08/12/2023
Real Velour's debut EP on Blaq Numbers comes to us from an unknown source in the early eighties. Its playful melodies and disco drum machines could be from mainland Europe, it's strange synth textures could be Japanese whilst its sardonic vocals could be from a post-industrial town in Thatcher's Britain; we just don't know.
What we do know is that in spite of its retro sound pallete, each track sounds fresh on any 21st century dancefloor. There is something indefinably new about these tracks; similar perhaps to the indefinable "Britishness" of 10cc in spite of their American accents and West Coast influences or the way Billy Childish somehow managed to make rock n roll sound alive again without changing it in any observable way.
Simply put: these are yesterday's sounds, tomorrow.
And who better to hold Real Velour's hand as he tries to navigate this strange retro-future than his two favourite sexy disco daddies, Donald Dust and Panthera Krause? Donald Dust's remagining of the title track on Spaceship In Tokyo puts us in New York territory, rendering it less angular, less Teutonic. There are shades of LCD Soundsystem, the Peech Boys and other artists from the Mutant Disco/No Wave scene whilst Panthera Krause's wild reinterpretation of the single, People Make Me Wanna Scream, is a fruity cocktail of freaky contradictions. Metallic and industrial rhythms blend perfectly with haunting synth pop textures. Panthera Krause finds the ghost in the machine and makes it dance!
The whole EP throbs with uninhibited glee. There is no coyness to be found here toward those genres that sometimes find themselves locked outside the fortress of "serious" dance music. While some techno bros gingerly dabble with Italo, Hi-NRG or J-Pop textures in some restrained, tasteful way as if to say "I like it... but I'm straight!", Real Velour jumps in with both feet.
This music is elegant without being aloof, playful without being ephemeral and it never abandons its primary objective - to make you dance!
