Disco Discharge: An Essay By Alan Jones
The Quietus , September 15th, 2009

Long before you heard it, you could feel it – a throbbing, pounding beat that seemed to pulse through walls and vibrate in the air as it echoed out of brightly lit club entrances up from dingy stairwells past cloakrooms. Then you heard that unmistakable sound, a ‘four-on-the-floor’ bass drum thump, thump, thump, thump, pushed through a bank of state-of-the-art speakers that grew even louder as you inexorably moved towards its increasingly eardrum-shattering source. That’s when the evocative multi-coloured light shapes hit you full in the face; a giddy demi monde of human spirals captured by reflecting facets of spinning mirror globes. Gyrating flashes freeze-framed in strobe effects, swallowed up in a swirling galaxy of ultraviolet stars. Kaleidoscopic revolving puddles of the rainbow flitted from vivid intensity to deep shadow. Suddenly dry ice smoke effects engulfed you, obscuring the stiletto heels, trainers and platform shoes in a shroud of sparkling fog. Out of which the disembodied weaving crowd warmly beckoned you into their swaying, sweating midst and the room became a boogie wonderland pulsating with one accord. The deafening music never stopped, not for a single moment. From the second the tribal throb moved from suspended tweeters and woofers to vibrate your rib cage, it continued relentlessly until the gathering dejectedly dispersed into dawn’s early light. As Idris Muhammed sings in this superb collection, ‘Could Heaven Ever Be Like This?’


Welcome to the world of Disco, where the music has never stopped for a 70s generation it defined. Die-hard devotees who loved the atmosphere, the fun and the thrill of the circus environment so much it became the enduring soundtrack of their lives! Who came to appreciate the double irony contained in the title of the all-time classic Disco anthem ‘I Will Survive’ - when everyone who really should have known better said it wouldn’t! Who wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing the dazzling white three-piece suit or glitter boob tube of popular polyester myth! Because the soaring melodies, harmonies and tunes were so powerful, so fantastic and so epic in emotional contouring that more than thirty years after ‘Saturday Night Fever’ spawned international dance mania on a massive scale Disco is still here. Just as fashionable and even more relevant than ever as pop culture. Like The Players Association say, ‘Turn The Music Up’. Loud!

Read the rest at: http://thequietus.com/articles/02734-disco-discharge-an-exclusive-mix-and-essay-by-alan-jones