Review: Madrid man Manuela Costela has previously been praised for the variety and quality of his house and disco related productions, something that helps explain the inclusion of his tracks on an impressively wide variety of compilations. There's plenty of variety to be found within the three tracks on his latest EP for Rare Wiri too, with a pleasing reliance on weighty, low-slung bass guitar the only unifying feature. He sets the tone on opener "Mustang Lady", a hot-to-trot nu-disco number laden with spacey synth sounds, layered vocal snippets and insanely funky dub disco bass. Synths come to the fore further on the slap-bass propelled, acid-flecked nu-disco number "Circles", while closing cut "Mama Funk" is a jaunty, loop-heavy disco house affair whose most ear-catching feature is the extensive use of spring-fresh flute samples.
Review: Madrid's prolific and versatile Manuel Costela seldom puts a foot wrong, regardless of what particular sub-genre of house and disco he turns his hand to. Here, the title track is a midtempo affair, built for White Isle play and characterised by thunderous, high-impact drums, fluttering keys and an assortment of haunting, buzzing synth drones. The Disco Funk Spinner Remix adds some even bigger stabs and will suit the more commercial floors while, elsewhere, 'Jump On The Middle' is a lavish, lazy groove topped with more of those raw synths and 'El Loco' has a more 'traditional' filter disco feel.
Review: Spanish producer Manuel Costela has been on a serious roll of late, and this latest release on Golden Soul does nothing to diminish his fast-growing reputation. There are two re-rubs of 'Interestellar Love' to choose from here: Limpodisco's take emphasises the track's rawer, more organic elements, with mucho application of Hammond organ and fat, squelchy funk bass, while James Rod's mix takes us into more stomping disco-house territory with hard-slammin' 4/4s and a disco-style walking bassline. Both rubs come fully laden with pyow-pyow-pyow! space disco stabs, practically guaranteeing the throwing of shapes out on the floor.
Review: Prolific producer Manuel Costela is clearly a fan of long-distance relationships. Certainly, there are few longer relationships than those forged from "Interstellar Love". The track itself does make a good case for supernova romance, though, layering litlting, loved-up synthesizer lead lines above a rolling disco groove rich in rubbery bass, laytered spoken vocal samples and glistening, Chic style guitars. Parisior opts for a looser, warmer dub disco feel on his accompanying remix, throwing funk-rock riffs into the mix to add a little more grunt, before JB Dizzy re-imagines "Interstellar Love" as a twisted fusion of rolling nu-disco grooves and wild TB-303 style acid lines.
Review: Boite Music squeeze a last one in for 2020 with a various artist EP taking in New York style new wave inspirations in AINZ's "The Saviour" next to the funkadelic industrial new disco hits of Manuel Costela's good times "Keep Me Burnin'". Lafrench Toast sends in a '70s inspired disco number of rich continental flair, allowing Sauco to cover a different kind landscape with a mesamptopian tipped "Nights Over Lebanon". Sortie, Ausgang, Sunrise at the Exit - you got there!
Review: Mexico's Deep Sense serve up a six-track EP that shows there's more than one way to go about repurposing a classic. Rather than simply looping up chunks of the original, the edits here get a little more creative - Sauco & Manuel Costela's 'Are We Ready?', for instance, takes the vocal from Fatback's 'Bus Stop' vocal and places it over a fresh (and utterly irresistible) funk backing, while on 'Last Nite' Tony Disco uses a similar trick to reinvent an InDeep classic in altogether sultrier, jazzier form. An equally well-known chanted vocal tops the brass-tastic 'Flamingo' from Hot Mood, and there are three more very playable nuggets where those came from!
Review: Thicker than clotted cream and twice as opulent, Golden Soul's latest label retrospective is well worth your attention. It focuses on material released by the Spanish imprint in 2019, which was arguably the label's strongest year to date. Label founder James Rod makes a number of killer contributions, with the colourful, bass-heavy Balearic nu-disco chug of "Let's Play Together" (a collaboration with Parissior) and the dreamy Italo-disco throb of "Heart Rock (Aleito Mix)" standing out. Elsewhere, get your ears around the sparkling, breakdown-boasting sunrise rush of Dubhouser's "Ereh" and the thrill-a-minute Euro-disco effervescence that is Hoochie Coochie Papa's "Work My Body".
