This is a somewhat obscure genre. As an introduction, these two tracks give a terrific taste of the German aesthetic having been applied to disco. The first track by Ganymed is essentially a cover of Cerrone's Supernature (even including a weak version of Sweet Drums in the breakdown), but filled with amazing cosmic sounds and a story about aliens coming to Earth and changing the human race to be like themselves. There is a demonic voice juxtaposed with a sultry insincere female voice it makes for a rather unconvincing argument for them to come and do whatever they are going to do. They do say though that we won't have to work and that they are going to take us to Mars, which sounds like fun.
This other track by Goblin from Italy (the best name for a band ever) has a definite krautrock derived influence. The sound is very hard to describe. It has a little Deep Purple, mixed with Tangerine Dream, mixed with a bit of high school orchestra. Front and center is an amazing bass player and great organ sound. The track is from a 1982 horror flick by Dario Argento.Please key me in to other artists in the same vein.
mp3: Ganymed - We Like You (The Way You Like Us)
mp3: Goblin - Tenebre
Check out: The Z.A.C.K. song "565, Where are You?" Very similar in feel to the Ganymed stuff.
ReplyDeleteoff the top of my head: supermax, tantra, les rockets, alan parsons, easy going (side project of goblin), Pink Project (disco covers of alan parsons and pink floyd), Alec R. Costandinos, kongas
ReplyDeleteoh, and going from the other direction, prog rocks that do the disco thing: king crimson's 80s records and robert fripps discotronics, wasa express, can's later stuff. none of this sounds at all like the tracks you posted, just have the prog-disco connection, sorry.
ReplyDeletethe video for that ganymed track is beyond ridiculous. http://youtube.com/watch?v=kghQ1QlCS6E
ReplyDeleteRegarding Goblin/Argento...I dont know if it is a coincidence you blog about the song now but it was sampled by French electro duo Justice for "Phantom".
ReplyDeleteYeah, i'm actually a perturbed that Justice used that Goblin track as a sample rather than just writing something new with a vocodor. Which they're entirely capable of doing...But hey, daft punk did the same thing time and time again.
ReplyDeleteHands down - best prog/disco by Cos, 'Babel'
ReplyDelete