On Djing...

*Sounds like I need to get some recordings up

It's not that I don't like hi-nrg vocals, obv that's part of the charm. But I think some of these would do good with an edit. A lot of the vocal melodies are too triumphant and happy or something for me. I'm generally anti-edit, and more italo vocals than a lot of the types of DJs who won't, and I have a long history of railing against disco edits for removing vocals....but some of these tracks and some others I was listening to last night, just killer aggressive arpeggiated synth stuff that gives way to cheesier chorus. Again, not that there's anything WRONG with that! Just that I'd like to play some of these without it.

i predict a year or so from now ppl are going to be looking for a hi-nrg thread that doesn’t have hi-nrg in the title!

Feels like an untapped scene to edit, though I think Justin Van Der Volgen had an edit ep with something that was hi-nrg I think.

https://myrulesrecords.bandcamp.com/album/i-need-a-man-living-in-harmony-justin-van-der-volgen-edits

for sure.

i agree Dan. i've done a few myself. Here's one of Roni Griffith's Desire. i actually love the vocal version but also wanted an instrumental. Bobby O goodness.

https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/EYghkpy87n

this is maybe my all time favourite Hi NRG track -

Sylve - I've Only got you to Blame

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4v8T4pkJrg

Awesome. Has anybody had a longer career with more records making the same song over and over again and having them all rule as much as Bobby O?

My two favorite Bobby O's, Roni Griffith's Spys:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4h_YAw3Nkc

and the way too unheralded Love On Video by the New York Models, one of my all time faves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqERpetQkH4

Can I just mention one more song here, one that is cheap and easy to find and everybody has it but never gets played? Even though it's a totally perfect song that just fell through some cracks?

Man Parrish's Heatstroke. B-Side to Hip-Hop Be Bop. Maybe because it wasn't electro/hip-hop people ignored it? It's absolutely proto-hi-nrg, vocoder robot love song with amazing latin disco freestyle drum breakdown with italo bassline.

Why isn't this song in the upper tier pantheon of music?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhnJF45l1Fo

^^^ hell yeah

whlle on that topic, great interview:

https://walkonthewildsidenyc.substack.com/p/man-parrish?fbclid=IwAR00K40UYzzS3-o6wCbxPjZ7BkaNap6GlrgJjjsInoZWxH_0ReAZ4ES5AfM

i recently got rid of that EP. i have a "hip hop be bop" on another comp, "man made" is pretty good, but i'm not really into the rest of it

it did occur to me as i was listening that "heatstroke" is pretty unusual, although to my ears it sounded more like one of those really bad post-ubiquity roy ayers disco tracks. maybe this was because i had just picked "fever" and "you send me" out of the dollar bin, and was still in shock from how awful "take me out to the ballpark" and a few other tracks were

what makes it hi-nrg? i have to admit i don't really know anything about hi-nrg except i generally don't enjoy it

that interview's great

what makes it hi-nrg?

octave basslines, high tempo, lack of funk.

IIRC “Heatstroke” was originally written for a gay porn movie. It was an A-side in the UK in 1983, and it slotted fine into the gay club music of the time.

you sure you're hearing Heatstroke? It's not an EP, just the 12" of Hip Hop/Heatstroke. And Heatstroke is extended. And glorious.

Yes, definitely. This was the 1983 12 inch that I bought at the time; it wasn’t a B-side to Hip Hop Be Bop here (I’d already bought that as a Dutch Ramshorn import). https://www.discogs.com/release/105387-Man-Parrish-Heatstroke-LP-Version-cw-Man-Made-LP-Version

Oh sorry, you were replying to tlg!

Wow that Sylve track is quite gorgeous.

yeah i'm hearing heatstroke. what i'm calling an EP, discogs calls an album!!

https://www.discogs.com/release/20044-Man-Parrish-Man-Parrish

^^ that's what i got rid of. the entire b-side is ... not my thing

poor sylve. at least she made an incredible song from the heartbreak. sylve he probably wasn't that great anyway, trust.

xp oh! maybe what i heard is a different mix? i see yours is labeled "club mix" (didn't listen) and i see there's a "disconet mix" also. i'll have to compare

^^

Bobby O is problematic I have heard, but got damn if both those tracks are not complete all time bangers.

he is a master of cowbells

i’m dumb, i think i was confusing it with “together again”

Heatstroke club mix, b-side of Hip Hop Be Bop, that's all you need to know.

i def consider that yellow covered one an LP.

Bobby O made homophobic statements. Talk about not knowing your audience.

or collaborators.

or influences.

is “i feel love” hi nrg?

also if hi-nrg does not equal eurodisco (selzer, 2023) where / how do we draw the line?

also if hi-nrg does not equal eurodisco (selzer, 2023) where / how do we draw the line?

polite request to keep it fun itt thanks

What's not fun?

I Feel Love is proto hi nrg. It's also prot space disco and proto techno and proto new wave and proto everything that's been done since.

When I said that about eurodisco I think I meant eurobeat. The eurodisco thread I think had some talk about stuff like Modern Talking or like, the mid 80s post-italo cheesy european dance pop.

But I'd say euro-disco is a big umbrella term that includes basically any late 70s disco from europe, space disco, cosmic disco etc etc. Doesn't always have the high tempos of hi-nrg. Beyond that I'd just say I know hi-nrg when I hear it. This description from wiki is good "The rhythm is characterized by an energetic, staccato, sequenced synthesizer sound of octave basslines"

There's a lot of crossover with italo and I think you can easily call a lot of italo hi-nrg, if it's fast, frenetic, has happier more pop vocals perhaps. So it depends on era and location. San Francisco hi-nrg is one thing, coming earlier, more live and analog it's more closely related to disco I'd think. Ian Levine style UK hi-nrg is later, is another thing.

hi nrg is a feeling

yo I got a "real" DJ gig!

a guy I have known forever who plays in local bands has been coming to my restaurant sets, he texted the other day to see if I want to do a set after his band plays at a local arcade/bar/dance club

sweet!

nice!!

that's great sleeve!! hope it goes excellently for you

prob gonna lead with this banger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro9gCn7yBI0

(thanks all!)

What's not fun?

personally don't love genre nit-picking but you guys are turning it into a cool and interesting conversation so ignore me please!

i'll admit to (maybe) having been guilty of that in the past, but trust that here i'm just asking questions, because i've never really been clear on what constitutes hi-nrg

i also think that ppl get very weird when supposed "genre nit-picking" happens. but we're not going to pretend that genres don't exist, are we? or that (other, non-ilx) people don't invest time and energy in deciding which genres they like and which genres they don't?

so for me, what you call "genre nit-picking" is actually not an exercise in trying to rigidly define what constitutes a certain genre. or, at least, that's not the *end goal*. instead i think it's useful to think about these things as if they're rigid (even though we know they're not!) as an analytical exercise, in order to figure out precisely what's *wrong* with those rigid definitions, and to maybe discover things about genres and songs that we may miss if we just accept received understandings of genres (whether broad or specific)

when i say "very weird" i mainly mean "weirdly defensive". i think it's weird mainly because there's just nothing to be defensive about, nobody is personally being attacked and genres (if they exist at all!) don't have feelings

i was accused of "gatekeeping psychedelic music" a couple weeks ago when i was just making some dumb jokes, jokes in response to someone saying "west coast psychedelic music isn't psychedelic enough" ... idk if it's my uber confident gigachad posting style or what, but who tf am i to keep gates? i'm just some rando on the internet with bad opinions and naive questions, don't let my dumb bs ruffle yr feathers!

imo genres are fluid because you can say you like X music because it's Y genre

this may or may not make sense to anyone beyond your immediate cohort, or perhaps yourself

I find genres and genre discussions helpful, especially if you have a very liberal idea of what these things mean and understand how fluid it and nebulous it is. Does it make sense to say Television made post-punk in 1975 or the best italo disco was from Quebec? It's all fun.

<3 you all, stay disco freaks forever please

nobody is personally being attacked

I think what it comes down to is that no one has this perfectly academic relationship with art. When you start trying to create strata and separate pens within art, it can feel reductive to people's personal interpretations and experiences. There's a rarefied, esoteric, and very noodley conversation to be had with the right tone and tenor, always - we're on ILM after all! - but that conversation to anyone who feels like an outsider can be perceived as personally invalidating to the perceptions mh describes.

Hard agree with dan overall too, esp w/r/t the liberal and fluid interpretations of these things.

ummm i guess so except that sounds like generally the opposite of how i approach the topic. the game is not exclusion (“mike dunn is not acid house because he doesn’t use 303s”) but inclusion (“is i feel love hi nrg?”)

i’m also not sure how it’s helpful to use loaded language like “strata” and “separate pens” to describe the process, esp when i pointed out my goal is to think critically abt genres by playing the genre game, not to actually create rigid definitons!

loaded language like “strata” and “separate pens”

Somewhat illustrative of my point that you consider those loaded terms rather than just categorical descriptions!

I agree that the game isn't exclusion, just pointing out why discussions like this sometimes end up heightened and accusations of gatekeeping can fly.