Collection: Disco/Funk/Soul

'Maledetta Quella Notte' is the first EP by Il Mago del Gelato, a new band from Milan (IT) with a strong Mediterranean imprint. This first album of theirs runs through funk, afrobeat and jazz; all the divergent strands make up the project, later convergent and blending in a nigh-perfect balance. Warm, watery, jazz-futuristic and easy on the ears, it's all held together by the uniquely Milanese fusion of vocoder, percussion, 80s synths, and roots guitars.

A near-mythical release from the Italian composer/bassist/karate don Pino Presti, Shitan was a one-off project in 1977. Slow, pensive, full of tension and loaded with detailed cinematic elements, it still sounds forward-thinking today. No surprises that the original 12"s regularly go for hundreds. Madly the long version never made it to the original 12" so this is the first time the full five minute version has been available. As if a repress wasn't enough reason to jump on this!

Best Records get right to the heart of true Italo disco with this body-poppin' killer from 1983. REM were made up of Paolo Alfani and Nicola Serena, both based in Florence and well ahead of the curve with their experimental electronic disco sound. Making fantastic use of the Mattel Speak & Spell for their vocal hooks, this enterprising duo cooked up a veritable club bomb with their fusion of sleek drum machine rhythms, throbbing acid basslines and romantic synth tones that would come to be widely used in Detroit techno some years later. There's a full original take of the track on the A side, while the flip features a tweaked "remix" version to give you even more of that robo-vocoder action.

Moar is an alias from French DJ and producer Jerome Potin, who has been gifting us groove-laden edit gear and his own original productions for decades now. His commitment to funk can never be in doubt, and so it goes on this drop for his 45 Loves label. It's a more recent venture which has carried a vast array of edits from the man's archives, championing less obvious grooves from hidden corners of Afrobeat, high life and elsewhere. The A-side offering on here is a slickly looped up strutter with a little filter house flair, while the B-side is a smoky, submerged affair for those subtler moments in a party.

Like many artists on the Napoli electronic music scene, Parbleu make music that tiptoes a fine line between multicoloured dancefloor nostalgia and forward-thinking musical fusion. Elios, their second album, expands on the Afro-cosmic and Mediterranean disco vibe of its predecessor, 2020's Danse Cett Zik, by reaching for a further range of kaleidoscopic and tactile music influences, most notably Balearica, mid-80s Mediterranean pop, zouk, dubbed-out synth-boogie and the kind of electronic dancefloor mutations that emerged from South Africa at the tail end of the 1980s. It's fantastic stuff all told, with the album sitting somewhere between fellow Italian outfits Channel Operators and Nu Genea.

The French pop scene is vast and full of treasures but Claude Francois is one of its more mysterious and mythical characters. He was active on the scene from the 60s until he was taken away too soon in a sad domestic accident in 1978 having been a trained percussionist and something of a teenage sensation. He sure did know how to write some killer grooves, though, and in fact co-wrote and sang the original version of what would become 'My Way,' no less. This one, 'Alexandrie Alexandra' was recorded in October 1977 and now gets some special reruns from the one and only Dimitri From Paris who brings the joyous disco goodness.

Edit & Dub

Edit & Dub

Edit & Dub

VA

I Bellissimi Dischi Di Ornavasso

G&D

Pigeon

Daniel Monaco

Gigi Testa