Like Ghostly International's groundbreaking
Tangent 2002: Disco Nouveau compilation five years earlier, London-based Lo Recordings offers an excellent survey of recent trends in disco-based electronica on the intriguingly titled
Milky Disco. Compiler and label head
Jon Tye (who appears here as part of
Black Mustang) records under the alias
Milky Globe, but "milky" is also an apt, if ambiguous, description of the luscious music contained here, which might be more straightforwardly labeled "space disco." The underlying, unifying concept of electronic disco grooves overlaid with dubby, psychedelic, and otherwise "cosmic" elements may not be anything particularly new: the disc opens with a blithe, genteelly floating track by
Daniel Wang (who, curiously enough, also kicked off the
Disco Nouveau comp) which dates back to 2001 and sounds like it could have appeared two decades earlier, but by the late 2000s it was coalescing in a burgeoning international movement. Certainly, there is a sense that many of these artists are working with an awareness of each other (a number of the included cuts are collaborations or remixes), as well as a shared appreciation for the (suddenly, it seems) venerable tradition of electronic disco, and in particular the recently celebrated Italo-disco of the late '70s and early '80s which, though not an exact template for the tracks contained here, is nonetheless a palpable influence. The compilation does contain at least one direct link to the music of that era in the form of a dense, dubby remix of up-and-comers
In Flagranti by mythic French producer
Bernard Fevre, aka
Black Devil Disco Club. Otherwise, the track list is deceptively unassuming.