Country: Germany
Genre: library music, cosmic, psychedelic, electronic
Year: 2008
Label: Permanent Vacation
Review: Continuing in their quest to deliver quality and obscure sought after music, Permanent Vacation go deeper than ever with their latest and new endeavour: “Space Oddities” A compilation of rare European library grooves from 1975-1984. Put together by Alexis Le-Tan and Jess, two obsessive French DJ’s, crate diggers and collectors; it is the fruit of many years of research, time, luck, passion and love. Searching the music library archives, the have dived into a world of spacey, cosmic, funky and freaky ... disco. Library music, mood music, source music or the French term musique d’illustration sonore, was produced from the early 50s by know and unknown composers and talented session musicians.
These records were never commercially available; you had to subscribe to the labels in order to get them. Used mainly in films, TV series or commercials they covered every genres, types of songs, atmospheres, and sound effects. Producers, beat dealers and discerning DJs have been hunting down these records for many years and using them as secret weapons. Alexis Le-Tan (music journalist and member of the Tigersushi Bass System) and Jess (formerly from the famed French house duo Jess & Crabbe and now drummer for punk band 10lec6) met in 2001 through a mutual love of no-wave and leftfield disco. In 2003 Jess came upon a big collection of Library music, which he bought for next to nothing. Whilst he was spending much time ciphering through it and finding the interesting bits, Alexis was digging in all things Cosmic, where along the way, he also started to pick up many bits and pieces from unheard of Library record labels. Inspired by Anti N.Y., Teutonik Disaster, NY noise, Disco not Disco compilations on labels like Gomma, Soul Jazz and Strut and with the current explosion of the nudisco-balearic-cosmic scene, the pair thought it would be appropriate to put together a collection of spacey, cosmic, funky and freaky disco focused tracks from their library discoveries, and reveal their best kept secrets to a wider audience.
Unlike many of these unlicensed/illegal bootlegs and edit records that have been sprouting out from everywhere in the last few years, they took the time and effort to hunt down all the composers or label owners who had the rights for the tracks, in order to license them properly and give credit where it is due. This was not an easy task as you can imagine but it was rewarding and worth the hunt as they hope to be doing more of this in the future. The artwork was done by close friends Check Morris and is a contemporary take on what an old Library record could have looked like today. They even went so far as to include a little description, as it was done back in the days, of each track. A booklet will be included in the CD, which contains original illustrations and extensive sleeve notes and for the vinyl lovers there will be a mini LP with the most dancefloor orientated cuts. (c)
Listen It
Wicked compilation packed with spaced out off-kilter obscuros. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, Conrad!
ReplyDelete