Review: Here's another must-check missive of lesser-known and hard-to-find material from DJ Kaos's Jolly Jams label, curated with love by the man himself. Over the course of 12 tidy tracks, we're treated to ambient lusciousness (Superpitcher remixing Kaos's own 'World Turning'), deliciously dubbed-out proto-house (the 'Warehousin' Mix' of Split Secs' 'I'm Not Losing'), mind-mangling psychedelic electronic disco-meets-acid house (Red Axes' 'Promo Only'), dub disco (Slaves of Love and Tavish, whose 'Raw Seduction' is genuinely superb), soaring disco edit action (Spring Break Edit), Sylvester pitched-down and blissed out (Balearic Skip), Kenny Hawkes-ish disco-not-disco eccentricity (Luke Solomon remixing Richard From Milwaukee) and ragging acid tracks (Danny Russell & Timothy Alexander).
Review: With a title like 'Cosmic Memories' your middle name doesn't need to be Sherlock to work out what's going on here, as Rare Wiri bring us a nine-track collection that pays homage to the trippy, synth-fuelled disco of early 80s Italy. Who better to kick things off, then, than cosmic disco originator Daniel Baldelli, with his and DJ Rocca's remix of Manolo's 'Amalfi Drive'? That sets the tone nicely for an album that's long on glacial synths, 80s-sounding electronic drum beats, Euro-style vox and dramatic magenta blusher... okay, you can only actually HEAR the first three of those, but you get the idea! Phoreski's 'Slow Down' stands out for yours truly, packing as it does a little more of Da Funk.
Review: Buyers of a certain age may experience an odd kind of deja vu on hearing this new compilation from DJ Kaos's Jolly Jams label - a kind of "this is where we came in" sensation, because with its fusion of angular, electronic disco and raw, jackin' house, the album ends up sounding like nothing so much as a bulletin from the more forward-looking dancefloors of Chicago and Detroit some time around the mid 1980s. That's not a criticism, though: there is wisdom in not fixing things that ain't broken, and acid squelchers "Hopper's Rant" and "This Is My House" are pretty much worth the price of admission on their own.
Review: Germany's Dennis Kaun AKA DJ Kaos brings us a 12-track best-of compilation from his own Jolly Jams label (est 2010) and - perhaps partly reflecting the fact that some of these tracks were made 10 years apart - there's a wide array of sounds and styles to choose from, ranging from the lively piano house of opener 'Breakthrough' to the 303 squelch of 'Acid Milk', and from the new wave-tinged Italo strut of 'The Horse Running' to the dreamy Balearicisms of 'Swoop', the warm, dubby house of 'Promo Only 1', the 80s Euro vibes of 'Natural Flavor' and beyond...
Review: Italy's Iva Vagli, better known as Ivo del Prado, comes to Spain's Rare Wiri label with four tracks that sit right on the cusp of contemporary disco and deep/melodic house. 'Fat Track' is a laidback little groove, 'The Blues Grows On' is a hypnotic chugger topped with the vocal from Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson's 'Bicentennial Blues', 'Summer Piano' sounds a little like Underworld trying their hand at piano house and 'Pm 04/04' finds us back in deeper house/disco pastures and sports some killer M1 action towards the end; all four come topped with big trance-y, euphoric synth leads that should help ensure maximum peaktime impact.
Review: Given that DJ Kaos's Jolly Jams imprint has consistently delivered some of the most unsusual and inspired re-edits and reworks around, you'd expect this label compilation to be nigh-on essential. It is, of course, with the eccentric, long-serving producer serving up a mixture of languid, sunset-ready synth-scapes ('Tangerine Stream' by Galling & Gruzis), electro-disco chuggers (Mark E Quark's "Slo-Mo Edit" of 'Doin' It Right'), fiery disco-funk (Bastedos' 'Nobody' and Dany B's 'Gotta Get It'), oddball disco ('Tapping The Source' by DJ Kaos), late-night acid sleaziness (Ivo Del Plado and Tavish's spaced-out 'Raw Seduction'), and glassy-eyed Balearica (Cole Medina). The package also contains a superb, slowed down re-imagining of Sylvester's 'You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)' by Balearic Skip that's simply stunning.
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