New buys, old product

Last Thursday/Friday saw my first major haul of records of the new year when I took a trip down south to Cork and the unsurpassable Plugd Records. I’d shamefully not paid a visit in the best part of a year so was looking forward to see what goodies were in store for me…

The only downside was that the boss man, Jimmy, had yet to receive any orders in the new year so far, so I was looking at going through mostly older releases which gave me an opportunity to pick some twelves I really should have already, but just hadn’t gotten around to. What I’ll mention I don’t think have been talked about here before (though I could be wrong). And I also got to dig through the Plugd vaults – well, some cupboards under the racks at least – which threw up some nice surprises. So instead of starting my posting for the year with some hot off the press gems you’ll just have to deal with me yapping about older shit.

There had been a bit of a whoopla over the last couple of years over Dopplereffekt, what with them playing live in Dublin, the ’07 release of Calabi Yau Space and the reissue of the monumental Gesamtkunstwerk. But last year also saw the release of a new Der Zyklus 12″ – Cherenkov Radiation, which may not throw up many surprises for previous fans but was still a nice dark and atmospheric slice of electro from the vaults of Mr Muller/Donald. I also picked up a copy of the old Arpanet album Wireless Internet, which is rather brilliant.

Moving in a more techno direction there is a slightly odd series of 12″ compilations out on new label Plastic Recs, which claim to be rare and unreleased classics. I picked up Vol. 3, which contains a Redshape rmx of Markus Enochson – which can’t be very rare as it’s only a year old, and though it’s my favourite rmx of his it’s not really a classic – a brilliant Dan Curtain track from his 1994 The Silicon Dawn album, which made the purchase a must for me and a shite Rennie Foster cut, which if it is rare, should have stayed so.  On a purely dancefloor banger tip is a  12″ from scottish label Iridite, who’ve put out some pleasant melodic techno in the past. This twelve contains 3 versions of the one track who’s lead sound is lifted a little bit from John Tejada’s Chorgs (which Kerri Chandler also stole off for Bar-a-Thyme a few years back), but I’m really digging the more electro tinged rmx from Marco Bernardi.

Swiftly moving onto a slightly housier tip I picked up a few  gems in the 2nd hand. Firstly are two Theo 12″s from 9-10 years ago, The Location of Lost Colours and Overyohead. I was just starting out buying records when these were coming out, and I was a devoted techno head, so it’s great that I can now discover this music, courtesy of people for some reason or another wanting to get rid of them. This release from Kai Alce – with a little help from Ron Trent – also landed on my lap for a few euros as did Keith Worthy’s Emotional Content. In a way it makes me sad that a new a record as Emotional Content can find it’s way into a bargain bin, but there’s just no accounting for some people. Maybe someone just ripped it to MP3 and then decided to trade it back in. I may be profiting from such an outcome but it still just isn’t right

Here on this site we have a mixed view on the current spate of Edit 12″‘s that continue to flood the racks. Most recently Tom was bigging up the latest Moxie, which is my favourite label for this sort of malarky. I’d fall into the camp that isn’t madly enthused by the version of Love Has Come Around, and instead I’m gonna highlight the previous Moxie, featuring edits by Pilooski – who’s previous The The edit is a real gem. It goes down a fairl spazzy disco/cosmic/pyschedelic route, and is really really good fun. One side – sorry, I don’t have it in front of me now – is especially loolaa, with a really insistent kick drum tearing through it.  There are times when I enjoy edits as I don’t actually know the originals and have nothing to compare them to. This recent twelve from new bootleg (oooh, i mentioned the dirty word)/edits label Disco Exotique features some enjoyable music that I can’t compare to the originals.  Save Our Love has some rude bass and fun Italo touches and the Spacemen 3 edit directs them in the way of the dancefloor more so than I imagine most Spacemen 3 music – going on the little i’ve heard of them in the past.

Quickly returning back to new music with the latest from Cyber Dance, a new label run by Casionova who’s also released on Dissident in the last year or two.  It features 4 tracks from 4 different artists, my picks of which is Casionova’s Glades, which borrows heavily from early Depeche Mode – no bad thing in my book – and new guy Spruxx’s Ghetto Bird, which is carried along on a nice electro beat and some cool italo/new wave sounds washing over it in the background.

Finally I picked up some nice older bits and bobs. The unidisc re-isssue of The Cover Girls “Inside Outside” doesn’t have an entry in discogs to link to. It a fun late 80’s freestyle electro-pop song that should get some bodies shaking on a less than serious dancefloor. Renegades of Funk is an old Afrika Bambattaa electro jam whose vocal is somewhat hilariously all over the shop on it. So much so the intstrumental on the flipside is more to my liking but I can see the Renegades Chant on the inside providing some fun too, in the right place. Leeroy Burgess gets the once over by Shep Pettibone on this reissue – which was also remastered by Tom Moulton – from ’03. The original Heartbreaker is from the early 80’s and nearly veers into a sound thats a bit too clean for me – in terms of this sort of disco – but not enough for me to not buy it! The last of my purchases I’ll mention confuses me a little bit. I was thinking it was either a bootleg or a legit re-issue  of a Patrick Adams/Harvey Miller production from The Paper Dolls; When I See You I Can’t Stop Dancing.  It’s a new release, but I can’t find any mention of an original of it, as The Paper Dolls ain’t been round for some time. The only conclusion I can come up with is that Tyson Records is still going and they’ve dug out some unreleased music. Maybe someone can give me an insight into this?  Either way it’s an uptempo disco-proto house number which stands out for me due the mad wonky keys that come in and out every so often.

On a side note, for any Dublin City dwellers I’ll be playing a selection of these along with a lot more Italo, disco, electro and Chi-town sounds at the next Lunar Disko this Saturday in Kennedys. There’s 3 of us on rotation on the night so it should be random and lot’s of fun. Just about time to shake off those post Christmas blues don’t you think?