The doyen of disco house Dimitri from Paris is back with his much-awaited compilation Get Down with the Philly Sound. The first of the double-CD set unearths definitive disco classics straight from the archives of legendary Philadelphia-based production duo Gamble & Huff. The second features the very same tracks reworked by Dimitri from long lost studio outtakes, with subtle finesse worthy of his reputation as the past decade’s remixer du jour.

For those who dismiss disco as deader than the goldfish in Disco Stu’s platform shoe, Dimitri is a high priest preaching to the unconverted. Dimitri himself was not always disco’s biggest fan. “I didn’t like the disco I heard when I was younger in the late ‘70s; I found it shallow and musically pretty poor,” Dimitri admits. “I thought that’s all there was to disco, until I discovered a record which was for me totally different – it really revolutionised my taste and became the thing I liked the most.”

Which record was it that revolutionised music for a man who has revolutionised DJing as we know it? “I think it was a record by a group called First Choice,” Dimitri thinks back. “They had a song Let No Man Put Asunder which was sampled in one of the first house records ever made, Jack Your Body by Steve Hurley.”

The idea for the Philly Sound project first germinated when Dimitri met with a long time hero of his, Tom Moulton. ”Back in the ‘70s, Tom pretty much invented remixing and also the vinyl twelve-inch single, which was a small revolution in the world of DJs back then,” Dimitri waxes lyrical. “He spent a lot of time in Philadelphia because he was also a big fan of the sound.”

“Moulton was the one who told me that bands like First Choice and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes all had the same backing band,” says Dimitri. “I just assumed it was all bands doing the same style but it wasn’t a style, it was a small family of people based at a studio in the city.” The family Dimitri refers to are Philadelphia’s answer to Motown’s Funk Brothers: the rhythm section made up of drummer Earl Young, bassist Ronnie Baker and guitarists Norman Ellis and Bobby Eli.

It was this Philly sound that inspired Moulton’s Philadelphia Classics compilation of 1977, one of the first remix albums of all time. Get Down with the Philly Sound is the vehicle through which Dimitri hopes to keep the little-known legacy of the Philly Sound alive. “For me, this is something that needed to be done for the Philly guys who didn’t get this recognition”.

Getting his hands on the original multi-track Philly recordings for the project, even with Dimitri’s connections through Moulton, was no mean feat. “We’d been asking them for three or four years and it was always no, then suddenly it was yes,” Dimitri says of Gamble & Huff’s decision to release the first of the tapes to him just over a year ago. “It’s still a miracle we actually managed to do it.”

The reel-to-reel tapes had been locked away in what Dimitri describes as “a hardcore storage facility, like the Fort Knox of archives”. Gamble & Huff personally retrieved the tapes from a safe and transferred them into digital files to be reworked by Dimitri in his modern set up.

“The first time I heard The Love I Lost, I almost cried because it was beautiful,” Dimitri says candidly of when he first listened to the tapes. “Once I heard each instrument individually on those multi-track tapes, I was totally inspired. It all made sense to me why I was working on this because this is music I’ve loved for a very long time.”

All remixes on the second disc of the compilation rework and re-edit the Philly originals using studio recordings of outtakes from the same tracks, undetectably extending rhythms with a jam session here and tastefully spicing up a track with a sample there. “This project is driven by musicality,” Dimitri insists, “it wasn’t a matter of taking old songs and adding flavour of the month, put in new beats and make it modern.” His raison d’être, he says, was not to erase the legacy of the greats of the Philly sound “but rather to glorify them as musicians”.

What do members of the original Philly rhythm section think of the compilation? “They really complimented me on it, I know they appreciated the remixing of their songs because I wanted to showcase their talent,” Dimitri gushes humbly. “I think they don’t fully realise how influential they’ve been, they don’t understand how much of a legacy they’ve left for today’s music.”

Interviews with many of the Philly greats, including Earl Young, Bobby Eli, Sigma Studio owner Joey Tarsia and producer Weldon McDougal are featured on a mini-documentary linked to Get Down with the Philly Sound promo sites. “Unluckily I couldn’t go to the States to do the interview myself,” says Dimitri of his involvement in the production, “but I wrote down the questions.” One key figure within the movement and an artist featured heavily on the compilation was vocalist Teddy Pendergrass, who passed away in January whilst the project was still the making. “It was very sad news for us,” Dimitri says with a sigh.

For Dimitri, the Philly Sound project is clearly much more than your average collection of dance music classics and remixes. Dimitri describes his role as being “more like a curator or an archaeologist, digging out things of the past and showing them to people. I joined the dots between the Philly Sound and Tom Moulton and I really want to share that”, he explains. “You can’t understand the present without your past. I’m curating songs for an exhibition and the exhibition is the CD.”

Are there any more ‘exhibitions’ in the pipeline for Dimitri? “I have a meeting this week for another remix project of the work of a very, very big producer,” he discloses. “I cannot tell you who, but if it comes out a lot of people will be very happy because they absolutely know who these guys are.” We can only wait with baited breath for what this connoisseur of dance music will serve up next.

Dimitri From Paris’s Get Down With The Philly Sound is out now on BBE through Inertia.