Seminal electronic disco pioneer Bernard Fevre, aka Black Devil Disco Club, has returned with an album of all new material featuring a stellar cast list of guest vocalists. Lending their dulcet pipes to the spectral four-four funk are Nancy Sinatra, Afrika Bambaataa, Jon Spencer, The Horrors’ Faris Badwan, YACHT, Cocknbullkid and more.

Black Devil Disco Club was one of the first European acts to record disco using mainly synthesisers in the late 70s, finding a unique sound that was both darker and druggier than the popular electronic symphonies of Giorgio Moroder. Though never finding a great amount of success or acknowledgement at the time, the act has had a major revival over the last few years due to their influence on the techno, nu-disco and Italo scenes. The original 1978 Disco Club LP release was re-issued in 2004 by Rephlex, and Fevre has returned to recording new music for the electronic label Lo Recordings.

The new album Circus maintains the core insistent dancefloor groove married to a spine-tingling creepiness that made the act stand out. The sound has not progressed very much but really doesn’t need to - it was singular at the time and remains that way to this day. And rather than being the usual roster of big names with little to offer, the guest vocalists are well chosen and work within the context. Worth special mention are the contributions of with the rock singers Jon Spencer and Faris Badwan of the Horrors and Cat’s Eyes, who lend the music a gothic timbre, while Afrika Bambaataa forgoes the rapping to deliver a menacing cackle worthy of an urban witch doctor. Nobody else does Black Forest disco quite as good as this. The first single from the album is the track “To Ardent” which features the legendary Nancy Sinatra, which may seem like an odd choice on paper but works beautifully:

Black Devil Disco Club ft Nancy Sinatra - “To Ardent”
 

 
Black Devil Disco Club ft Faris Badwan - “Distrust”
 

 
Black Devil Disco Club ft Jon Spencer - “Fuzzy Dream”
 

 
You can hear (and buy) Black Devil Disco Club’s Circus album in full on the Lo Recordings website, while over at Menergy we are giving away a download of the Grosvenor remix of “To Ardent”.

Previously on DM:
Black Devil: Pioneering electronica from the 1970s

 
It reads like the synopsis for a Phil Alden Robinson

This is what happened to Herk Harvey, who happened on the Saltair Pavilion on the south shore of Salt Lake, when driving back from California, in the early 1960s. Herk worked as a director for Centron Films, America's leading producers of industrial and educational movies, and he was inspired by Saltair's eerie, haunted appearance. Harvey devised a scenario, and with help from colleagues at Centron, money form his girlfriend, a budget of $33,000, an unknown cast, and three weeks to film, he made The Carnival of Souls. It was a kismet moment, as Harvey returned to his work at Centron, the cast continued with their own lives, and the film’s star, Candace Hilligoss, only made one other film.

Saltair was the Coney island of the West, opened in 1893, a large structure with Moorish domes, leading on to a pier:

The girth of the resort rested on over 2,000 pylons, driven into the bed along the lakeshore. Many of the original posts can still be seen today, over a hundred years after the resort’s initial construction.

With many resorts of unseemly repute dotting the Salt Lake shoreline, the predominant Mormon population of the Salt Lake Valley called for a retreat that matched their conservative standards; the Great Saltair answered their call. Mormon couples could visit Saltair by taking a short train ride and dance the night away without becoming victims of indecorous rumors. This was due to the open and frequent supervision of activities at Saltair by prominent members of the Mormon Church. The Mormon Church, however, suffered some criticism for the sale of coffee and tea—both substances prohibited by church doctrine—and for opening the resort on Sundays.

Owners of Saltair enjoyed the popularity of the Western resort. From the beginning, the lake retreat was intended to be a counterpart to Coney Island. Its pylon bridge led thousands of patrons through its gigantic doors to countless days of lounging and swimming and countless nights of dancing and romance. Being one of the first amusement parks in America, it became the most popular family destination west of New York.

Fire damaged the resort twice in 1925 and again in 1931, this time causing $100,000 worth of damage. Like everywhere else in the 1930s, the Depression took its toll, as did the war, which led the venue to close in the 1950s, leaving its massive decaying structure, disused rail tracks, and rollercaoster. No wonder Herk Harvey was inspired:

This was the Saltair I knew firsthand… the Saltair of the schlock horror movie classic Carnival of Souls..rotting wood, broken glass, collapsed staircases… and always, the smell of the lake, the stganation of the swimming pool dredged years earlier, littered with half-submerged dodge-‘em cars.

Saltair lay deserted for years, but reopened as a music venue in 2005.

As for Herk Harvey’s The Carnival of Souls? Well, what was intended as a low-budget B-movie is now rightly considered a classic of gothic-horror cinema. So, next time you pass a location that gives you goose-bumped inspiration, just remember Harvey and imagine what you can do.
 

 
Bonus clip of Saltair, after the jump…
 

 
What with the acclaimed release of Brad Gooch’s long-in-the-works biography, and Criterion’s recent reissuing of John Huston’s WIse Blood, I’m guessing Flannery O’Connor‘s receiving more NPR airplay this summer than the latest Moby offering.
Last week, I spent some time with the Criterion disc, and let me tell you, despite the usual “mentat intensity” from Dourif, Wise Blood has NOT aged well.  So, when you’re hankering for some Southern-fried gothic but don’t have the time—or patience—for a full-length feature, you might wanna check out Black Hearts Bleed Red, Jeri Cain Rossi’s 1992 film adaption of O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.”  It’s satisfyingly austere, lacks Wise Blood’s grating soundtrack, and hey, who’s that misfit with a rifle?  Why, it’s Joe Coleman!

Jeri Cain Rossi’s Black Hearts Bleed Red