Disco Inferno

This is a tough one but here goes. In chronological order:

"Hope to God"
My favourite song of DI's early, pre-sampler period. A short, sharp acoustic ballad damning the square community in a way that has incredible resonance in the context of our current economic quagmire.

"Summer's Last Sound"
Their real breakthrough moment. Absolute sampledelic rapture. Sadly, my CD single has succumbed to metal fatigue.

"New Clothes for the New World"
DI at their most extreme but still catchy and concise. More than any other one of their songs, this sounds like a blueprint for a futuristic rock music that still hasn't come to pass.

"Lost in Fog"
Mixes the bleakness of early DI with MIDI madness of "DI Go Pop". Harrowing, righteous and totally unique.

"Keep it Together"
This was erroneously labelled as "Drowned Out" on the version of "The Technicolour Outtakes" I downloaded. Still, the chorus (which encapsulates all that is positive about the Ian Crause world-view) cleared things up: "Keep it together/By any means possible/I want to live long enough/To witness a miracle".

Great stuff.

The copy of "The Technicolour Outtakes" I got clearly had some the title tags mixed up. The song I mentioned has the phrase "keep it together" in the chorus (as I quoted above) but it wasn't the one tagged as "Keep it Together". It was tagged as "Drowned Out". Another song had a prominent sample of a woman saying the word "Swing" in place of a chorus, yet one of the other songs was tagged as "Swing". And so forth. If you want, I can try to figure out what all the songs were originally tagged as and what I think they should actually have been tagged as.

All right. I didn't even know they were labelled incorrectly.
Are you going by how the lyrics are in the songs? Because honestly,
I can't make out 90% of them.

^ Yes, that's the one. I especially liked the girlish screams. Imagine that, comments from Ian Crause himself. I've bumped into some of his comments on DI from time to time. Very few sites/blogs/forums with DI on it, to the point I think I've stumbled upon them all.

I actually have the one with the extra version of "Where Did I Go Wrong", put up as Mix 2 and the first as Mix 1.

Here are the tracks, just to compare with yours (before your changed the titles):

1] Where Did I Go Wrong (Mix 1)
2] Drowned Out
3] Untitled
4] Keep It Together
5] Swing
6] Where Did I Go Wrong (Mix 2)

This thread would do much better if more than two people were involved.

So I really need to get a copy of the Technicolour Outtakes, it seems. That's the only thing I'm missing.

Aside from that, I'm going to slap together an ad hoc list, which may or may not end up revised by tomorrow. Here goes. Btw this isn't in order, just 5 interchangeably brilliant tracks.

1. It's A Kid's World.

I don't care if it's not the deepest thing they've done or any other apect of DI which has deeply ingrained them in my musical life. This is a pop masterpiece par excellence. I defy anyone to shrink away from the glorious burst of color and energy this song is. It's made headway into several mixtapes I've created, and is always the first track I play to get anyone into the band. The Iggy Pop drum fill grabs your throat and leads the way through the carnival ride of pop perfection..

2. The Last (Long) Dance

I have really nothing to add from what you fellows have stated - it makes me swoon, pure and simple. "In the end it's not the future/But the past, that'll get us." Pure and simple, that line is what first struck me to my core when getting into DI.

3. Second Language

From the opening clatter of camera shutters to the glorious refrain of "and we just smiled..." riding an epic wave of distorted and bent guitar love this song just blows my brains against the wall. It's maybe not the most substantial track, lyrically, but it's nearly the definition of what I love about DI. These textures don't run.

4. The Athiest's Burden

One of the few songs with discernible (great) lyrics, it nonetheless grabs me the same way all other DI favorites do: with warped, intricate, forward-and-upward-aiming sonics I'm forced to surrender to. That plucked and echoed guitar in the middle is menacingly lovely, the warped one forming a backing track is deliciously addictive, a holy groove by the spirit of Vini Reilly in heavenly paradise, and the beat is relentlessly propulsive. I can't deny it's pleasures.



5. Footprints in Snow

Quick soundbites: Majestic. Star gazing. Swooning. Mysterious. Endearingly twisted. Romantic. Twinkling. Delicate. Powerful. Expansive. Anthemic. Perfect album closer. (with perfect album-closer 4th-wall-decimating ending sample)

So that's my list.

Yeah, I was going to point out how the incorrect indexing of the outtakes bootleg is mirrored in the "A Rock to Cling to" single.

Not sure I agree with preferring the more abstract, instrumental side of DI but if you like "From the Devil..." you should get with the untitled track from that bootleg and "The Mixing It Session" too, if you haven't already.

To me, it's funny how Disco Inferno-influenced acts like Hood, Epic45 and Piano Magic mainly show their love of DI by aping Crause's vocal delivery - surely the least immediately appealing thing about the band. Having said that, I do love his "singing" and feel that it's a vital part of the DI aesthetic - that very English mixture of magical and mundane.

My Disco Inferno Top 5:
- Footprints In Snow
- In Sharky Water
- Summer's Last Sound
- Entertainment
- Lost In Fog

Giving DI my first go!

Maybe giving us the reasons why would help guys?

So am I. I'm actually the worst at it, but I still tried my best.

Not sure I could narrow it down to 5 favourites (like MBV before them, DI were a band that to me in the 90s made most other music seem pretty irrelevant and there's hardly any tracks I don't love) so I thought I’d limit it to one track from any album or EP.


Starbound: All Burnt Out And Nowhere To Go

I could probably fill up my top 5 with tracks from DI Go Pop (unlike many, I actually even prefer it to the 5 EPs) but if I had to pick one it would be this. The repetitive samples and how they turned the barely controlled chaos into music was a total revelation to me back in 94. Then of course there’s the lyrics: “The world’s spun its shit down on me far too long. I’m gonna spit down hard on it back.” We all know that feeling!!


Summer's Last sound

The Open Doors, Closed Windows LP was fine but it was here that they got the whole midi/sampling thing going on and became the band we know and love. The fact that Crause made sure that the birdsong at the start was authentic British hedgerow birdsong showed his attention to detail. There’s just not enough Ornithology in rock & roll (or should I say ‘post’-rock & roll) if you ask me. Then the beautiful electronics kick in and Crause gives his unique brand of social commentary: “The price of bread went up 5p today. An immigrant got kicked to death again”. That’s the real England, not the rose-tinted caricature painted by Blur and other Britpopsters.


The Atheist’s burden.

Quite accessible for DI and a track you could almost play to people with mainstream music tastes without them saying “what’s this shit?” It’s quite an upbeat song for Crause but I when I first heard it I assumed throughout that his optimistic lyrics were a little sarcastic and he’s going to come out with something really twisted and bitter at some point. Of course he doesn’t and ends with the lovely line “If you get up real early, say 4.30 and look around. You’ll see the world before the cynics get out of bed”. Makes you want to do just that.


DI Go Pop

Not their easiest listening track (and definitely as inappropriately named as the band themselves). It sticks out like a sore thumb on if you listen to the 5 EPs in one sitting but I love the little story about going on holiday to some awful country where shit things happen and nobody cares. Then at the end they find out from a waitress that they never left England. Absolute genius.


Lost In Fog

Unlike DI Go Pop, this one’s very appropriately named. Hazy, and ‘vague’ (as Eno would put it) but also very bleak. It definitely fitted in with the “dark ambient” concept of Virgin’s 1994 ‘Isolationism’ compilation that it was included on.