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Lost in the voidEvil spirits guide the hands of unbelievable
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by JACK OATMON
Black Devil’s Disco Club should have been the most important and influential electronic dance music record to be released in 1978. It was an unimaginably forward-thinking recording that might have redefined how people perceive club music and incited an entire movement of ominous, intelligent, textured electronic disco. But it didn’t. No one listened to it. No one talked about it. It was essentially lost to the annals of history—just an ultra-rare piece of vinyl kicking around in a few basements with the mysterious names Joachim Sherylee and Junior Claristidge listed in the credits. It took almost three decades before people at Rephlex Records stumbled across it, dusted it off and presumably had their heads blown off their shoulders by it. The label’s founder Richard D. James, aka Aphex Twin, reportedly took a particular interest in the recording and re-released it, and the rest is history. Sherylee and Claristidge turned out to be pseudonyms of two experimental French producers, Bernard Fevre and Jacky Giordano. “I didn’t know until after the signature was signed,” Fevre explains. “Rephlex had contacted the French publisher of the original Black Devil tracks and made a deal to re-issue them. For me, it’s cool. As a result, I exist.” At the time of the re-release, many who heard it couldn’t believe it was authentic. The hypnotic bass synths, hammering percussion and the bizarre melodic howling seemed too timely and refined to be that old—particularly when heard in the middle of the past decade, when dance music was beginning a great shift toward dark electro and sinister disco. Following the Rephlex re-issue and some remixes, Fevre and Giordano took the whole name Black Devil Disco Club and set to work creating 28 After, the stunning sequel to Disco Club, to be released, you guessed it, 28 years after the original. “I didn’t think at all that it could have been so relevant three decades later. I thought I had composed something completely incomprehensible, particularly given the sneering reaction of the professionals who had heard it back then.” 28 After was dynamite. Underground techno, electro and disco fans cherished it for its tortured, dubby genius. Its sound was true to the original, but much more. “It’s the same attitude. No reflection whatsoever, a deep emptiness, one sound bringing another, a melody that comes along all alone, a bassline, a chord. The mastery of the sound happens bit by bit. “Evil spirits guide my hands, my voice and my ears. For the machines, I still have a few vestiges of the past, but I also employ the marvels that bring us the ingenuity of today. I’ve arranged my laptop to work in the manner of a ’70s sound booth. And he likes it.” Following 28 After, the third album, Eight Oh Eight, was released in 2008. It is a deft and appropriate continuation of the Black Devil legacy. Together, the three albums project a strong sense of continuity, with recurrent themes and sounds coming to a close in the third installment. “The albums will always remain a trilogy, in a way. I’m currently preparing a new album, but my formula has changed. I’m not alone. It’s now the story of a family, a circus. The 2011 album will be full of surprises.” WITH THE JUAN MACLEAN DJ SET, VHS |
