In 1982 Glen Larson and Stu Phillips brought you the high-tech wizardry of Knight Industries Two Thousand (KITT). 1984 saw Jan-Michael Vincent and Sylvester Levay's Airwolf. Fuelled by Tangerine Dream’s synth anthems, the laser-guided Street Hawk motorcycle appeared in 1985. In July 2009, Thisisnotanexit presents Night Plane’s state-of-the-art dark disco that welds cosmic, italo and house grooves onto druggy, atmospheric rock songs. Night Plane’s debut, “Chinese Shadows,” offers three dancefloor-ready tunes teeming with cinematic suspense, conjuring up scenes of geopolitical conflict, substance abuse, underworld intrigue and sci-fi hallucinations. The sound is the result of a meticulous engineering process: to forge the Night Plane prototype, Brooklyn-based producer, DJ and critic William Rauscher took his decades of studying jazz piano and twentieth-century minimalism and applied them to the decadent energies of Fleetwood Mac and Patti Smith, the long-form disco structures of Giorgio Moroder, Gino Soccio and Patrick Cowley, and the visceral noir of Michael Mann and Brian de Palma. But Night Plane is just as much the product of the times Rauscher spent both in Germany and the US studying for his PhD – on “Chinese Shadows” one can hear the cyborg rhythms of Berlin churning alongside distinctly New York-style scuzzy rock tunes.
Chinese Shadows: On the title track, a grizzly, Rhodes-driven disco throb gets chased by a relentless incandescent dragon, barreling through a labyrinth of gangland haunts, opium dens and rain-soaked ports of call. Suffused with a neon narcosis, the track weathers bursts of electric light mixed with the strung-out howls of the half-alive, swelling into a hypnotic rollercoaster that plumbs the depths of a drug-addled netherworld.
Wave Haze: Tropical depression. A sprawling rock-tinged Balearic-disco triptych offers visions of the morning sea - a sun-soaked following a sordid all-nighter, laying face down in the sand for some bleary-eyed solace, then baptism in a saltwater tide. But in a testament to romantic longing, no amount of sweet beach relief can quell the aching in a grifter’s heart.
Walls of Stone: The EP closes with a nocturnal passage through the Lower Manhattan financial district: those grand, desolate atriums lined with marble and bejeweled chandeliers, gates of gilded bronze, monumental and inhuman, all encased in late-night solitude to form a post-punk Chirico nightmare.
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Night Plane was discovered by Thisisnotanexit Records, the cult UK indie that has previously brought you releases and remixes from the likes of They Came From The Stars I Saw Them, Detachments, Parallels, Optimo, Emperor Machine, Hatchback, Prins Thomas, Professor Genius, Brennan Green, Naum Gabo, Capracara, Serge Santiago, Mungolian Jetset, Holy Ghost and Brain Machine.
Clash Magazine recently called the label “the most enigmatic and consistent new label in the UK” and “the UK’s answer to Italians Do It Better”.
