Subscribe to the A Brooklyn Life Radio Podcast or visit A Brooklyn Life to download Apocalyptic Well-Being, featuring a laid back mix of classics from Raw Silk, edits by Greg Wilson, Chicago house classics by ESP and Rickster, dreamy disco from Hott City and chilly deep techno from Swedish masters Cari Lekebusch as Mr. James Barth, Jesper Dahlbäck and Sebastian Ahrenberg as Sunday Brunch, and Jesper Dahlbäck and John Dahlbäck together as Hugg and Pepp.

Every track from Fram’s Unnatural High to Mr. James Barth’s Music is the Key puts me in that dreamy state of well-being that the mix title refers to. Try not to let your disbelief that Alexander Robotnick’s Dark Side of the Spoon was actually written and recorded in 1983 disrupt your musical high, and keep an eye out for more Svek on the A Brooklyn Life Radio horizon - rumor has it that two of the DJs have an all-Svek series up their collective sleeves.

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A reader recently brought it to my attention that comments were not working. An overdue upgrade of WordPress seems to have fixed the problem. Happy commenting!

And, in order to make this post a little less boring, check out the latest issue of Discopia magazine, featuring tasty interviews with Tim Sweeney, I-F, Alexander Robotnick and Danny Krivit.

Discopia Issue #7

When my pals at A Brooklyn Life asked me to make a mix for their new podcast, I couldn’t resist mixing in a little nod to my dearly missed New Yorker and soon-to-be New Yorker friends. Maybe it’s a little cheesy, but certainly no worse than working our beloved hometown’s airport code into the title. Subscribe to the A Brooklyn Life Radio Podcast or visit A Brooklyn Life to download ATLien In My Pocket, featuring tracks and edits by Roboterwerke, Todd Terje, Vera, Azoto, Terrace, Faze Action, Idjut Boys, Lindstrøm, Lindbaek, and more.

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Discopia Magazine, now in it’s 6th issue, features interviews, charts, event reviews, history and editorials covering all things disco with a little funk, post-punk, electro, and italo on the side. Issue 6 focuses on Gay disco with Top 10 Gay Record Sleeves and Daniel Wang’s explicit and possibly NSFW account of his introduction to disco in 1990s San Francisco; Issue 5, Disco-Europe Express, features interviews with robot disco favorites Bangkok Impact, Idjut Boys, Serge of Clone, Lindstrom & Prins Thomas, and Marco Passarani.

[ Discopia Webzine ]

Love Magic is… disco and disco-edit love from Prins Thomas, Gary’s Gang, Easy Going, Jimmy Ross, John Davis and the Monster Orchestra and more. Don’t fight the feeling - download today!

[ download Love Magic - .mp3 - 71mb ]

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· Williamsburg’s finest disco & 80s pizza parties, AllDisco and The Beat Club, now deliver their playlists direct to you via podcast. If you don’t have iTunes set to get more than the 4 latest episodes then you’ll miss a really stellar 3-part set by Scott Zacharias, Jeremy Campbell and Dan Selzer from the July 16th AllDisco. Go download it the old-fashioned way here.

· Rob T. of the Dorkwave crew in Detroit kindly passed this four-part, two-hour Kirk Degiorgio disco edit mix our way:

Kirk Degiorgio London Xpress part 1
Kirk Degiorgio London Xpress part 2
Kirk Degiorgio London Xpress part 3
Kirk Degiorgio London Xpress part 4

· Maestro is a documentary four years in the making that explores the history of House in New York City and includes footage from the Paradise Garage, the Loft, the Gallery and interviews with Francis Grasso, Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles, David Mancuso and Nicky Siano. Criminal Records in L5P as of 7:09 this evening had one left in stock.

· Is your city a sucker? LCD Soundsystem graces Atlanta with their presence on November 12 @ Earthlink Live.

Sometimes it was 5 a.m.—and sometimes it was 10 a.m.—but regardless, it was a slowed down, emotional and communal groove that was unique to each DJ, each club, each morning. If you felt the magic of 5 a.m. just once…you never forgot it.

Guaranteed to leave you desperate for access to a time machine, 5 a.m. Ago is a record of one man’s experiences partying in clubs in NYC, LA and San Francisco from 1977 to 1987. The author, who’s 1st name is only revealed once via a scan of his SoCal Disco DJ Association membership card, created the documentary site in a quite successful attempt to share with us the magic of the 5 a.m. moment described above.

The site includes eloquent tributes to his two favorite DJs of the day, Bobby Viteritti and Larry Levan, and photos and descriptions of eight superclubs of the era, including well-known and documented venues like Paradise Garage and even some lesser-known (to me at least) hotspots like the exclusive and oh-so-80s private dance and video club, Private Eyes, where Steve played the role of both DJ and VJ as early as 1983. The photograph of the famous Trocadero mirror ball “cluster” (ha!) at Trocadero Transfer in San Francisco just about brings a tear to my eye, and I’m still reeling at the planetarium star projection and dome ceiling at the Saint.

The best part has to be reading all about the magic of 5 a.m. is getting to experience the audio yourself. The Records page includes full .mp3s for most of Steve’s top-40 essential records. I recommend cueing up this 1979 recording of Viteritti live at 5a.m. at the Trocadero (Windows Media), complete with crowd noises recording from a microphone hanging above the dance floor, for the full sensory experience.

This generous resource is the perfect multimedia companion to what seems to be widely accepted as the best disco history book written, Love Saves the Day by Tim Lawrence. You can check Steve’s review of Love Saves the Day on the Links page, which in of itself is bound to keep one occupied for at least another month with links to such enticing resources as Disco Box liner notes and HotDiscoMix.

Last night I had a Disco Emergency and mixed up some domestic disco classics from AKB, Class Action, Bombers and Electra, italo disco by Azoto, some modern (robot) disco from Daniel Wang, Alden Tyrell, Fatima Al-Qadiri & Brennan Green, and updates & disco edits from Joey Negro, Community Recordings & Magick. Do it!

Tracks 7, 8 and 9 make me want to travel back in time to be a fly on a studio wall in the late 70s and early 80s. Rather than imagining these tracks on dancefloors, I tend to visualize the creation process: the violinist and pianist sweating it out in the studio during Stand Up Sit Down, or the solo violinist in Any Time or Place making all hearts in the studio swell, or a smiling duo laying down the wholesome vocal tracks of Dancin’. The sheer expense of a single disco track will never cease to amaze me - in fact it must have been a good time to be a studio musician in New York or Philidelphia. My non-audiophile mixer and needles may have lost some of the details of these masterpieces, but if you try listening to this mix through nice headphones you’ll be amazed how many additional instruments and parts you can pick out.

[ download Disco Emergency - .mp3 - 58mb ]

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