Review: Perhaps wisely, KS French is using his FKR imprint to offer opportunities to previously unheard producers. Here, it's the turn of Smooth Tempo. Like much of the label's output, the three tracks here blur the boundaries between sample-heavy disco-house, original nu-disco, and straight up re-edits. In the latter category you'll find "Dance Dance Floor", a formidably dubbed-out, looped-up tweak of Zapp's P-funk classic "Dancefloor" full of trippy effects, liquid synth bass, head-nodding house percussion and Roger Troutman's iconic talkbox vocals. There's a similarly trippy, spaced-out feel to the excellent "Get A Little", too. Best of all, though, is opener "Midnight Rendez-Vous", which turns a curious disco jam into a bubbling, synth-laden dub disco epic.
Review: Some 18 months on from the release of the label's first retrospective compilation, Brazilian imprint About Disco presents another bumper selection of floor-filling re-edits, reworks and original productions. With 23 killer cuts to choose from, the collection provides excellent value, particularly when you factor in the eclectic nature of the reworked source material. Compare and contrast, for example, the warm and sticky Afro-disco goodness of NFC and Key Sokur's "Coming From Congo", the bass-heavy disco hustle of "Hihache" by Ozzy and the kaleidoscopic, hard-spun synth-funk brilliance of Rafael Cancian's "Queen of Zanzibar". We're also huge fans of J.B Boogie's gently lolloping and exceedingly loved-up "Love To Love", though we could say the same thing about half a dozen of the other included tracks. Stellar stuff, all told.
