Aphex Twin's 2004 reissue/reworking of the super obscure 1978 Black Devil Disco Club heralded the rediscovery of Bernard Fevre as an unsung electronic music pioneer. Subsequent BDDC releases like 2011's Circus (which featured collaborations with the likes of Afrika Bambaataa and Nancy Sinatra) and 2013's Black Moon, White Sun further affirmed the devil-masked Fevre's entrancingly ominous take on Eurodisco, and haven't diluted the impact of this first fully authorized, complete and untainted reissue of the original EP.
The skittish yet hypnotic pulse that powers all six of the tracks here is clearly indebted to Giorgio Moroder's work of the same vintage, and should still fill dance floors 37 years after the fact. But it's the ghostly synths, electronic effects and haunting, off-centre vocals on opening cut ""H" Friend" and "Timing, Forget the Timing" that Fevre's idiosyncratic production (which manages to be mesmerizing in its own sparse isolation) really establishes itself, offering a stark but no less invigorating flipside to the optimistic, commercial disco of the period. And yet that's here too, reaching its zenith with "Follow Me," an otherworldly meld of Italo influence and proto-house drive. This one's a classic.
(Anthology Recordings)The skittish yet hypnotic pulse that powers all six of the tracks here is clearly indebted to Giorgio Moroder's work of the same vintage, and should still fill dance floors 37 years after the fact. But it's the ghostly synths, electronic effects and haunting, off-centre vocals on opening cut ""H" Friend" and "Timing, Forget the Timing" that Fevre's idiosyncratic production (which manages to be mesmerizing in its own sparse isolation) really establishes itself, offering a stark but no less invigorating flipside to the optimistic, commercial disco of the period. And yet that's here too, reaching its zenith with "Follow Me," an otherworldly meld of Italo influence and proto-house drive. This one's a classic.
