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December 06, 2004
We have a Jaguar Farm!
Unclassics (Morgan Geist) - Purple Flash Orchestra - Freedom Now
A good Monday morning song, because it starts with an orgy of quaking cowbell. Then there's some dialogue between two or three slinky keyboards, an ambivalent guitar line, and sweeping, huge, majestic, rainbowtronic strings. But that cowbell, how it strives for your love! Enter stage right a galumphing bass line. Two minutes and fifty-one seconds of solid, sweaty hugs from strangers in a danceclub. This would be the song to put on at a party when you're about to do something amazing (or terrible).
Unclassics is a collection of obscure disco tunes from 1978-1985 put together by the unquestionably great Morgan Geist (who, with Darshan Jesrani, performs as the amazing Metro Area- whose songs I'll post here soon enough). It's a mix in the DJ sense, so everything flows together seamlessly, courtesy of Geist's tweaking and pruning and distension skills. In the liner notes, there's an interesting section where the discussion turns to the way in which some bad (cheesy, overproduced, etc.) songs, or bad portions of songs, make everything else that much sweeter by comparison, when dropped into a DJ's set, for example. And it makes good aesthetic sense, in a way, that a set would be better off for being a little 'dirty' or 'sloppy', and not adhering to the expectations of the audience (or accepted 'good musical taste').
You can buy 'Unclassics' directly from Environ Records, which is itself run by Morgan Geist. If you're interested, here's an interview with the man himself, about why he did the mix.
Posted by matt at December 6, 2004 08:00 AM