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An inter­est­ing thing about Harmless Records’ Backbeats series:  it does not dis­crim­i­nate against disco records the way some soul music com­pi­la­tions do.  In fact, Backbeats often devotes vol­umes purely to dance music, even going beyond disco to embrace later dance styles like techno and house.  Yowsah Yowsah Yowsah and The Big Apple Bites Back illus­trate the depth and breadth of the Backbeats approach to dance­able music, effec­tively illus­trat­ing the con­nec­tions between dif­fer­ent eras of dance music when played back to back.

Yowsah Yowsah Yowsah is devoted to records that were pop­u­lar in the New York club scene dur­ing the orig­i­nal disco era (the title comes from a pop­u­lar Chic song).  The focus here is on songs that marry lav­ish, melod­i­cally sweet arrange­ments to dri­ving rhythms.  There’s a strong amount of Philly-recorded mate­r­ial, high­lights includ­ing First Choice’s “The Player,” where soar­ing orches­tra­tions are anchored by an aggres­sive per­cus­sive attack (look out for those con­gas), and Loleatta Holloway’s “Hit & Run,” where the steady midtempo groove keeps things rolling ever-forward while the Holloway tes­ti­fies in a go-for-broke gospel style.

However, there are some other styles going on under this set’s “New York Disco” ban­ner.  Other high­lights include “Keep On Dancin” by Gary’s Gang, a spar­tan yet ele­gant track with jazzy vocal har­monies and an effec­tive use of acoustic gui­tars to achieve a per­cus­sive tex­ture, and Lucy Hawkins’ “Gotta Get Out Of Here,” a funk/disco hybrid with James Brown-style “chicken scratch” rhythm gui­tar and an assertive lead vocal.  Some home­town musi­cians even steal the Philly groove and rework it for their own pur­poses on Ripple’s “The Beat Goes On And On,” an MFSB sounda­like that gives the Philadelphia boys a run for the orchestral-disco money.

The Big Apple Bites Back con­tin­ues the New York theme but brings disco into the mod­ern dance era.  It’s unique amongst Backbeats vol­umes because it breaks down into two dis­tinct halves.  The first half devotes itself to post-1970’s remixes of Salsoul Records mate­r­ial: Larry Levan’s clas­sic remix of Inner Life’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” is the best known of these tracks but Joe Claussell’s epic redux of Double Exposure’s “Everyman” is also quite impres­sive, boast­ing an excel­lent break­down mid­dle sec­tion that high­lights the record’s tasty vibes solo.  Elsewhere on this half, Frankie Knuckles recasts First Choice’s “Let No Man Put Asunder” in a con­vinc­ing house music guise and a Blaze DJ remix of Skyy’s “Call Me” com­pletely rewrites the song’s back­ing track but still works.

The sec­ond half of The Big Apple Bites Back focuses on clas­sic house tracks released near the end of the 1980’s.  Your Humble Reviewer doesn’t gen­er­ally grav­i­tate towards this genre (he prefers his dance fare to be more lav­ish and instru­men­tally com­plex) but the selec­tions cho­sen here are rock-solid stuff and par­tic­u­larly effec­tive in the “chil­dren of disco” con­text they are given here: “Bango (To The Batmobile)” by the Todd Terry Project deftly mixes vocal sam­ples and min­i­mal­ist synths against an insis­tent beat and Black Riot’s “A Day In The Life” offers a hyp­notic dub-styled blend of echoey synths and mas­sive elec­tronic beats.  Afrikali’s “Out Of The Jungle” is another impres­sive track, adding a world­beat fla­vor and incor­po­rat­ing a sermon-style vocal that con­jures up mem­o­ries of David Byrne and Brian Eno’s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts.

In short, dance music fans will find plenty to enjoy on both Yowsah Yowsah Yowsah and The Big Apple Bites Back.  They’re unusu­ally well-curated and sequenced for bud­get com­pi­la­tions so any­one inter­ested in these sounds shouldn’t hes­i­tate to take a gam­ble on them: each is worth the mea­ger admis­sion price for genre enthusiasts.