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After unleash­ing four double-disc vol­umes of vin­tage disco last fall, one might think com­pi­la­tion pro­ducer “Mr. Pink” would take a moment to rest on his lau­rels.  However, he imme­di­ately threw him­self back into con­tin­u­ing the series so he could unleash a fresh quar­tet of com­pi­la­tions for the spring.

The ini­tial wave of Disco Discharge comps revealed that he’s par­tic­u­larly strong on European fare so it’s not a big sur­prise that one of the new vol­umes is a con­tin­u­a­tion of last year’s Euro Disco set.  This sequel is enti­tled European Connec­tion and it does a fine job of uphold­ing this new series’ stan­dards of qual­ity.  Like its pre­de­ces­sor, European Connection divides its time evenly between clas­sic 1970’s-era Eurodisco and syn­thier sounds from the 1980’s and early 1990’s (with a big accent on Italo-Disco).

The first disc is devoted to the 1970’s mate­r­ial and offers a gen­er­ous cross sec­tion of stylings.  As expected, lush, orches­tral groovers are an impor­tant part of this disc: “From East To West” by Voyage is a clas­sic exam­ple of orches­tral Eurodisco, apply­ing an airy melody to an insis­tent and aggres­sive rhythm track pumped up by dense lay­ers or per­cus­sion, while “Midnight Madness” by Don Ray takes the funkier end of disco into jazzy realms with its intri­cate horn arrange­ment and cushy strings.

However, elec­tronic sounds were just as impor­tant to Eurodisco dur­ing the lat­ter half of the 1970’s and they are well-represented on this disc: high­lights include Giorgio Moroder’s “If You Weren’t Afraid,” where falsetto vocals dove­tail in a dreamy style with bur­bling pro­grammed synths, and Tantra’s mind­blow­ing “The Hills Of Katmandu,” a 16-minute epic that cross­breeds Eastern melod­i­cism with pul­sat­ing synths to cre­ate a hyp­notic classic.

The sec­ond disc cov­ers the 1980’s and even dips briefly into the early 1990’s.  Italo-disco is the main­stay on this half of the set, with tracks like Taffy’s “I Love My Radio” and Funny Twins’ “You And Me” deliv­er­ing the mix­ture of bubblegum-sweet pop hooks and huge, bouncy synth frills that this effer­ves­cent sub­genre requires.  They’re as light as cot­ton candy and just as tasty for those who enjoy the pop­pier side of dance music.

However, there are styl­is­tic vari­a­tions within disc 2’s elec­tronic sound­scapes: Vivien Vee’s “Americano” has an excit­ing arrange­ment with a dra­matic, Spanish-tinged flair to it and Dilemma’s “In Spirit” rep­re­sents elec­tronic dance music at its most ethe­real, offer­ing a trance-inducing sound that sug­gests the Giorgio Moroder style updated for the 1990’s.

The two discs add up to an enter­tain­ing, smoothly pro­grammed set.  As with the pre­vi­ous vol­umes of Disco Discharge, the set’s pro­duc­ers have gone to great pains to take all the songs from master record­ings and make use of album-length or extended remix ver­sions (14 of the 21 songs included here are 12-inch mixes) and the set is topped by trivia-rich liner notes by Alan Jones.

Between the two halves of this com­pi­la­tion, the lis­tener is treated to a com­pre­hen­sive edu­ca­tion in how Eurodisco evolved in a way that allowed to side­step to media-mandated “death of disco” in the late 1970’s.  This aspect of Disco Discharge: European Connection makes it worth­while for fans clas­sic disco and mod­ern dance music alike.  It’s edu­ca­tional and you can dance to it.