About this Playlist
One of the biggest changes in music industry was the use of magnetic tape to record audio, in the 50s and 60s the music industry exploded with the limitations from recording direct to phonograph records lifted, it allowed studio engineers to re-record performances and then tape could be cut and spliced to rearrange or edit the musical arrangement.
But it’s the DJs who took this piece of studio engineering and turned it into a new form of art, a new way of creating music from other peoples music. The story really begins in early 70s when Tom Moulton frustrated at watching the flow of dancers interrupted at the ending of records made a homemade mixtape, It took him over 80 hours to make a 45 minute tape with no breaks in the music using tape to layer or splice the end of one track to the beginning of another. So here we have the start of DJ mixing, but Tom also lengthened the tracks by extending or looping sections of the original music and the remix or re-edit was born.
As well as Tom Moulton producers like Walter Gibbons have had a lasting impact on dance music history, Walter challenging Tom Moulton for the very first remix with his interpretation of Double Exposure’s ‘Ten Per Cent’ rearranging the normal structure of a traditional soul or disco record and starting with the break, this originality would become Walter’s forte, many more notable tracks have become club classics many years after the original release, his version of Gladys Knight ‘It’s Better Than A Good Time’.
The next generation of producers learnt the techniques and discovered the sounds that would shape a scene, in these clubs, DJs like Francois Kevorkian who worked with Walter at Galaxy 21, starting as a drummer accompanying the seamless beat mixing and hip hop style cuts of the DJ. John Morales famed for his M&M mixes with Sergio Munzibai also started his career in this period using the same cut and splice tape techniques, creating individual acetates to play in clubs, like many of the DJs at the time soon found himself in the studio and was involved in countless uncredited mixes including Patrick Adams studio band Universal Robot Band with the track ‘Barely Breaking Even’ overall it is estimated his involvement in over 650 remixes and he is still a working producer, remixer and DJ today.
Producers now use software like Ableton and can edit tracks with ease and mash ups can be found all over YouTube, Soundcloud and various online edit sites, like hype edit, the Nu Disco scene of the last few years has been built on edits, so the challenge for new budding producers is to make something fresh and creative, one of the best is legendary DJ Greg Wilson he was one of the original UK DJ’s from the early club scene in late 70s – early 80s Manchester, like his contemporary’s in the US like Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles, Greg used the Reel to Reel to make edits of Soul and Disco tracks and then over twenty years later his his career was brought back to life because the re-edit scene one that he had himself helped to create.
This playlist presents some of the classic soul and disco records and some more recent sounds, remixed like a good cocktail, it’s just needs a classic ingredient, a little twist and you’ve got something special.