"In the beginning there was rhythm," Ari Up of the Slits yelled in 1980, and a
new compilation of British post-punk bands' enthusiastic plunge into dance
music (on the Soul Jazz label) takes its name from her battle cry. For a couple
of glorious years in the early '80s, even scenes that had once seemed the
hardcore opposition to the gaudy excesses of the discotheque gave themselves
over to the beat. True, as much as the likes of A Certain Ratio and 23 Skidoo
lift from disco (Nile Rodgers's splintery guitar playing in Chic is a favorite
reference point), few of the bands on In the Beginning . . .
could be mistaken for the real thing. Yet the raging noise that filled
punks' heads could be channeled into a beat easily enough. Gang of Four's "To
Hell with Poverty" is dragged across its four-on-the-floor beat by the feedback
shrapnel of Andy Gill's guitar, but its real hook -- the chorus's yell of
"ah-ah-ah-OW!" -- isn't too far from something Donna Summer might've sung. Even
noise monsters Throbbing Gristle flip on the drum machine for a slow, atonal
groover that's snarkily called "20 Jazz Funk Greats."
The same thing was happening all over the world. The two astonishing Disco
Not Disco compilations (on Strut) assembled by DJs Joey Negro and Sean P
are subtitled "leftfield disco classics from the New York underground." What
"leftfield" means here is that they were made around 1980 by disco outsiders
(the jazz veteran Don Cherry, abstract filmmaker Dieter Meier of Yello, noise
goofers Liquid Idiot, who became Liquid Liquid) -- and the farther away from
disco they'd begun, the more they had to bring to dance music. Can were a
German experimental rock band with a drummer, Jaki Liebezeit, who believed in
inventing a new beat for every song. A stuttering groove from bassist Rosko Gee
(who'd played with prog-rock band Traffic) and a little nip-and-tuck operation
from tape editor Holger Czukay and their collective improvisation "Aspectacle"
became a terse, raw, dance-floor favorite. In the
Beginning . . . closes with the Clash's "This Is Radio
Clash" -- a former punk band's bear-hug embrace of disco that became an
international hit.
You could even argue that it was an avant-garde cellist who became the most
creative dance auteur of the era. The late Arthur Russell began experimenting
with dance music in the late '70s, but even after he co-founded the post-disco
label Sleeping Bag Records, his idea of a groove was nothing like anyone
else's. Four of his brilliant tracks appear on the first volume of Disco Not
Disco, and "Let's Go Swimming," a late-period Russell jam, is the highlight
of the second. "Let's Go Swimming" starts with rubbery beats that might be
processed cello scratches, then throws in layers of percussion that seem to
locate the beat in different places -- it's there, all right, but it seems
refracted, as through ripples in clear water. Russell's murmured, free-floating
vocal and clipped stabs at a keyboard shy away from any kind of tonal center;
you're halfway through the eight-minute track before it's becomes clear what
key it's in or where the downbeat is. This was hardly standard operating
procedure for club music -- it's the kind of idea that only an outsider would
come up with.
Another new compilation, Can't Stop It! (Chapter), surveys the
circa 1980 Australian post-punk scene. Unlike the American and British
artists on In the Beginning . . . and the Disco Not
Disco comps, the DIY bands Can't Stop It! documents didn't have any
commercial prospects, and they knew it. They had barely anyone to impress and
lots of people to annoy: the Slugfuckers' 1979 "Cacophony" is the height of
inspired crudeness, and Voigt/465's "Voice: A Drama," from the same year, is as
giddy, awkward, and astringent as the early Slits. But prickly noisemakers
warmed to the beat Down Under, too. Ash Wednesday's "Love by Numbers" is half
arty frigidity, half dizzy bounce -- its verses are simply Wednesday counting
up to 100 or so through a robotic filter while a drum machine burbles away
happily. By 1982, the bug had bitten everyone: one highlight of Can't Stop
It! is "Lamp That," a sourly funky little instrumental by Equal Local, and
the liner notes mention that a handful of the disc's messier, rockier bands
eventually "went disco" too. It could have been a surrender, but it mostly
sounds like their discovery of their bodies.
Issue Date: March 29 - April 4, 2002
