Blogarhythms

As I’ve already made abundantly clear, I have reason to celebrate this week. And while it’s true there won’t be much in the way of partying going on in my vicinity I still can’t seem to shake the festive mood, no matter how hard I try. And it’s in that spirit of having fun and getting down that I continue to enjoy as much “party music” as I possibly can.

Lucky for me, the California-born but New York-based Disco-Punk revivalists and party-band extraordinaire (seriously, they’ve torn it down every time I’ve seen them live) The Rapture have teamed up with Berlin, Germany-based !K7 Records to release Tapes, a 22-track mixtape that’ll rock any party…From a party of one (like me, right now) listening solitarily on their headphones…To a decidedly larger gathering of revelers who have no compunctions about working up a sweat to some loud, thumping dance beats…So long as a style-spanning, decades-traversing collection of body-moving music is the “party” in question’s idea of a fun time that is.

Much like entries in !K7’s long-running DJ-KiCKS series Tapes gives a dance-music artist not necessarily known as disc jockey, in this case The Rapture, the opportunity to play DJ and mix up a batch of tunes of their choosing. Unlike some of the personalities behind certain “celebrity mix albums” who have no experience spinning jams in a club setting The Rapture have been biding their time between albums spinning doing DJ gigs here and there so they’re not approaching the format from left field. As such, the actual mixing on the album, while not always deft and never flamboyant or overly technical, is always solid. And their track selection shines throughout.

As expected from a bands who helped popularize dancing amongst indie kids, there’s an overwhelming amount of Disco, House and Techno on Tapes. There’s familiar dancefloor-fillers from familiar names like Martin Circus, Thomas Bangalter, Richie Havens, Cajmere, Northend, and Armand Van Helden. And they play alongside newer sounds from newer acts such as “Where’s Jason’s K” from veteran DJ/producer Maurice Fulton’s alter-ego Syclops, the mutant Baltimore Club and Breakbeat House of “Everyone’s Got to Make a Living” from Dances With White Girls, and DJ Mujava’s recent crossover out of South Africa’s Kwaito scene “Township Funk.”

Somehow Paul Johnson’s 1999 Chicago House thumper “Get Get Down,” with its infectiously repetitive piano melody and minimal vocals co-exists on the same mix as the raw raps and unpredictable slang of Raekwon and Ghostface Killah from 1996’s “Daytona 500.” That the GFK track mixes into “The Word,” a 1985 Def Jam single from Washington D.C. Go-Go institution The Junkyard Band, setting off a series of segues that includes the squelchy Funk of The Bar-Kays‘ “Holy Ghost” and Vaughn Mason’s Roller-Disco/Electro-Funk classic “Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll” is all the more impressive.

The band’s last official single was an acerbically funky, cowbell-crazy jam where they opined that “people don’t dance no more, they just stand there like this, they cross their arms and stare you down and drink and moan and dis.” And while I’ve witnessed this phenomenon myself at many a concert and club night I have the feeling that anybody who bothers to listen to Tapes is more likely to be shaking their shit and shouting “Whoo! Alright - Yeah … Uh Huh.”