Third Generation Disco: David Mancuso to Frankie Knuckles to Derrick May or Rhythm is Rhythm. Invented spacey electro disco sound with collaborating DJ record nerd friends, The Belleville Three, from Detroit; innovating off Kraftwerk's electronic and ambient take on disco. They called their DJ soundsystem business Deep Space Soundworks. "Beyond the Dance" feels trance-y, even possibly psychedelic, a dash of ambient Brian Eno, chill-out dance music (before that became a tired brand) with this relentless buoyancy that hits that endless groove hooky repetition bell again but in a completely different register here: techno grooves, snappy castanets, crude electronics, a droning pinball machine, zen healing melodic cheap synth tones, pulsating, radiating outward like gamma rays. Where four or five minutes in you want the groove to go on forever: Serene, slow building, surging space disco Detroiters called Techno. Now, 2024, only its ambient splendor remains. And I am surprised this hasn't been endlessly looped in some Muzak space, elevator music, or grocery shopping to Rhythm is Rhythm.
TGIDF
