The Beat Electricians aren't posting much these days because we are too busy planning for the rapture that is coming in three weeks. In that time, the only thing that will survive other than a few pious Americans are their Hummers and my Threshold SA 3.9e; which was made specifically to withstand such an ordeal. In all honesty, I need a new soundcard and just came up with a janky solution to rip a couple of jamz for you foos. So here we have a favorite jam of mine off of Cymande's second record that came out on Janus in 1972. I have also included a selection for the ladies. Here Roy Ayers is apparently seducing his robot lover.

Cymande - Anthracyte
Roy Ayers - Programmed for Love

Began Cekic made his money in the Brooklyn construction trade, and during the disco boom decided to capitalize by setting up a label and producing what were perhaps some of the early examples of dance tracks made up of looped and re-worked riffs and hooks from earlier well known hits. You can find his hits produced for Brooklyn Express all over the internet, as well as many others, but I can't find a clean version of Hi Voltage's Somewhere Beyond/Let's Get Horny anywhere, and I think its his best, so I'm putting it up. That being said maybe I just didn't look hard after I randomly picked it out off the shelf this morning.

Began was a shadowy, uncelebrated figure in the New York disco scene, Tee Scott who mixed this record gave an interesting and colorful account of him in an interview he did with Daniel Wang back in the nineties, but a decade later Began Cekic turns up in the history books again, this time in a new york times article about the Montenegro separatist movement. Turns out he went from disco revolutionary, to, well, revolutionary..

'"I think we made a difference," said Began Cekic, a demolition expert from Brooklyn who returned to his parent's home in Gusinje in the north of the republic. His friends and neighbors, a mixture of Montenegrins, Albanians and Muslim Slavs, celebrated late into the night, waving Montenegrin, Albanian and Bosnian flags.'


Hi Voltage - Somewhere Beyond
Hi Voltage - Lets Get Horny

Due to fair weather funk collectors, who shall remain unnamed, neglecting their duties to BeatElectric in order to concentrate their time on their newly formed Witch House band ('Witch House', look it up, I shit you not), I will be renaming beatelectric to BlackShag.com . It will comprise mostly of rips of soon to be not as sought after as they were last year before Witch House came along electro boogie records, and discussions about fantasy wargaming.

Owning the biggest boogie 12" collection in North Norfolk county comes with a burden of heavy responsibility, and as such it was high time I posted Goody Goody's Make Me Hot, maybe one of the most perfect uptempo electro funk compositions put to wax. I say perfect because it has all the bits I like very much, a squelchy woofer shaking bass line, synthy space effects and on point vocals. This is maybe the last great single that came off of Philly Sound Works and is still to this day more coveted than the first Salem demo cd-r that I caught BT Magnum and Joel having a bidding war over on ebay (no need to look Salem up)..

Goody Goody - Make Me Hot

Asphalt Jungle was a project of session drummer and Salsoul Orchestra rhythm section ace Keith Benson. The above is not a picture of Keith, as I can't find one, its just a picture I like of a drummer, so its in context.

If you look at the man's discography he is credited with playing on hundreds of New York sessions all the way up until the nineties, but he is only credited as producing and writing a rare handful. He either re-recorded or re-edited Asphalt Jungle's Freakin Time without the vocal and with more dubby bits, a bit similar to the B side pt. 2 version of this release, a few years later in the early eighties as The Funk Fusion Band, which is no easier to find than this his original version.

Asphalt Jungle - Freakin' Time Pt. 1

Asphalt Jungle - Freakin' Time Pt. 2