Nightdubbing

Imagination's Night Dubbing is a record as important to me as Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express or Radioactivity. 

This was the album that made me want to do electronic music and actually to become a musician. 

DUB DISCO FUTURISTA.

Every single bit of it is pure pop perfection, from that electronically crystalline synth bass used in almost all the tracks to the drum programming, sequencing, effects.... plus all the melodies, its progressions and all the timbres. Arranged, produced and reworked by Steve Jolley and Tony Swain and Richard Lengyl, including a remix by Larry Levan for 'Changes'. Not to mention Leee John's most beautiful and elegant vocals ever, (here mostly re-sampled, cut and pasted and redistributed in space but also used sometimes without any effects) with all that brilliant panning and delaying all over. Futuristic illusionist flanger-ed spacious disco-melancholia for lovers and dreamers. Everything in the right place. The studio is the instrument here. The rework of music, of lights, of bodies talking and crystals. (A)temporal Oceanic-dub-disco-clap. Body talk, Music and Lights, Changes, Flashback, So Good So Right. Heart and Soul, 

C r y s t a l i z e d P E R F E C T I O N. 

I bought Night Dubbing in 1983 in a small shop in my home town Belo Horizonte in Brasil. 

Hackney / New York / Belo Horizonte / Sao Paulo / Hackney.

Written by Leee John, Ashley Ingram, Errol Kennedy

+ + Garage  UK classic -  Leee John - Your Mind, Your Body and Your Soul (SAS Phantasy Mix)

Realce or A Gente Precisa Ver O Luar

As a transcendental preparation when music really began to infiltrate my skin more consistently I bumped into Gilberto Gil's music. Gil made a huge impression on me.
The first time I heard his hit single 'Realce' on the radio in 1979 I knew I was listening to something special. That's when I heard the harmonics of its modal/ cosmic disco-funk with jazz-fusion... these luminous progressions and afro-disco warmth would follow him through many subsequent tracks such as "Toda Menina Baiana", A Gente Precisa Ver O Luar", "Banda Um", "Palco", "Lente Do Amor", 'O Afoxé é' amongst many other pieces. These are only a few examples of his unusual fusion afro-brazilian-futuristic pop with esoteric and modal disco. BUT this is another Gil. Not the late 60's, early 70's pre-tropicalia, post bossa-novista. This is Gil entering the 80's as post tropicalist entity who was simultaneoulsy interested in Earth Wind & Fire, late 70's disco-funk, reggae, MPB, baladas and radiophonic pop.

In 1982 I went to see him live at the Mineirinho stadium in Belo Horizonte.
To see and hear all of these songs performed live with his huge band Banda Um changed my  understanding of sound and pop. In parallel these songs also led me to Brazilian disco, synth pop, punk funk and post punk.

GHOST DANCE _ to be haunted before the mask of intellect

Before the mask of intellect
Before the reaches of consciousness
A nothing / A no thing / A no-where

Ken McMullen's superb take on Derrida's theory of mourning & hauntology.