- In a Twitter conversation last week, Erol Alkan, Chris Duckenfeld, Luke from the Unabombers and others lamented the increasing conservatism in the cosmic/Balearic-influenced disco scene; London DJ Frank Tope chimed in to assert, "All dance music sub cultures are most vibrant before they're codified and start having records made for them." He's probably right, but very few individuals get to enjoy that long view in person. Stuck with the historical and geographical hands we're dealt, most of us in dance music spend most of our time with genres that have long since settled into their standard forms.
"Garden of Vargulf," by Sydney's Loin Brothers, is definitely a codified version of Balearic disco. Virtually every element here feels like it might have come from some master checklist: ropy electric bass, rolling bongos, string vamps, squelchy arpeggios, distant vox, Rhodes chords, Moog solo, even searing electric guitar solo. (Like DJ Harvey or Prins Thomas, they like their disco with a heavy helping of rock.) For a form that once professed to travel the outer limits, it's not terribly outre, but if you're predisposed to nu-disco pastiche, that's not necessarily a problem. The production is luscious, and there's a wealth of musical ideas in the track's many twists and turns. (It's certainly not a track for DJs who prefer linear, controlled grooves.) On their "Acid Re-Rub" of the cut, they add throbbing, overdriven 303s and 909s, elements of a different code entirely, which contrast invigoratingly with the blissful keys and strings.
Fresh off a recent EP for Delusions of Grandeur, Tornado Wallace digs in with slow-motion gusto. This kind of pitched-down house music is quickly evolving its own standards, but that doesn't make Wallace's version any less effective. Reducing the original to a single bassline and a spacious drum groove, he lavishes his attention on dubbed-out production and flashes of keys, and he even manages to preserve a portion of the guitar solo while keeping the vibe tightly controlled.
LA's Woolfy and Projections stray further from the source; their remix is also a downbeat house bubbler, around 115 BPM, but it sounds like they've mostly written new synth parts around the structure of the original. Towards the end, they even add breathy falsetto vocals—a decidedly yacht rock touch, for the keepers of the codebooks. For the rest of us, it's just blissfully breezy.
Tracklist A1 Garden Of Vargulf
A2 Garden Of Vargulf (Acid Re-Rub)
B1 Garden Of Vargulf (Tornado Wallace Remix)
B2 Garden Of Vargulf (Woolfy vs Projections Top Sirloin Remix)