Disco Kandi

I think they're disparaged because perhaps more than any other compilation series they represent buying into a lifestyle - the display-piece casing, the whole air of seventies cool, the lifestyle-themes. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't spun off into so many different sets ("Winter Chill", "Beach House", "Nu Cool" etc.) all with those "funky" covers.

Me, I don't have too much of a problem with them. I bought one for my boyfriend (who loves the covers *and* the music), and have seriously considered buying whatever the latest one over here is - No. 4 maybe? It has Mange Le Funk's "I Still Want Your Love", which is absolutely brilliant.

I think they're disparaged because perhaps more than any other compilation series they represent buying into a lifestyle

yes, this may be true. i find it interesting that the same aesthetic, when applied to the loungecore movement in the mid 90s and the revival of interest in easy listening it was seen as integral and necessary. first time round, ez was 'lifestyle' music, 90s rehabilitation kept this element (albeit partially ironicized)

do we perhaps only feel comfortable with being sold 'lifestyle' music when it is ironicized via distance - ie *we're not the target demographic, we're slightly cleverer than that, we're in on the whole thing*???

Yes, although I'd argue that there's still an intended ironic element (if quite weak) to Disco Kandi with its seventies- through-the-nineties focus - if it had come out in '95 I imagine a lot of the elites we're discussing would have latched onto it.

The problem now is that because *everyone* thinks "we're not the target demographic, we're slightly cleverer than that, we're in on the whole thing" the original people who thought that with lounge music now realise that superiority-through-irony doesn't actually make you superior. In the same fashion, Mixmaster Morris' ambient crusade would seem very silly happening now because chill-out is such a successful orthodoxy that adopting that position would not only be thoroughly populist, but actually * behind* the masses.

My ex used to buy these little trinkets and as a result the mere sight of the cutesy cartoonish demi-monde demons that frequent their covers summons images of hueys throbbing over forests on fire, napalm etc.

Joking aside, they're a pleasant enough noise, but I find the branding tedious.

besides the obvious 2 (bel amour and agent sumo) i think that the 'secrets' track, by mutiny uk? is really good too, for a second you think its going to be energy flash, then it goes into a bass cheesy organ which puts me off a little, then its sexyfilterdiscobizness as usual