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Black Devil Disco Club returns with Nancy Sinatra, Afrika Bambaataa, Jon Spencer & more


 
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

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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06.09.2011
09:42 am
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