Mar­cel King — Reach For Love (320k)

This is what hap­pened yes­ter­day. I was walk­ing home, mi belly full after late lunch, my thoughts deeply on dif­fi­cul­ties of life. And there it was, near the side­walk, down this lit­tle bank. Some­thing round and black stick­ing out of the snow. Had to get down imme­di­ately, and within few steps there I was: kneedeep in snow with this 12″ in my hands. Quickly to home and some trusty ole AM Record Cleaner con­sumed. So here we go.

This song appears to have been a def­i­nite floor­filler at the leg­endary Hacienda club in Man­ches­ter, Great Britain — hence — a party banger? I’m start­ing to get fix­ated on extend­ing the mean­ing of this bit point­less term. Cur­rent view seems to be too lim­ited. Any­ways few of the pro­duc­ers involved with this song would be some dudes called Don­ald John­son (known from A Cer­tain Ratio) and Bernard Sum­ner (of New Order). Below some juicy details on how this song came onto being.

Rumour has it that New Order’s man­ager, Rob Gret­ton (a huge north­ern soul fan him­self), found his hero Mar­cel sleep­ing home­less in the back of a car. Enthu­si­as­ti­cally, Mar­cel was asked to make the record which was pro­duced by the Bernard Sumner/ Don­ald John­son, Be Music/ Dojo music axis, giv­ing it an elec­tronic based pow­er­ful rhythm and bass line riff pos­si­bly influ­enced by Gior­gio Moroder with its repet­i­tive and demand­ing sequenc­ing. The song is cer­tainly a pre­cur­sor to the rock/dance crossover genre.

The vocal range and con­trol on ‘Reach For Love’ was excep­tion­ally high level, both from a tech­ni­cal and emo­tional stand. The record was per­haps too intense for day­time air­play but was cer­tainly one of the great lost hits of the 1980s. It’s incred­i­bly baf­fling how nobody has ever cov­ered the song since.
– http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/review/1851

The b-side Dub Ver­sion is also nice. No kick drum at all, some syn­th­bass flour­ishes, gui­tar and synth licks here and there. Snare and claps plus conga/bongo per­cus­sion run­ning through the whole 7 min­utes and 39 sec­onds. And the vocals of course, in style of dub mixes famil­iar from lots of 80s songs, cut up from time to time, delayed and reverbed. Def­i­nitely a Dj tool — to be so worked out like a m*****f***ker.

Who­ever it was, being maybe bit frus­trated, maybe even a frus­trated dj, think­ing: “F**k it, to hell with this 12″, NOBODY LISTENS TO THIS 80S SHIT!” — my sin­cere thanks go there. Made my day, espe­cially as Mar­cel King’s advice is mostly the sorta every­one likes to hear from fam­ily & friends some­times. Or from a vinyl record.

Dynamic Break­ers — Dynamic (Total Con­trol) (320 kbps)

Ever won­dered how Bob James’ Nau­tilus would sound were it done in old school elec­tro style? Dynamic Breaker’s Dynamic (Total Con­trol) totally mim­icks Nau­tilus’ bassline. This is also anal­o­gous to what New­cleus and other sim­i­lar type of elec­trogroups did that time: not-so-great raps but ortho­dox electro-funk beats.

The track is pro­duced by New­cleus (Chilly B and Cozmo D). No cred­its, no com­pen­sa­tion and they were even cheated out of writer’s credit and roy­al­ties for it. The idea was that Dynamic would rap but actu­ally the rap­ping is done by other rap crew called Total Con­trol (Dynamike, Frankie Dee and d.j Johnny Juice).

Dynamic Break­ers were actu­ally part of larger crew called Dynamic Rock­ers. It is the Dynamic Break­ers that you see in the doc­u­men­tary Style Wars b-boying against Rock Steady Crew. Though lat­ter is regarded as a pre­mier b-boy group, it was the Dynamic Break­ers that gained more pop­u­lar­ity appear­ing in movies like “Deliv­ery Boys” (some real old school cheese) and “The Exterminator”.

Sources:
OldSchoolHipHop.com
Jam-On Pro­duc­tions

Change — Oh What A Feel­ing (Paul Hard­cas­tle Remix) (320k)

Soon no snow in Rovaniemi. That’ll take maybe a bit over one month.

George Clin­ton — Erotic City (Sasso Re-Edit) (320)

Upload­ing — at least to youtube — Prince’s orig­i­nal ver­sion of Erotic City is out of the ques­tion , so here is the George Clinton’s ver­sion edited by Sasso. Per­haps unnec­es­sary edit but nev­er­the­less use­ful. If you ever become tired to Prince’s falsetto you can play out loud this ver­sion as it is faith­ful to the original.

‘Erotic City’ is def­i­nitely in my per­sonal all-time top 10 or some­thing like that.

Pulse 2 — Hard Nut To Crack (320k)

Pulse 2 — Dance-85 (320k)

These elec­tri­cally funk­ing tracks come from ex-Soviet Union. Text below is from back cover of the record.

This disc is issued in a series jointly pre­pared by the “Melo­dia” firm and the USSR Sports Com­mit­tee and may be rec­om­mended to accom­pany sports coach­ing ses­sions, com­pe­ti­tions and other active recreations.

PULSE 2

Zig­mar Liepinš
INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC (“Sports & Music” Series).

So prob­a­bly Zig­mar Liepinš is the artist here and Pulse 2 is the title of the record. There’s also a record named Pulse 1 (+ also Aer­o­bic exer­cises) — these are yet to be found from Rovaniemi… Check Discogs entry for Pulse 2.

Also have my top 6 tunes list for Jan­u­ary 2010 (these are not in any par­tic­u­lar order):

O Chil­dren — Dead Disco Dancer (The Golden Fil­ter Remix) — youtube video
K.I.D. – Hupendi Muziki Wangu (You Don’t Like My Music?) — youtube video
Tesla Boy — Elec­tric Lady — youtube video
Edwin Starr — Con­tact (Fro­mage is Look­ing at You Edit)
Pulse 2/Zigmar Liepinš — Hard Nut To Crack — check @ kyny­nasty
Kerim Khan – Sea­side Ren­dezvous (Seaside-Dub) — check @ kynynasty

Older lists here.