TANTRA - THE HILLS OF KATMANDU
On Monday I went to the Social Security office to apply for a replacement SS card. Don't ask, but believe me, because I would not lie to you, after all you've done for me, sometimes without even knowing that you did so, which can be the most beautiful way to do things, with that soft warm light of self-oblivion, the kind that will come to shine again in the end of days.
It should come as no surprise when I tell you that there was a despicable, soul-crushing line awaiting me, and that I waited there, in the queue in that airless room with other crushed souls, for a good hour, and that I listened to music, and that I had to stop listening to these songs that I'm sharing with you, because they were way, way too amped up. I literally felt like I had to start running around, so I put on "El Kinto" instead, a highly peaceable antidote.
This is my way of saying please don't listen to these tracks while you in a physically constrained environment, because you will probably want to start moving your parts around in a rhythmic way. Best to go running, or jump on your bed, or dance. Both are highly recommended in general, both are specifically highly recommended as workout anthems, and both will be soon played by me in a DJ or DJ-like environment.
TANTRA - HILLS OF KATMANDU is a severely holy-shit epic italo-disco classic, recorded by Celso Valli, who is another legendary Giorgio Moroder type. It is a brawny, barebones dance comet, it has girl singers, random 80s guitar riff interventions, and flute solos. It's from the early '80s. If you want to know where LCD Soundsystem came from, guess what, it's this stuff - a solid grail of deep underground disco. Why is this not on CD? I guess because if it was, it would kill the 'holy shit' factor you get when you hear it for the first time, after you think you're a big enough nerd to have heard all great underground disco already (you're not not by a long shot. thankfully).
RON HARDY @ The Music Box in Chicago, early 80s
This Ron Hardy edit of ISAAC HAYES - I CAN'T TURN AROUND is also fire, hellfire, like melt the house down fire. Because it's nine minutes of a jacked-up horn-section dominated funk groove with Isaac over the top. It just smells like furious sweat. Every time you go to dancing in a club, you should have to thank Ron Hardy for it. You should have to touch your fingers to one of those little things by the door frame like the one that you touch if you're Jewish. Also what's great about edits like this is the man-machine hybrid: it's not drum-machine and computer beats, it's people playing, but they've been caught in Hardy's time-warp loop device and they can never escape, they can just churn out peak-time burners like this into infinity.
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