(Compost/Creative Vibes)

London, Paris and New York are cities that are constantly associated with the disco era. But who would have thought Munich could be mentioned in the same breath of these other major metropolises? Apparently the German city had a thriving clubbing scene back in that hazy decade of excess we call the 70s. Although it never went out of fashion, over time the genre has been married to a lot of other styles of music such as techno, reggae and punk, and (thanks to record labels such as Compost, Gigolo and Warp) has created a mutant hybrid of the once predominantly gay scene. Isar Gold is a celebration of the disco revival happening all over the world, with Munich at the centre of it all.

As the leading light of the “neo funk movement”, Munich’s own Poets of Rhythm, show us what a seven piece funk band can do. Their specialty is transforming retro 70s funk into modern masterpieces and it is evident on the opening track Smile (while your crying) which mixes classic funk beats with elements of punk and disco. I must admit I have a fascination with German producers at the moment, one of them being Ben Mono. He must be a black man trapped in a white man’s body because the boy knows how to write a funk track. On his track  Transmission, Mono teams up with  Philly MC Capital A, to create an absolute space bomb! With chant’s of “want we the funk”, it could easily be mistaken for a Parliament song, yet it still manages to sound relevant and cutting edge. Hilltmeyer’s track “Pornhaus” is a fascinating exploration into Italo disco, very minimalist, a bit cheesy, but still very danceable. Queen of Japan’s Impossible love is the total opposite, as it try’s too hard to be raunchy, but just kind of gets annoying towards the end.

This is quickly salvaged by Leroy Hanghofers Bathroomboogie, which apparently was recorded in a bathroom and has some very strange samples of a French girl babbling about getting drunk in a bathroom. The throbbing disco beats continue with Muallem’s Sweat, a song riddled with French mutterings and even Frencher orgasms. One of the stand out tracks is a song called Magnifique, by an artist by the same name and apparently a huge disco producer in the 80s. It has a very heavy bassline and a pulsing drum beat that is totally infectious. However the CD takes a bit of a dive back into the bad old days of disco, with a track by a band called Disco Patrol which basically made me cringe with its horribly cheesy baseline and synths. Thank god for General Electrics, whose Beanfield remix of Facing the Void  took the bad taste out of my mouth. If there was any bad taste left, German producer Jicheal Mackson helped bring the album out of it’s “middle track syndrome” with some really beautiful cut up production from an artist we will all surely know more about soon. Elsewhere Silicon Soul’s Who Needs Sleep Tonight gets a reworking by the master himself DJ Hell, which gives this quirky early 90s track a bit of oomph.

In all Isar Gold does have it’s moments of brilliance, each track brings it’s own unique influence to the album, which shows that Munich and even greater Germany is a vast melting pot of art, culture and of course people. To be perfectly honest, as cutting edge as some of these artists were, they weren’t particularly interesting. What it has done though is exposed me to a period of music which I never knew existed, and now that I have heard this album, I only want to know more.