Saturday, September 23, 2006

Discfunctional

Discfunction Records has long been a favorite of mine, they haven't put too much out lately, if anything at all, but they were or are one of the Idjut Boys many many labels and are almost always worth grabbing if u like a bit of left field, tripped out Disco that's full of stoner delays. Akwaaba, was one of their regulars, a production team made up of Steve Kotey (Chicken Lips), Paul Murphy & Tom Lee. They attended the Idjut's residency at The Cross many times where they found they were unavoidably influenced by the Boys, Dj Harvey, Dave Lee and the like. Their 1998 track 'Phlox', an epic fusion deep house classic became a big anthem at Body & Soul thanks to Francois Kervorkian and got into many dj's boxes at the time. It sounds a little dated now, mind u it's 80's glider guitar fusion style sounded dated then, but it remains a classic for me and reminds me of a time when a new kind of Disco was on the rise in underground clubbing.
Akwaaba - Phlox

Fast forward a little and Akwaaba released their second album 'Too Shiny' in 2002, also on Discfuntion, a great album with a wide range of sounds, all with that particular 'head-funk' thing they had going on. 'Velvet Vouchers' is almost entirely made up of beats, a proto broken beats, dub house disco number for shifting between moods with a driving pace and maximum detail. I've used this a lot, when playing out on more adventurous gigs to pretty good effect, especially for an up for it discerning crowd.
Akwaaba - Velvet Vouchers

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