The perfect album to soundtrack an early morning sunset by the Seine. Songs to relax to or to fall in love with, songs to dance to or to dream with. The soundtrack of an extraordinary life - your life, maybe...

"NEO" is the next chapter for the critically acclaimed compilation series "Too Slow To Disco ". For DJ Supermarkt it was time to explore the exciting new, modern smooth sounds of the present. With "TSTD NEO - En France" we go to the exciting European capital of all things mellow, elegant, slightly erotic and Pop! The compilation contains 17 tracks - some of them never released and exclusive for this compilation - featuring two godfathers and grandseigneurs: the legendary Bertrand Burgalat, head honcho of the Tricatel label, musician, composer, arranger, producer, and the electro-disco wizard Yuksek who also runs the infamous Partyfine label.

The others are the kids of Michel Legrand, Les Jeunes Gens Modernes and the French Touch, they sometimes try to marry Debussy to a disco beat, they’ve all got this blue melancholy which you only find in the French streets, they sing in their mother tongue or in their so very charming English accent without any complexes. They’re boys and girls. Duos (Bleu Toucan, Poom or Weekend Affair…), bands (L’Impératrice, Cléa Vincent and her friends), collectives (the elusive Catastrophe) or solo artists (Jean Tonique, Lomboy, Magnüm, Saint DX…) mix candied melodies and Gainsbourgienne basslines, electro arrangements and sensual grooves. There are funky guitars licks and - as usual with TSTD - way too many saxophones (it sounds like Duran Duran’s "Rio"), slap basses and some vocoders, even features a great ironic use of the modern autotune. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xLP Info: 180 gram heavy double gatefold vinyl.

New compilation compiled by DJ Supermarkt from critically acclaimed Too Slow to Disco series. With TSTD Neo - En France it starts a brand new series of modern music with the special touch we always love on all Too Slow To Disco releases. The compilation contains 17 tracks -some of them never released and exclusive - featuring artist like Yuksek, Bertrand Burgalat and many more. As always the heavy weight double vinyl comes in a gatefold with lots of liner notes and on RSD exclusive limited colour edition.

Applying maximum sunscreen and blending the perfect caipirinha, Too Slow to Disco take a dive into an often overlooked side of Brazilian music: Brazilian soul, funk and AOR. To guide them through these unfamiliar waters, the firm enlist a new face, a giant of musical endeavour, the young nephew of Brazil’s legendary soul icon Tim Maia, the ‘Colossus of Rio’, as he’s known: Ed Motta.
At the end of the 1980s Ed Motta burst upon the music scene as a major singer and one of the writers and producers in the band Conexão Japeri. He’s now fifteen albums into a career that hops from genre to genre, perhaps one of the savviest music makers and curators out there. He is a refined practitioner of jazz, funk, soul, AOR and much else besides, having worked with everyone from Gilles Peterson to Roy Ayers, 4Hero, Seu Jorge, Patrice Rushen, Greg Phillinganes, Bo Diddley, Incognito, Ryuichi Sakamoto and many other insanely talented musos.

In this collector’s compilation, you’re coming on a kind of expert guided time travel mission – just picture yourself following Ed’s fingers as they trace along the sleeves in that massive library-sized vinyl vault of his. So we dart back through over two decades of music making, dancing in one style then the next from soul to funk to AOR, you’ll feel the air coming out of the horn section right the way through, and a mixologist’s golden touch tying everything together.

The artists Ed has play-listed for you include über-obscure figures like Carlos Bivar or Gelson Oliveira & Luiz Ewerling – both of whose songs here derive from privately pressed albums – so rare they’re not even listed on Discogs! He’s also gathered together a real pantheon of Brazilian musical heroes like Rita Lee (who was part of the legendary Os Mutantes), Cassiano (one of the founders of Bossa Trio and Os Diagonais) and million sellers like Roupa Nova, lovingly referred to as ‘the Brazilian Toto’ (who would have thought that would become a compliment by 2018?)! And as ever with the Too Slow to Disco series, the artists might be new to you, but they’re always bringing a killer tune.

“Before slipping this LP on, you need to nail the AOR modus opeara… That means: a Hawaiian shirt à la Magnum PI, loafers without socks as in Miami Vice, jump in your convertible and drive under the coconut trees. This is a sunset ride through Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles, Miami, Hawaii. Aloha!" Ed Motta

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xLP Info: 180 gram heavyweight double vinyl.

2xLP includes MP3 Download Code.

'Too Slow To Disco - Volume 3' - this is bottled sunshine! A bunch of beautiful songs that might have missed the charts, but can still break your heart.
We present, "Too Slow to Disco -Volume 3". Another incredible collection of songs that gleam with the high definition gloss of big-studio, bigger-budget production. Volume 3‘s another excursion into those late 1970s West Coast delusions of grandeur, sure...but in the company of songs that are also brimming over with soul, wit and passion. Killer tunes, penned and played by virtuosic instrumentalists, backroom gals and guys who were often also Grammy-winners in their own right. All the elements that have made "Too Slow to Disco Volumes 1 and 2" (and “The Ladies” Edition) so beloved from New York to London to Barcelona to Bottrop, are back for another round of near-danceable lushness. This smooth wave continues to ripple round today’s music world too. You’ll have found us blinking with joy as we read that jazz bassist-to-the-stars Thundercat has recently released a new single with Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald, and even dedicated his entire new album to “The West Coast”. And even The XX can’t seem to escape the lure of Hall & Oates on their new single “On Hold”. For their second single “Say Something Lovin’” they even chose to sample one of the tracks from TSTD Vol 1, the Alessi Brothers –Do You Feel It. As ever, DJ Supermarkt has somehow prised open another box of obscure gems keeping to his usual concept: all killer, no filler, selected and sequenced to bring out the mood of the era. Lyrically the focus remains on slightly difficult love affairs backed by grooves gentle enough to mix cocktails to. Slow dancing is encouraged, fast dancing...well you know our views on that.

We’ve got an accidental pop hit crossover from none-more-fusion jazz guitarist Lee Ritenour. A dab of Christian funk from Archie Cavanaugh and his troupe.You’ll even find a bizarrely funky and commercial sounding Grateful Dead laying down the chart-bothering beat of ‘Shakedown Street’ (we assume the A+R guy had a gun...true story: it took DJ Supermarkt about four years to get this nailed, the track was supposed to appear on Vol 1 already. We now have the official okay of the band!). Elsewhere Steely Dan’s go-to sax man, Cornelius Bumpus makes an appearance with some angular funk, while Larry Carlton (another associate of Don and Walter) turns up the guitar drenched white soulon ‘Where did you come from?’.

And we’ve looked beyond L.A. this time, discovering a few exotic exponents of the West Coast sound from more distant shores. Our first non-English sung TSTD track comes in the shape of Dwight Druick, legendary Canadian songwriter, delivering a fine slice of Montreal disco-funk. Then there’s the groovesome Stars’n’Bars from Sweden (in its first ever official re-release),and even two acts from the UK with Vapour Trails and the amazing Billy Mernit, with a lush torch song we’ve been desperately chasing for years.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Too Slow To Disco - Volume 3 - this is bottled sunshine! A bunch of beautiful songs that might have missed the charts, but can still break your heart! Volume 3 features Balearic unclassic "Stars And Bars", Lee Ritenour's "Is It You" and Grateful Dead's frazzled disco winner "Shakedown Street".

With “The Ladies of Too Slow To Disco” DJ Supermarkt, aka Marcus Liesenfeld takes a look at the women who kick-started the female pop revolution in the seventies. But he not only presents the big names like Carole King, Carly Simon or Rickie Lee Jones, 'Too Slow To Disco' once again unearths lots of overlooked and lost gems of the 1970s LA music scene.

These pioneering songwriters were determined to navigate their career on their own terms, while fighting an industry that was only marginally less machismo-driven than the mafia (and in some cases involved characters from both worlds). Chauvinism was the mood music de rigueur in the record biz of the 60s and 70s, and the dawning of sexual liberation as often as not left women holding the baby. But battling through, these women writers and performers redefined what pop music could do, and in doing so, charted the path for the women that followed.

Pop is notoriously over-concerned with surfaces, and as a result writers have traditionally played second-fiddle to performers, background figures rarely accorded their dues. But for women writers back in the sixties and seventies this was an even harder battle with the low expectations of high chauvinism.

Carole. Ricky. Carly. Big personalities who lived as large as their male peers. And sure, some of these names you already know. They brought new subjects to the studio, righteously loved to this day for finding new ways, new tones in which to express every emotion. But for each of the well-known ladies of the post-Laurel Canyon scene, there are so many you’re about to meet for the first time.

Take the amazing Franne Golde. She never became a household name despite penning songs that have notched up 100m sales worldwide (including “Don’t Look Any Further” by Dennis Edwards), now isn’t that something? Or Evie Sands, the gamin soulster whose sixties would-be breakthrough hit was stolen from her and given to another (male) artist right under her nose. Still, she carried on and wrote some timeless tunes including the slickly reprimanding “You Can Do It” included here.

Laura Allan’s “Opening Up To You” captures the mood of the decade and of this collection perfectly. A rhythmically deft, proudly self-aware love song, Allan’s writing is tender but she always stays in control, and the whole thing floats like a leaf on a summer breeze.

You’ll find plenty more of that sophisticated West Coast yacht pop sound you know we love, where the tune and the groove and the lyrics just fuse together, in a kind of endless sunlight. Take the cruelly overlooked Leah Kunkel’s “Temptation”, a total earworm, beautifully played with session musicianship from members of Toto. Leah was the younger sister of Cass Elliot from the Mamas and the Papas, and perhaps wary of comparisons mostly lived the session singer life until she stepped out into the limelight in the late 70s with this lost gem and two underrated and forgotten albums.

As ever with Too Slow To Disco, we hope we’re moving the needle, reinstating a few unjustly overlooked talents. But above all this is about the music, that vaulting ambition that pours out of these arrangements, lyrics and melodies, all played by the finest musicians the LA scene could muster. So take a trip with us, and round out your picture of a decade. The style is still Too Slow To Disco. But the inspiration and the achievement is all woman.

STAFF COMMENTS

Philippa says: Wow! Too Slow To Disco have really come up trumps with this new collection of 1970s female singer / songwriters from the post-Laurel Canyon scene. Brilliant from start to finish.

Soft rock, vanilla funk, yacht rock... they're all different names for the same thing. Gone are the days when people laughed at the LA sound from the late 70s / early 80s era with its super-smooth, lavish, luxury-laden excesses. This sound is everywhere these days, echoing down the years, influencing the likes of Midlake, Haim, John Grant, Ariel Pink, out to the more discofied sounds of Chromeo, Breakbot, and Todd Terje. And what was Daft Punk’s "Random Access Memories", if not an album entirely dedicated to late 70s LA? Our friends at the label How Do You Are? unearthed some of the lesser-known but still beautiful mood music of this period, by people who were often still starting out, or would write their biggest hits years later, but who surfed the West Coast wave penning some total gems. With this first volume of "Too Slow To Disco" they want to share some of the great acts and songs that made the mid-late 70s California scene so awesome. Even though this is not officially a City Slang release, we helped the guys who curated this gem. Because we love the stories behind the music and we love the chills these tunes send down our spine.