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One of the rea­sons disco is such a fun genre for us 1970’s musi­cal archae­ol­o­gists to explore is because it offers a vast expanse of uncharted ter­ri­tory for us to explore.  The famil­iar hits that casual lis­ten­ers know are just the thinnest top-layer of what is really out there.  There are count­less for­got­ten or over­looked gems wait­ing to get their fair share of the mir­ror­ball lime­light and a whole genre of disco com­pi­la­tions has grown up around unearthing such trea­sures, with ded­i­cated dee­jays like Dimitri From Paris, Joey Negro and Al Kent doing their damnedest to unearth every worth­while 12-inch obscu­rity under the sun.

Another intre­pid disco-explorer who has been doing note­wor­thy work in the field is “Mr. Pink,” a U.K. based fan and col­lec­tor who won over many disco fans last year with a quar­tet of action-packed, double-CD disco comps known as the Disco Discharge series.  He has returned this year with another quar­tet of com­pi­la­tions that con­tinue his dance­floor archae­ol­ogy in high style.  The first of the new batch is Diggin’ Deeper, a set that con­tin­ues the musi­cal exca­va­tion that Mr. Pink began with the ear­lier Classic Disco vol­ume and does a fine job uphold­ing the stan­dards of his series.

The first disc offers a nice cross-section of mate­r­ial that extends from the mid-1970’s into the early 1980’s.  The Trammps score with “Soul Searchin’ Time,” a slick groover that retools the Gamble/Huff mes­sage song style for max­i­mum dance­floor impact and the Ritchie Family update Martin Denny’s exot­ica clas­sic “Quiet Village” for the disco-kitsch 1970’s, com­plete with wonky synth solo­ing and breathy, chanted come-ons from the singers.  Elsewhere on the disc, the Constellation Orchestra mixes Chic-style ele­gance with sci-fi lyrics on “Dancing Angel” and Sticky Fingers crafts a killer funk-disco epic in “Party Song,” a skillfully-arranged tune with amaz­ing, jazzy horns à la 1970’s-era Kool & The Gang.  There’s a great blend of vin­tage disco hooks and dub-style 1980’s synth tex­tures in “Do Your Best” by Carol Hahn.

The sec­ond disc main­tains the sleek plea­sures of the first with another gen­er­ous assem­blage of dance obscu­ri­ties.  The funk-disco theme is con­tin­ued in a strong way by Avenue B Boogie Band’s “Bumper To Bumper,” a com­pul­sive dance track dri­ven by a relent­less bassline and intricately-layered vocal chants, while the Philly-influence disco style gets its due from John Davis And The Monster Orchestra via “Ain’t That Enough For You,” a double-time, per­cus­sive disco opus with grand, soar­ing strings on its cho­rus.  Other favorites on disc 2 include Dan Hartman’s “Countdown/This Is It,” an exu­ber­ant 14-minute opus that over­flows with per­co­lat­ing pop hooks, and Charlie Calello Orchestra’s “Sing Sing Sing,” which updates a jazzy swing-music fave for the 1970’s with some of the best-recorded drums you’ll ever hear on a disco record.  Fans of camp-disco also get a treat with disc closer “Savage Lover” by The Ring, a deliri­ous kitchen-sink pro­duc­tion that boasts surg­ing strings duel­ing with echo-drenched drums, quirky ana­log synth solos, oddly regal horns and vocal inter­jec­tions that range from cutesy vocalese to jungle-style shrieks.

There are plenty more high­lights that could be cov­ered here — like the moment where the singers scat in uni­son with the string sec­tion on Poussez’s “Never Gonna Say Goodbye” or the bubblegum-style gid­di­ness that per­vades Freddie James’ “Get Up And Boogie” — but that would make this review twice as long.  Besides, you should get to dis­cover some of the fun sur­prises on your own.  Your Humble Reviewer will close out the review by not­ing that the set is scrupu­lously well-produced (every­thing comes from mas­ters, always album-length ver­sions or twelve-inch mixes) and Alan Jones’ infor­ma­tive lin­ers pro­vide a nice crown­ing touch.  Simply put, any­one look­ing to revel in a choice batch of disco obscu­ri­ties would do well to pick up a copy of Disco Discharge: Diggin’ Deeper.