Here’s a crazy record I picked up in Vancouver a few years back.  It’s by Paradise Frame, on the “Cosmic Records of Canada” label.  It doesn’t get much more Canadian space disco than this. 

The drums are solid, recorded with that punchy ‘70s quality that nearly everyone seems to have forgotten how to accomplish.  The synth work is trapped somewhere between cool Italo-disco and Moog novelty.  There is some pretty nice layered vocoder singing.  Most of the tracks are marred by way too many changes and, oddly enough, major-key guitar hoedowns.  Seriously, there is some strong country / early rock influence here.  My favorite song on the record, “Paradise Frame,” has the kind of muted triplet rhythm guitar line featured in Del Shannons “Runaway.” It’s all wrong, like Kraftwerk and George Clinton stuck in an elevator… with the Allman Brothers.

From a disco perspective, I guess you’d have to call this a pretty bad record.  But the sound of a band utterly missing the point can be something rare and special in its own way.  I picture these guys sporting gold chains and big beards, brown cowboy boots on, coming up with new song ideas during epic, Coca-Cola fueled games of Traveller.

Another weird thing about this record, which struck me as soon as I looked at it in the store, is that the back cover depicts a turquoise hexagon sun.  Given the rarity of this particular combination, I have to assume that Boards of Canada was digging this record at some point, which makes total sense.  It’s clearly coming from its own little world, drawing inspiration from disparate bits of the musical mainstream which nobody else thought to put together, and in that way totally jives with BoC’s hermetic approach. 

posted by randy
10:26AM, 29 Apr 2006
[3 comments]