Low Motion Disco for RA

A review and scene shot for Resident Advisor

What a lovely surprise this two-part single is. It’s both a lovely release in itself, and an affirmation of two basic truths: the new disco scene, at least three years old now, has a load of interesting things left to throw up, and remixes can reach parts edits never can. Eskimo are unsurprisingly behind this, and for a label whose rep was based on outsourcing routinely superlative zero-gravity disco mixes, it’s endearing that part one is an entirely inhouse affair, with the remixing duties handled by SLB and Aeroplane. While much of Low Motion – two anonymous and competent producers based “nowhere and everywhere” – slips a little too-anonymously into the background, ‘Love Love Love’ is a steadily growing gem of not-quite danceable melancholia. Music for fast cars and slow trains rather than spaceships, its dignified, tugging piano loop and syrupy bassline carry a controlled climb. While it never really goes anywhere, the journey is the experience.

But just as the best conversations begin with the most prosaic introductions, it’ s what the remixers do with ‘Love Love Love’ that provides the real thrills. LSB’s version recalls some of Walter Gibbons’ most interesting disco and hip hop edits, with the duo employing dub’s divine dimensions, cloaking high, picked guitars in reverb and wobbling the low end to a laidback and fulfilling climax. It’s the Aeroplane remix that really takes the breath away, though: Stephen and Vito’s unashamedly massive disco suits this track down to the ground. Beginning pregnant with Kommische horror strings, the track smoothly mutates with Acid half-steps into gleaming Balearic disco: disembodied, urgent and epic. If this set of triggers sound by the numbers, my apologies – this is the kind of epic disco that that no one does better. Listen at home and dance.

Part II is where the Eskimo BlackBerry gets a look in, with Soft Rocks (with Kathy Diamond) and DFA’s Still Going having a go. For the very small proportion of the world’s population for whom a Kathy Diamond guest spot on a Soft Rocks Low Motion remix is reason to explode, the track is likely to surprise. Her work on Aeroplane’s ‘Whispers’ saw her full-throated and dominant,: a positioning miles from the disembodied yearning of the Shapiro-Chromatics camp. Rather than play against type, then, Soft Rocks have played their sought-after guest down: the swelling, lush synths, nagging hand-drums and stripped kicks wrap her weightless Love… All we need is love. Stunning and stirring.

Still Going begin with the kind of pounding so strangely absent from much of disco’s revenge, give in to the primal urge and create a Choice-esque work of gleaming, retro-futuristic house. Now the loop sounds like a cold shower, and the undancable enters the sublime. Not even the wholly out-of-place AMO1/Studio guitar solo can remind tastemaking, contextualizing nodes to get in the way for longer than a minute – it’s a pounding gem, at once ancestral and ultramodern. It’s music for sweat and dark rooms and alien landscapes, and – with so much attention paid to edits on the disco scene – it’s a wonderful reminder of the power and the glory of a great rip-it-up-and-start-again remix. This is a very, very good release, showcasing four different takes on one rather unispiring original. Proof – were any needed – that this disco thing is still growing.