Nancy Martin, also known as Nancy Martinez, released this sultry jam in 1982. This track is one of a handful she released using her more Anglo sounding moniker in the early eighties. Her first releases came out on her Canadian home label Neige. This one was produced by Dominic Sciullo and Rick Annett.

This track, like many produced in Canada, shows a lot of italo influence. It seems to have equal parts Robotnick and Sharon Redd with a bassline could easily be warped into a modern minimal techno track. This cut was a crowd pleaser at the Garage, which is easy to imagine. It is hard to see how this track would fly in a club nowadays, I would bet that it would require a good crowd with a particularly high serotonin level.

I have the Atlantic promo release, but the original looks way cooler. The Neige release is also a minute longer.

Nancy Martin - Can't Believe (Vocal)

West End is my favorite old school New York dance record label, and its output in the post disco era, that being arguably the early nineteen eighties onward, is my favorite material from the label. Sparque's 'Take Some Time' is my favorite track from that period of West End, so maybe therefor by that logic it's my favorite ever dance track.

Sparque's 'Take Some Time' comes from a time when disco was in deep mainstream decline, the shunning of disco by popular radio in effect gave it back to the underground, beaten, sick and in terrible shape. With the spotlight turned away the genre was given a chance to breathe, convalescing in the wharehouses and clubs of a few of the world's big cities. Evolving with newly injected creativity spawned from limited resources and ever cheaper technology, eventually to re-emerge with a new face and several new names, boogie, electro, house etc
. 'Take Some Time' is straight out of that transition, its still has the traditional elements and live instrumentation of disco, a very minimal but soulful vocal, some of the stripped down groove of boogie and the synthy punch that would mark the rest of the decade. Its great to mix, has a slow to mid tempo and it gratifyingly hookey with the disco bell curve sine wave 'booo' sound all over a mix that typifies the idiom "less is more", the arrangement and build up also utilize every lesson learned at the what was then the tail end of the first generation of disco producer's decade long journey.

Sparque was the project of producer Larry Joseph, a prolific but mysteriously uncelebrated figure who created some of the best works on West End under his Sparque moniker, all tastefully energy filled dance floor movers, and who made a very natural progression into Electro and hip hop as the decade wore on (one of which I know Larry himself raps on), eventually even releasing a couple of house records as the nineties loomed. What happened to him, what he looked like, what his deal was at the time, I have no idea whatsoever and the fact he is so undocumented is a shame as his creative contribution to that important formative era of modern dance music is as important (to my mind at least) as many of the other much hailed production giants of the genre.

Sparque - Take Some Time