The Month In Clubs: July

The Month In Clubs: July

28 July, 2008
by: Robin

Unless you've been living under a giant glitter-ball, you're probably aware that disco is now a basic nightlife staple, like hotdogs, fake cocaine or illegal minicabs. Far from taking place in establishments equipped with monster, million-pound mirror globes, however, in 2008 the natural homes of this formerly glamorous music seem to be basements in Dalston and 'characterful' pubs – obviously places unlikely to be blessed with decoration at all, other than of the most pikey, mobile-DJ kind.

The long-running Cocadisco night, for instance, was resurrected last year in the seedy setting of The Dolphin, in Hackney, before moving on to Visions Video Bar, a below-stairs venue on Kingsland High Street with lots of tiny, seriously ancient televisions inexplicably fixed to the walls. And until June, the Disco Bloodbath parties usually happened Passion, a bright pink Amhurst Road basement now put out of action by the renowned party people at Hackney Council. Fortunately, finding new, semi-legit venues in east London appears to be almost as easy as you'd imagine, so after a successful tryout last month the guys are back at their new place in August.

When the whole thing first started to take on major momentum, nights like Future Brain (now on every month at the Korsan bar) were about digging up lost weirdness from the post-disco era, namely kitsch synthesiser interpretations from Italy and some of the other ill-advised attempts at glamour, mystique or futurism that litter European pop history. Enthusiasts of modern disco, on the other hand, tended focus on the 'cosmic' sound of earnest Scandinavian producers like Prins Thomas and Lindstrøm, before New Yorker Mike Simonetti created a huge fuss around his admittedly great Italians Do It Better imprint. The man behind arty Brooklyn rock label Troubleman Unlimited basically gave arty Brooklyn rock bands (like Chromatics and Glass Candy) the chance to reinvent themselves with dreamy, post-punk-inflected electronic disco workouts.

All that sort of stuff is still popular, with British enthusiasm for Italians… acts culminating in the sold-out show Chromatics came over to play at Café 1001. But at the moment, what's really worth getting all excited about on is all the material being made in Britain. A few weeks ago, J Saul Kane's once-patchy DC label celebrated its current clutch of artists from the alternative side of disco – including Padded Cell, The Emperor Machine and The Oscillation – with a compilation release party at Corsica Studios. More interestingly, ubiquitous but unbeatably fun London duo Heartbreak have just signed a deal with Lex, who'll rerelease the 'We're Back' single soon and get them on stage at the Solexism label night on 6 July.

If you only check out one thing that we're ranting about here, though, get the new CD compilation from Andy Blake's Dissident label. Since the first super-limited 12-inch came out last autumn, every DJ with a vague inclination toward metallic robot-disco or weird, arpeggiated techno has been checking the name like they're getting commission – and, what's more amazing, actually going into shops and buying the releases. New label History Clock should shortly achieve a similar following. Run by Nathan Gregory Wilkins, who co-promotes ESP at The Star of Bethnal Green and Private Party, which takes place beneath an Old Street restaurant, debut release 'Gamma Model' is already getting heavy play from DJs like Optimo's JD Twitch and The Idjut Boys.

Listening to forthcoming History Clock material, for instance, which references progressive rock and early electronic experimentation, or Dissident's stuff, which sometimes resemble Detroit-esque techno as much as anything, it would be stating the massively obvious to say this isn't disco in the sense of the Bee Gees. In fact, people will wonder if much of it is disco at all. But apart from the fact that disco was always more of a scene than a sound, the point is that's it's all united as a reaction against more established electronic dance music, one that thrives on looking back to forgotten or scorned sources of inspiration.

Let's finish off with some more stuff you could go to, just to prove this isn't total hot air: Moskow Diskow launched in June at A10, Say Yes is also at The Star of Bethnal Green, and The Joiners Arms hosts the weekly Macho City parties. In the meantime, there are of course many blogs that might entertain you, including Human Shield (featuring contributions from Ali Renault of Heartbreak) and Mike Simonetti's, and also this really quite amazing video for History Clock cohort Mickey Moonlight's cover of Sun Ra's 'Interplanetary Music'. The next big thing is definitely going to be outer-space jazz reworked for the dancefloor, trust us.

Robin