Electric Blue | 01

Lifting off with DâM-FunK’s modern boogie, this mix connects past with present. Instrumental versions, edits, and remixes set the uptempo vibe to fuel your nocturnal urges.

Toeachizown (D-F’s Theme) - DâM-FunK

Da Feelin KOLA Remix - Nightmares On Wax 

Ghetto Funk Original Mix - Discotron with Q-Tip

Main Thing - Shot ft.Kim Marsh 

Your Personal Touch - Evelyn Champagne King 

Falling In Love (Version Previously Unreleased) - Surface 

I Need a Little More (Original Mix) - Seamus Haji

All This Love (Smart Edit) - Gwen McCrae 

Never Give You Up (Mekon Recut) - Sharon Redd 

Another Man (Instrumental Dub) - Barbara Mason 

Terrorize My Heart Disco Dub - 79.5 

Minos Pour Main Basse (Sour La Ville) - Tout Doit Disparaitre 

Sex Shooter (Extended Version) - Apollonia 6 

Can't Play Around (Jean Claude Gavri Editors Kutz) - Lace 

And You Know What (Club Mix) - T.J Swann

"Toeachizown (D-F's Theme)" — DâM-FunK

The title track and theme of DâM-FunK's 2009 Stones Throw debut, a five-part modern funk epic released on CD in October and as a 5-LP boxed set the following January. Damon Riddick tracked the album solo at the Funkmosphere lab in Leimert Park, working from CD to CD with no Pro Tools and no sequencers, playing each part through end to end before layering the next. The album credits a deck of period-correct hardware including the Roland JX-3P, Roland Juno-1, Oberheim DX, and the MPC2000XL. Dan Rule's Cyclic Defrost interview captured Riddick's working principle without varnish: "I like to make melodic, modern funk, man. I don't do retro." The original 5-LP set is long out of print and circulates well above issue price on the second-hand market.

"Da Feelin (KOLA Remix)" — Nightmares On Wax

George Evelyn's original "Da Feelin" opens Thought So…, his 2008 Warp album recorded during his move from Leeds to Ibiza. As Resident Advisor reported at the time, rather than ship his studio gear by boat, Evelyn loaded a camper van with kit and a sound engineer and tracked en route through Spain, finishing the record at Wax On Studios in Ibiza. The dubbed-out flip here comes from Montreal producer KOLA, uploaded to his SoundCloud in 2016, where it now sits past 50,000 plays. It never had an official Warp release, which is half its charm.

"Ghetto Funk (Original Mix)" — Discotron

A 2016 nu-disco edit on Tasty Recordings, part of Discotron's four-track My Nu Joint EP. The hook lifts the chant and ad-libs from Q-Tip's "Breathe and Stop", Q-Tip and Jay Dee's 1999 Arista single, and stitches them over a loop of Ripple's 1977 Salsoul cut "The Beat Goes on and On." Two decades of crate lineage compressed into one peak-time edit. The EP was a digital release, no vinyl.

"Main Thing" — Shot featuring Kim Marsh

Cut for Easy Street Records, Michael Gusick's NYC dance imprint, in 1986, produced and written by Roger "Wolfie" Williams and mastered at Sterling Sound by Jose Rodriguez. The 12-inch arrived with a vocal mix and an instrumental dub, both built on the slow-mo boogie template that defined Easy Street's catalog. Dig Deep put it neatly when describing the 2019 reissue: "downtempo electrified sleazy Funk." Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez later flipped its low end for The Bucketheads' "You're a Runaway" in 1995, which is how most younger listeners encounter the bones of the track before tracing them back. Original copies still command collector money.

"Your Personal Touch" — Evelyn "Champagne" King

Evelyn's 1985 RCA single, written and produced by Allen George and Fred McFarlane for their Terrible Two Productions, the Bronx-bred duo who formed their partnership in 1981. "Your Personal Touch" embraced the synth-driven sound that characterized the evolving musical landscape of the post-disco era. It hit number 9 R&B and number 5 on the Dance chart, and closed out Evelyn's run on RCA with A Long Time Coming. She had been discovered at fifteen, cleaning the offices at Sigma Sound and singing Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" to herself in the bathroom when producer T. Life overheard her in the hallway. Eight RCA albums and a fistful of dance hits later, her instrument was still the same effervescent voice that earned her the "Champagne" tag.

"Falling In Love (12" Edit)" — Surface

The mix on this set is the long Tom Moulton re-edit, first issued on a late-90s Salsoul 12-inch reissue and later included on Salsoul's Gold Master CDs. The original single dropped on Salsoul in 1983, written, produced and arranged by David "Pic" Conley and Tony Byrd for the New Jersey trio, with lead vocals from Conley's then-girlfriend Karen Copeland. Bernard Jackson joined the group later for its smoother late-80s incarnation. The track peaked at number 84 R&B on first release, an undersell that Dystopian Dance Party rightly considers a small crime against woodwind history; the long flute solo at the back end is the whole point. Daft Punk later pulled the drum intro from the Moulton edit for "Face to Face".

"I Need a Little More (Original Mix)" — Seamus Haji

Seamus Haji's 2016 boogie re-edit, released on his Re-Loved series via Midnight Riot and gathered the following year on the Best of Re-Loved Vol. 1 compilation. The source is Instant Exposure's 1992 house cut "I Need a Little More," produced by Victor Simonelli, which itself loops the vocal refrain from Womack & Womack's 1983 "Baby I'm Scared of You." Haji, known for Big Love anthems and UK-chart remixes, calls this cut “my homage to Simonelli’s dub science and Womacks’ silky menace."

"All This Love (Smart Edit)" — Gwen McCrae

Smart Edit's reframe of "All This Love That I'm Givin'" opens 2020's Get Down Edits - Family EP, leaning into the original's pocket without redecorating it. The source is Gwen McCrae's 1979 LP Melody of Life, her final album for Cat Records, produced by Betty Wright at a moment when McCrae was rebuilding after her marriage to George McCrae fell apart and Cat's parent T.K. was collapsing. Wright co-wrote half the record, brought in her Betty Wright Showband, and pushed McCrae to sing harder than she had since "Rockin' Chair." It still flopped on release. The track took its long second life through dance music, most famously when Cassius lifted the vocal for their 1999 French Touch hit "Feeling for You."

"Never Give You Up (Mekon Recut)" — Sharon Redd

Sharon Redd's 1982 Prelude original was mixed by François Kevorkian and remains one of the defining boogie sides of the post-disco era. The Recut here comes from Mekon, the long-running production alias of John Gosling, the former Psychic TV member who built his Wall of Sound catalog in the mid-90s while Goldie was still picking his name for him. The Recut keeps Redd's vocal forward and stretches the rhythmic spine for DJs.

"Another Man (Instrumental Dub)" — Barbara Mason

The B-side dub of Barbara Mason's 1983 West End Records single, produced, arranged, mixed and written by Butch Ingram for Family Productions and tracked at Star Recording in Philadelphia. Butch led the Camden, NJ family band Ingram with his siblings through the 70s before turning to production work for the Stylistics, Blue Magic, Ronnie Dyson, and others. The single landed on Mel Cheren's label at the height of the Paradise Garage years; the dub strips the lyrics off and leaves the synth-bass and Rhodes work to carry the room. Mason had been writing and singing Philly soul since "Yes I'm Ready" in 1965.

"Terrorize My Heart (Disco Dub)" — 79.5

A 2018 four-on-the-floor recut of 79.5's debut single, Big Crown's signature Brooklyn statement. Bandleader Kate Mattison fronts three vocalists over a band that records live to tape in one take, with Leon Michels producing and Jens Jungkurth mixing. The Disco Dub appears on their Predictions LP and on a companion 7-inch, taking cues from the boogie era, featuring groovy basslines, lush vocals, and a catchy dance rhythm. The band's commitment to analog recording and vintage instrumentation captured the authentic feel of the late 70s and early 80s dance music. 

"Minos Pour Main Basse (Sur La Ville) — Tout Doit Disparaitre"

The track sits in the middle of Super Discount, the 1996 founding text of the French Touch and the first solo album by Étienne de Crécy on Solid. The Minos alias is a wink at the masked psychopath from Henri Verneuil's 1975 Belmondo thriller Peur sur la ville; the album's bargain-bin titles ("Liquidation Totale," "Prix Choc," "Fermeture Definitive") run a discount-store gag through the whole tracklist. The packaging extended the bit, with H5's covers for the original four 12-inch maxis fitting together into the Super Discount logo when laid side by side. The track itself rides a loop of Chic's "Chip Off the Old Block" from their 1980 Real People album, a classic Rodgers and Edwards groove.

"Sex Shooter (Extended)" — Apollonia 6

Prince wrote and produced the entire Apollonia 6 album under his Starr Company alias, replacing Vanity's vocals with Apollonia Kotero's after Vanity walked away from Purple Rain and the second Vanity 6 record. Per Prince Vault, basic tracking happened on April 30, 1983 at his Kiowa Trail home studio in Chanhassen, the same day he cut "Promise to Be True." The single hit number 19 R&B and number 32 on the Dance Club chart after the Purple Rain film performance gave it visibility, though it only crept to number 85 on the Hot 100. Several songs originally written for the project, including "Manic Monday" and "The Glamorous Life," were rerouted before release to The Bangles and Sheila E., leaving the album a seven-track curio that flickered briefly and dissolved. Prince's own demo of "Sex Shooter" surfaced posthumously on the 2019 Originals collection.

"Can't Play Around (Jean Claude Gavri Editors Kutz)" — Lace

The source is a 1982 Atlantic Records 12-inch produced by J. Bana and R. Tyson, written by E. "Lamb Chop" Curry and Tyson, and mixed by Larry Levan himself, the dub on the flip running to 6:21 of echo-laden boogie that has become the most-hunted version of the record. Ministry of Sound co-founder Justin Berkmann remembered Levan's handling of the track at the Garage as "an F1 coming out of tight corners, thrust at 9Gs", basslines exploding on the break in a way no one else could engineer in a live mix. Jean Claude Gavri's edit, part of his Editors Kutz series with VinylAddicted, extends Levan's already-extended dub.

"And You Know What (Club Mix)" — T.J. Swann

1979 cut by T.J. Swann rapping over a funk backbeat and relentless guitar lick. Released by Brooklyn's Express Records as part of the small wave of early independent rap singles when disco’s live rhythm sections were giving way to electro-rap’s robot future. The Soul Jazz crew later anthologized it on Boombox 1: Early Independent Hip Hop, Electro & Disco Rap 1979-82.

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