BIONIC BOOGIE — HOT BUTTERFLY: Glamour Meets Grit Under The Mirrorball

The unini­ti­ated often think of disco as a genre of songs and not a genre of albums.  However, the con­nois­seur knows that the disco’s truly skilled pro­duc­ers — Giorgio Moroder and the Nile Rodgers/Bernard Edwards team, to name just a few — could main­tain a var­ied blend of groove and melody at album length and cre­ate an expe­ri­ence that was com­pelling from the first beat to the last.

Gregg Diamond was a mem­ber of that exclu­sive club, announc­ing his tal­ents as an LP-length disco auteur on the clas­sic Andrea True Connection debut album, a lush but dri­ving opus that spawned the crossover pop hit “More, More, More.”  However, his skills would find their fullest expres­sion with a stu­dio project he dubbed Bionic Boogie.

Hot Butterfly was the sec­ond Bionic Boogie album and offered six songs that are all wor­thy of dis­cothèque spins.  The title track is the obvi­ous clas­sic and kicks the album off in high style: a jazzy piano and bass groove holds down the beat as swirling strings and harp cre­ate a heart-tugging back­drop for a stel­lar vocal from a pre-solo star­dom Luther Vandross.  He sings of lost love with the grace of a Hollywood idol, cre­at­ing a swoon-inducing roman­tic mood that is sup­ported nicely by expert back­ing vocals that empha­size his phras­ing at key moments and add lovely counter-harmonies when added ear-candy is necessary.

However, there’s much more to this cult-fave album than just the title track.  Each of the remain­ing songs pur­sues a slightly tougher sound, mix­ing the ele­gance and jazzy flair of the title track with grit­tier rhythms and the atti­tude of a New Yorker.  “Chains” is a killer disco jam, with the vocal­ists cre­at­ing a polyrhyth­mic blend of group-vocal hooks over a track that boasts a sur­pris­ing fuzz gui­tar hook and stac­cato horns that form a call-and-response pat­tern with the soul­ful vocals.  “Fess Up To The Boogie” is another funky entry that off­sets the “Arabian Nights gone funk” sce­nario of its lyrics with a pound­ing arrange­ment where the rhythm sec­tion, piano and group vocals work together to cre­ate a relent­lessly per­cus­sive feel.

Elsewhere, Diamond and com­pany add fur­ther spice to the mix with a pair of elec­tric piano-driven tracks that have rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent feels.  The first is “When The Shit Hits The Fan,” which uses the elec­tric piano to cre­ate a “New Orleans goes new wave” rhythm as the group vocals affect a ner­vous, stac­cato style to deliver lyrics that poke fun at the beat-driven hedo­nism of the disco scene.  The other is “Cream (Always Rises To The Top),”  which uses a con­stantly ascend­ing electric-piano riff as the lynch­pin of a smooth yet funky groove that cre­ates dra­matic ten­sion with skit­ter­ing strings and churn­ing gui­tar riffs.  It’s worth not­ing that the lat­ter song has daz­zlingly intri­cate vocal arrange­ments, as does second-side opener “Paradise.”  However, the lat­ter tune takes top vocal hon­ors on the album thanks to an finale where lay­ers of back­ing vocals dove­tail to cre­ate a jazz-inflected complexity.

In short, Hot Butterfly is a great exam­ple of disco in album form; a real work of crafts­man­ship that is acces­si­ble enough to be instantly dance­able but com­plex enough in its musi­cal­ity to stand up to mul­ti­ple lis­tens.  It has also finally got­ten the CD it deserves thanks to an excel­lent new edi­tion from Funky Town Grooves.  The new disc boasts stel­lar mas­ter­ing from disco leg­end Tom Moulton, who avoids “make it louder” mind­set of mod­ern remas­ter­ing to cre­ate a warm, nat­ural sound­scape that main­tains the ana­log integrity of the orig­i­nal record.

It’s also worth not­ing that this new edi­tion boasts a quar­tet of vin­tage remixes by Diamond and dee­jay Jim Burgess that bring out fresh angles on a trio of the album’s tracks.  Diamond’s arrange­ments on the album ver­sions are dense with lay­ers of frills so he and Burgess had plenty of mate­r­ial to work with.  The result­ing remixes retain the album’s musi­cal vigor while high­light­ing riffs and hooks that got buried in the rich­ness of the album’s sound.  For instance, Diamond’s rework­ing of “Fess Up The Boogie” strips down the arrange­ment to give it a more propul­sive feel that high­lights some nag­ging rhythm-guitar hooks while Burgess’s take on “Hot Butterfly” weaves in an extended break to high­light the jazzy intri­cacy of the back­ing vocals.

The com­bi­na­tion of gor­geous sound and the value enhance­ment of the remixes makes Funky Town Grooves’ edi­tion of Hot Butterfly a must for disco stu­dents.  Veterans will value the classy treat­ment it gives to a vin­tage gem and new­bies will get a grand intro­duc­tion to the dance-floor genius of Gregg Diamond.