world of today SUPERMAX

another find at austin's BACKSPIN RECORDS (i've only been there once) that was playing in-store.  i was vaguely familiar with the 1978 ephemeral disco benchmark, LOVEMACHINE, from the austro-german wunderkind, KURT HAUENSTEIN for his SUPERMAX project.

FLY WITH ME was released in 1979 on elektra at a time when the disco diaspora, fueled by the technological advancements in synthesizers and the stillwater pools of commercial disco (with the humble exception to the roller-rink jams), to name only two, was producing several enigmatic figures, namely MORODER in italy and DIDIER MAROUANI in france. worth including, for the sake of this post, in this cahiers du disco was the rhythm chique hauenstein, oft user of a moody monotone and an economic synth melody as components of a pre-prozac, laissez-faire disco.

most of this record is a concise example of hauenstein's EURODISCO vocabulary and marks the very small number of fingerprints he left on this genre before spending a little bit too much time under the sun in the caribbean, as several songs on this bricolage lp, sadly, foreshadow (imagine if nilsson took his 1971 coconut as a career-changing trajectory).  what really kills me on this track is the lead synth line, a slightly modulated, slightly filtered melody that comes at a time when synths were being incorporated into bands of many genre.

the late seventies were an interesting time for synths.  it had been about ten years since the momus-slaying, wendy carlos-slinging MOOG in the us and the BBC RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP-party-favor, oblique strategist EMS VCS-3 in the uk hit the commercial market.  what began as boxy, analog, monophonic keyboardless voltage shapers were by the late seventies, polyphonic practitioners of boundless process control with guys like the YAMAHA CS-80 and the OBERHEIM OB-1.  the lead in WORLD OF TODAY i think is a MOOG and the synth in the chorus is the inimitable synth string sound of seventies, the 16-voice ARP SOLINA string ensemble.


supplemental materials:

PROPOSED SPACE-DISCO BUMPER STICKERS:

--keep your laws off my lindstrom--

--i'll wear a helmet when you listen to space-disco--

--moroder is my ambien--