Review: Montenegro-based rework maestro Mitiko (real name Sasha Mitich) has been a busy boy this year, with this EP-turned-mini album marking his sixth missive of 2024 to date. There's plenty to get the blood pumping and the feet moving across the seven tracks on show, from the lightly housed up vocal disco rush of 'Along With You' and the filter-sporting Afro-disco joy of 'Fungi Mama', to the slow-motion disco-funk headiness of 'Ghost' and the build-and-release excellence of the stomping, string-laden peak-time disco of 'Peak At You'. Those seeking mid-tempo thrills are catered for via 'Get Up and Boogie', while 'Latin Hustle' is a memorable revision of a Spanish language dancefloor gem.
Review: Greek producer Goji Berry made his Katakana debut on the multi-artist 'Vol 50' EP back in 2017. Since then he's appeared on two further V/A EPs in the series as well as helming six of his own, most recently Vols 142 and 140. Now he's back with 'Vol 144', which finds him reworking a brace of classic soul/funk jams, namely Wilson Pickett's 'Funky Broadway' from 1967 and Lonnie Liston Smith's 'A Chance For Peace', taken from 1975's 'Visions Of A New World' album. Given the calibre of the source material, it's hard to go wrong, really - and Goji Berry certainly doesn't.
Review: Shabi's DOBRO jams continue with Happy Jams that are undeniably exactly that, much what these times need. Pushing a classic house tip with good vibes pads, sample selections, loops and tricks, Shabi gets '90s old school and French touch in his kicking title track. "Let's Talk Dancin'" offers some similar tricks, holding down a groove with a vocal hook to boot, while "I Feel It Comin'" does something some more soul and R&B. "Disco Party" throws down some classic percussion and a walking bassline while "C'mon Let's Fly" may as well be Fred Falke back in the mix. French house style!
Review: Despite the title there's no particular discernible 'summer' theme to this latest batch of re-edits from German maestro Alkalino, but that's probably just as well - after all, no one wants to hear 4/4'd up remakes of holiday 'classics' like 'The Birdy Song' or 'Agadoo', do they?! Instead the Audaz boss serves up another typically classy bunch of reworkings, drawing on sources that include Change ft Jocelyn Brown's 'Angel In My Pocket' ('I Remember All So Clearly'), Lenny Williams' 'Midnight Girl' ('The Music Plays And Plays'), Central Line's 'Walking Into Sunshine' ('I Got To Get Away') and Talking Heads' 'Seen And Not Seen' ('A Larger Forehead'), to name but a few.
Review: Umbo (Croatia's Mario Lovakovic) has chalked up releases on Timewarp and Kraak and now comes to Germany's Resense with two re-edits of tracks from Chess, Sun Records and Stax veteran Little Milton's 1969 'Grits And Groceries' album. That album's title track, here reworked as 'Grits', was written by Titus Turner in 1955 as 'Mona Lisa Was A Man' and has been recorded by many blues, soul and R&B artists under a variety of titles over the years; '23h' is much less confusing, being simply the new name for 'Twenty-Three Hours'. Anyway, suffice to say the sheer power of the late R&B legend's voice makes either a cert on funk and soul floors!
Papa Was A Rolling Stone (Philly Vanilli extended remix) - (15:33) 122 BPM
Review: Germany's Philly Vanilli has been around since forever, it seems, but to these ears - and they're ears that have reviewed plenty of his previous releases for this very website - this new set of reworks for Deep Disco Edits is the best work he's turned out so far. He's working with some very well-known source tracks here, so there's no point insulting your intelligence by enumerating them: suffice to say that somehow he's managed to tease the funk out of these much-loved classics in a way that, in some cases, even the original artists didn't manage. Ohio Players' 'Love Rollercoaster' was, admittedly, always a personal fave of yours truly but in PV's hands it becomes a truly exceptional 10 minutes of sheer funk joy, while his reworkings of Marvin, Kool & The Gang and The Temptations are equally impressive. Essential!
Review: This is, if we're counting correctly, French producer Morlack's 20th EP in the Katakana Edits series so far, so if you're a fan of the label generally the quality's pretty much assured! Coming under the scalpel this time out are a couple of underplayed jams from the 80s - El DeBarge's 'You Wear It Well' from 1985, and Imagination's 'Tell Me Do You Want My Love' from 1981 - before he takes what can safely be classed as something of a left-turn in the context of contemporary re-edit culture, giving us a remarkably effective, disco-fied makeover of new jack swing maestro Keith Sweat's 'Just A Touch' from 1996.
Review: Although Alkalino has re-edited all sorts of music over the years, disco, boogie and Italo-disco tracks have always been his bread and butter. He's taken a different path on his latest release, offering up 'Transgenre Edits' that touch on a wide variety of sounds and styles. There's much to admire throughout, from the 105 BPM conscious soul-goes-dancing headiness of 'Songs That I See' and the weirdo disco-rock-goes-Italo-disco throb of 'Angry Eyes' (a take on a legendary 1979 by Skatt Bros) to the effervescent jazziness of 'Sad Sax' (an edit of the track sampled by Mr Scruff on 'Get a Move On'), the muscular, mind-mangling synth-disco throb of 'Angel Dust' and the bouncy Tango-disco rush of 'Funana'.
Review: Montenegran re-edit maestro Sasha Mitich, better known to the music-buying public as Mitiko, serves up seven more reworks of classic cuts from days gone by, kicking off with Sister Sledge's 'All American Girls' from 1981. Next to get the treatment is Brass Construction's 'Changin' (1975), followed by - among others - Rare Function's 'Disco Function' (1976), Johnnie Taylor's 'Disco Lady' (1976) and Sylvester's 'Dance (Disco Heat)' (1978). That leaves just two tracks whose source had our disco detectives scratching their heads - including the infuriatingly familiar 'Funky People' - but you get the general idea!
Review: Baby Ford and Dazmos took the limelight on this first release on Nice 1, now released digitally for the first time. We Are Syd's original "Gently" is a mellow downtempo roller featuring choice vocals from Shea Seger, but it's the remixes here that get pride of place. Ford and Dazmos lock into an understated drum machine funk draped in hazy pads on their Backroom Mix, while on their Frontroom mix they push the club elements to the forefront, riding the rhythm section with intent while still retaining the smoky spirit of the original to create with an impeccable club cut that should nestle comfortably into the bags of all deep digging house heads.
Review: Serbian disco don Milos Dordevic AKA Tonbe once more dons his Loshmi re-editor's guise. 'Around The Corner' draws on an unidentified (but we're guessing early 80s electrofunk) source and sports a familiar spoken sample about the irrelevance of genres in music, while 'Like You Know' revisits Fat Larry's Band's 'Act Like You Know' from 1982. The seriously fat-bottomed 'Lovely Attack' then bites Tom Hooker's sought-after 1984 Italo-disco gem 'Love Attack', before the package is completed by 'Shake Shake', a rework of TC Curtis's 'Body Shake' from 1981. The latter two share top honours for yours truly but all four will keep disco floors grooving along nicely.
Review: Harri Pierson bangs the box with his new EP for Duca Bianco, a full thrill mix of disco and house sounds that want to get the party going. 'Instant Message' has a dense mix of raw drum sounds and squelchy synths with interesting melodic designs and steamy female coos. 'Techno Native' is laced up with piano stabs and a hint of old school energy then 'Trippy Too' cuts loose with a head-twisting mix of drums and whistles and bass and pads. 'Young Australians' then brings some big guitar licks to a Balearic beat that is for dancing under the stars. All four of these cuts are unique and compelling.
Review: Last year, Serbian re-edit and rework specialist Tonbe began offering up freshly updated versions of cuts from his catalogue. He begins the new year by offering up more of the same - specifically a quartet of '2024' versions of things he first edited, remixed and reworked in the dim and distant past. He begins by reworking 2016's 'Original Tool', delivering a driving, thickset slab of heady disco-house excellence, before lightly polishing-up the disco-funk horns and deliciously low-slung bass of 2018 classic 'Downtown Drive' (arguably the most-played cut in his catalogue). There's more funky bass - alongside relaxed, flanged guitar licks and twinkling Rhodes solos - on lolloping disco-house number 'Boss of Funl', while 'I Feel Energy' is a deliciously sun-splashed disco roller that's as deep and warming as it is effortlessly funky.
Review: A bit of a curveball here from Mathmos as he explores slightly tuffer, darker styles than we're used to hearing from him. So it's testament to his production prowess that these four cuts work just as well, in their own way, as the groovier, more melodic sounds that are his usual stock-in-trade. 'My Name Is Snake' is a driving, mid-paced cut with techno overtones and chunks of dialogue from 'Escape To New York', 'Techno Duke' also (unsurprisingly) leans towards techno, while 'Street Inferno' drops the tempo and ventures into leftfield electronica territory. 'Plissken Prologue (Raw Mix)' then completes the EP by revisiting the title track's vocal samples in hallucinogenic, extended interlude form.
Review: Rapidly approaching the 150 mark, Katakana Edits saddles up funk-disco DJ-and-producer outta Brighton - Fray Bentos - for session 139. Holding down the ballroom beats in the disco burning "Stabbed In The Back", get a 11-minute Billie Jean turner in "Re-Clubbed". Bentos adds a classic Marvin Gaye vocal and sax to a '90s UK pop inspired anthem subtle nestled in the background (for a truly euphoric mix) - next to some sublime, sleeper dub techno only the deepest diggers could discover in "Georges Pudding". From disco to dub techno.
Review: 2024 will mark a decade since Milos "Loshmi" Djordjevic launched the 'Serious Edits' series. With that significant anniversary looming, the Serbian producer has quietly released the 28th instalment, a ten-track selection that includes a mixture of unheard rubs and '2024 mixes' of gems from the catalogue. There's plenty of guaranteed party-starting fare on show, with our picks including the horn-toting disco-house release of 'Party No. 9', rolling Oliver Cheetham re-rub 'Saturday' (a house-style revision of all-time anthem 'Get Down Saturday Night'), the hard-wired disco-boogie-goes-house flex of 'Holiday In Abroad' (a Change re-rub), and the grunting disco-rock pump of 'Sweet & Nasty (2024 mix)'.
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