to note the duo’s characteristic gestures, and “Tunnel Vision” is somehow emblematic here: those pitched vocals, synth loops frayed out from filters, and crisp, bright drum programming that makes 134 BPM feel like the most natural metronome your feet and ass could follow. We hear Ruin for the first time two minutes in: “You cannot tunnel vision me”. She speaks of a “dance without dogma” in between short choral swells, picking up on the theme of a rewritten divine that figures into Pillow Queen’s Burn Me Up (2020). The phrase “dance without dogma” refers to the writings of Gabrielle Roth, a dancer and author noted for founding the 5Rhythms movement-meditation. Roth’s phrase “sweat your prayers” has also been held aloft as an ethic of the party series Radiant Love, where this EP's final track, “She’s Hot Magic,” was intended to be performed live by Ruin and D. Tiffany. Again we start airborne with birdcall and floating chords. Picking up a kick drum after 3 minutes, and a bassline after 5, this is truly some deep-dancefloor-7AM-body-and-soul-fully-merged shit. Concurrently, we hear Ruin asking us “Unconscious floor, do you know what good touch is?” and “Can you trust this sound?” No doubt, we are being called.

For the first time ‘A Muto’ by Esa is given an official reissue. Not only does this mark a first as a stand along single, but the reissue contains previously unheard Instrumental, Dub and Keys Versions alongside an Acapella. Licensed from writer and producer Martin Socko Moukoko, for 40 years Martin kept the original 2” master tape in mint condition so for the reissue the tape was baked and stems transferred by Archive Audio in Paris and the tracks given new mixdowns by Martin himself alongside Jerome Caron. The resulting mixes stay true the original whilst making the most of today’s digital studio technology, cut at 45rpm and truly representing the gold standard of quality when it comes to a reissue.‘A Muto’ was originally released in 1986 on the ‘Atesa’ album and became an instant hit in Cameroon and Africa. The lyrics tell the story of a woman who abandons her husband, complaining of being alone as the keeper of the house. ‘A Muto’ is a blend of Makossa, a style originating in the French Cameroons characterised by prominent brass arrangements, and Ambasse Bey, traditional fast paced dance music from Cameroon. Martin assembled a team of session musicians in Paris in 1985 and programmed the drums and synths himself on the Linn Drum and Yamaha DX 7.The Esa project ground to a halt in 1989 following a legal dispute which saw Martin win a court case in France regaining the rights to his music. In the intervening years Martin has continued to work in music studying jazz for 4 years at the American school of modern music in Paris and providing background music for the corporate world.