In my younger days before I actually got digging for interesting records I simply assumed that Disco was lame. Bands like Abba and The Bee Gees were Disco. And although Abba & The Bee Gees knew how to write incredibly successful tunes, they didn’t exactly create much that made the serious record collector/DJ sit up and take note that maybe…just maybe there was some awesome Disco out there.
We are now in the Internet Age and as a result of others hard work digging through record vaults around the world we know that Disco was in fact home to some of the deadliest and most bad-ass records around. If you don’t believe me then please bare with me and see if I can change your mind.
Obviously many folks here were or are Ministry fans. Depending on the era of Ministry I think we can all agree that Disco had an impact on Al in one way or another…I’m just sayin…
Anyway over the last 10yrs there has been a huge boom in the 12" Disco Re-Edit. The producers creating these first and foremost need to find the original killer tune to edit. The more obscure the better is the mantra for the most part. These 12"s tend to be pressed in batches of 500 and they tend to change hands for a lot more than they were originally once the 500 vanish into cases. Still £100 for a shit-hot edit is not too bad compared to £2500 for the original 12".
One of the absolute heavyweights in the business of the Disco Edit today is a guy called Eric “Dr Dunks” Duncan. He is also one half of Rub n Tug who are popular in their own right on the club circuit worldwide. Dr Dunks is responsible for the C.O.M.B.i Edit 12"s. These are pressed in Japan and they are without a doubt the DOPEST of the dope when it comes to edits. Each C.O.M.B.i. Edit 12" has 2 tunes, 1 on each side. My hope is that once the C.O.M.B.i Edit series finally presses up its final 12" (Y & Z to go now) they will compile all the tunes from A-Z on a 3 or 4 X CD box set. The C.O.M.B.i Edits never got a digital release so it’d make sense to offer this wonderful music up to CD-DJs, home listeners/collectors and fans who missed out first time around.
https://www.discogs.com/label/100121-Combi
The most important ingredient with a great edit starts with the source material obviously…then from there it comes to the love, respect and skills shown by those responsible for giving the material a new life. Then it’s all down to mastering and the press.
My top 5 when it comes to the Re-Edit is the following…
1 - Dr Dunks aka Eric Duncan
2 - The Reflex
3 - Cole Medina
4 - Greg Wilson
5 - Todd Terje
So BACK to my opening call of arms to Challenging The Perceived Notion Of Disco Being Lame…Dr Dunks did just THAT with an insanely bad-ass mixtape called How We Do In NYC.
I must point out that one of the MAIN qualities (traits) of proper Disco is bad-ass. The Disco HAD to be bad-ass as well as funky. Very important that one. So what I want as a fan is for the artist to get rid of the cheese and replace it with the bad-ass when creating these works.
How We Do In NYC is a very rare and limited cd. It is pretty expensive but totally worth it as it’s the funkiest most bad-ass document of Disco Edits around. Most importantly though is that it is the only cd around with a few prime C.O.M.B.i Edit cuts. In fact it has my absolute favourite Disco Edit which is Stone Waters.
Stone Waters is the tune that enlightened me to the fact that Disco is the dopest.
Stone Waters has a massive cavernous sound, a hypnotic rhythm with dubbed out percussion. Stone Waters sound like King Tubby making a Disco 12" with Robert Fripp along for the ride on guitar.
C.O.M.B.i Edits - Stone Waters
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JgGHIUdhBVA
Dr Dunks - How We Do In NYC - Review
http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=6389
- Keep a Burning
- Dancing Fast
- Fire Hungry
- Let Dance
- “Hold Me”
- She the Ones
- Stone Waters
- Stop Playin’
- Kill
- How We Do in NYC
https://www.discogs.com/Dr-Dunks-Aka-Eric-Duncan-How-We-Do-In-NYC/release/1810431
Eric Duncan, one-half of Gotham’s sleaze-disco overlords Rub-n-Tug, turns in a full-length mix for clothing label aNYthing’s imprint. It’s the second Rub-n-Tug-related mix for the aNYthing crew, the first being Better With A Spoonful of Leather, an album-length dive into snail’s-pace dance grooves that rivaled Houston rap in its sleepwalking, codeine-heavy slowness. How We Do in NYC, in contrast, is a mix of sweaty, energetic string and vocal-laden Philly-style disco, all tweaked and edited into shape by Duncan himself.
The man’s got a slew of strong releases under various names, like his pseudonym Dr. Dunks and side projects like DFA’s Still Going, and it’s great fortune to have this mix see the light of day—consider it one of the closest approximations to getting the Rub-n-Tug treatment in the club firsthand: Duncan and his partner Thomas Bullock are renowned for a kind of raw-dog in-the-red mixing style that gleefully eschews perfection for passion, and this release delivers. Like a lot of killer NY underground disco these days, however, it’s a rather limited-press offering. For some reason some of NY’s heaviest disco hitters couldn’t give a toss about career-building or conquering the sales charts. (It’s no surprise that one of the scene’s finest purveyors is called Whatever We Want Records.)
Full of rollicking orchestral builds and swaggering grooves, How We Do in NYC is a fire-breather from start to finish, perhaps evident from such an incineration-themed tracklist, which includes titles like “Keep a Burning” and “Fire Hungry.” Duncan’s oft-invisible cuts and seamless mixing demonstrate how disco’s cheesy excess can be caught and packed tight into a body-moving pressure cooker. The tracks don’t particularly vary from one another, but that’s hardly grounds for complaint, because you don’t really want them to, they roil and churn in a kind of ecstatic sweet-spot best experienced in a state of fluid overabundance.
The first half stays celebratory and boisterous, stretching out into a hairier affair on the back end, culminating in “Stone Waters,” a deep rock-disco rager that sounds like the extended jam on the Rolling Stones’ “Can You Hear Me Knocking” only more drummed up and drugged out. If How We Do slips through your fingers, rest assured that “Stone Waters” along with mix opener “Keep a Burnin” are also available as a 12-inch under Duncan’s C.O.M.B.I. alias. But do yourself a favor and don’t let this limited edition mix get away. There are some records within a particular genre that are potent enough to serve as gateway doses to the uninitiated—next time a friend professes a distaste for disco beats, spike their stereo with this and watch minds expand.
Published /
Wed / 15 Jul 2009Words /
William Rauscher
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