The 1980’s. Stuck in collective memories all over the world as a collage of gated snaredrums, keytars, flashing music videos, lip-syncing and Karate Kid. When talking about this decade many forget all the good it has brought us. How it has influenced so many artists and music we love today in more than one genre. One of those genres being: disco funk. Yes, disco funk. Not at all a popular genre, but definitely one of my personal favorites. And what better example can I give you to illustrate my love for this genre than the magnificent Brooklyn Express ?

Brooklyn Express is one of Began Cekic’s two disco projects (the other being Common Sence). Cekic was a Yugoslavian guy with a little record company called One Way (formerly known as B.C. Records) based in New York. A pretty shady figure that disappeared from the music scene abruptly but he left us some great music to discover, most of them considered ‘covers’ but I’m more comfortable with the term ‘re-works’.

One of the re-works Cekic was loved for is ‘Sixty-Nine’. A track heavily ..ahem.. influenced by this Jimmy Bo Horne joint. I can’t even begin to describe this beautiful instrumental chaos! After a strange kind of cinematic soundcheck intro and a cheeky vocal sample the song kicks off with a cool little loop upon which the entire track is based. As mentioned before, this jam is instrumental but believe me when I say: you won’t miss the vocals! The B-side ‘Changing Position’ is basically a radio-edit of Sixty-Nine. Only difference being that the dramatic synth break of Sixty-Nine is being used as an intro. There’s an interesting story around this Cekic that you should definitely look up. Even Tee Scott (mash-up pioneer, introduced into the Dance Music Hall of Fame in ’04) has a guest-role in the Cekic picture. This extract of a 1994 Tee Scott interview should spark your interest:

“He (Cekic) was the king of the copiers. He got a hold of me, and he treated me to all kinds of baubles (laughter); he bought me two huge 1500’s, or 1520 tape decks, the model they used in the studio with a “Store” feature and the extra sections for your tone generators, which were built-in; it cost about $4000. And then he bought me the 1506, which was a 4-track recorder. These were all gifts for doing those reca-ds for him. Of course he did cover records, really because he didn’t sample anybody else’s records – it wasn’t possible then, — he just did things that sounded close to them.” Curious yet?

[wpaudio url=”http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11988624/Sixty-Nine.mp3″ dl=”0″ text=”BROOKLYN EXPRESS – SIXTY-NINE”]

BROOKLYN EXPRESS – CHANGING POSITION (192 kbps)