Crack

The year is 1978. You’ve got a dodgy hairdo even by today’s standards. You like to think you’re a bit of Dancing Dave, hanging out with your cool cat chums in the swankiest disco nightspots in London town.

You shake your stuff to the tunes of the time. You’re part of the first generation clubbers and in the background there is disco cuts from Chic, Donna Summer, Gorgio Moroder and a whole new world of synths, mind-bending drugs and neon’s (this time not painted on your face, these lights come out of the floor).

You become fascinated with the disco genre and in your new world of discovery stumble across a relatively unknown record called Disco Club by a French artist named Black Devil. Despite the record’s original brilliance, it escapes universal recognition leaving you with a gem. A completely unique snapshot of forward thinking disco that cements your position as a disco aficionado to those who care but most importantly in your own head. Literally no one else knows about it. It’s a disco memento of your era.
Fast forward thirty-years to your living room. In between playing for pathetic sums of money in online poker rooms and sporadically checking his Facebook account, your son is playing some familiar music.

“What you listening too?” you ask.
“I found this real cool electronica thing Dad, I think they’re called Black Devil Disco Club, I’ve never heard of them before, but I’ve been given their new album. It’s amazing.”

Here ensues a father-son conversation in which Dad suddenly feels like he’s won more cool points than he has in previous ten years and son is completely bemused because the extremely contemporary artist he’s listening too is actually in his mid-sixties and returning from a longer hiatus than Portishead.

Black Devil Disco Club could perhaps win the award for ‘all time biggest enigma in dance music history’. The re-release of Disco Club in 2004 on Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label had the knickers of disco lovers old and new extremely twisted. Deemed to be the lost classic re-touched and re-produced with a few added percussion segments thrown in, the futuristic and ultra-modern sound of Disco Club had those in the know up in arms.

Theories abounded as to the true nature of the record. Of all the labels Disco Club could have been released, Aphex Twin’s made it extremely susceptible to prankster theories. Many people assumed this was the latest effort in the long line of Richard D James’s public fooling frolics and that he was in fact the Black Devil making the whole thing an elaborate hoax.

The official identities of Black Devil are two Frenchmen named Joachim Sherylee and Junior Claristidge, but even these people were rumoured to be the false identities of two Parisian library musicians who go by the names of Bernard Fevre and Jacky Giordano.

Confused? Well fuck the history lesson and listen to the music. Black Devil has released two albums since Disco Club reappeared: 28 After (2006) (a clear and obvious reference to the years in between releases) and Eight Oh Eight (2008). Both records incorporate parts of other Black Devil songs making it incredibly difficult to separate the old from the new. The good thing is it doesn’t matter a jot.

This is 21st Century disco with one foot in the past and the other a few million light years in the future. It’s bold, dark and utterly infectious. Percussion bubbles brilliantly in the background giving every tune an absolutely unmistakable groove-line that allows the true brilliance of Black Devil to work over the top.

Spacious, futuristic synthesizers are used to chronically eerie effect, as are the garbled, odd lyrics. It’s like disco’s really sadistic, evil twin has just ripped the fake afro wig off and pissed all over it. There is no room for gimmicks in these tunes. They are haunting blasts from the dirty past disco never knew brought right up to date. The standout track from 28 After is the brooding I Regret the Flower Power, an unbelievably un-nerving piece of peak-time paranoia, which doesn’t relent. Similarly the ethereal chanting on The Devil in Us is genuinely scary, yet totally danceable.

It’s not an improbability the mythical origins of Black Devil have accidentally shrouded the quality of the music but it has undeniably added to the legend that encapsulates one of the oddest and most brilliant things Crack has heard for donkeys.
A quick check on discogs.com shows an original of Disco Club going for the rather cheeky price of €399. Luckily Crack’s old man’s got one upstairs then isn’t it.



Tune: Free For The Girls

http://www.myspace.com/blackdevildiscoclub26

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