TOM MOULTON — A Tom Moulton Mix

I am nearing the end of this Moulton thing and it is a goddamned monster. one of the best Soul Jazz comps ever, hands down.

I just read somewhere that Moulton was actually working on re-mastering some Larry Levan mix or comp and wasn't sure if this was it or not.

Initially thought it to be so-so but, as far as I'm concerned, it's almost the equal of Love and Dancing. Body Talk is slower and practically floats.

I just found the extended mix 12" of this and can't wait to play it out. I love the way this song comes to an end. Also, Levan's Live at the Paradise Garage is worth getting, if not for the music then the booklet alone worth it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/arts/music/20sann.html?_r=1

Dance Music Then and Now, From Tom Moulton and Unai
By KELEFA SANNEH
Published: April 20, 2006

Early in the 1970's, Tom Moulton found a way to defy the laws of mathematics: he made songs longer by a process of subtraction. By stretching out the emptiest parts of his favorite records — the rhythmic breaks, where verses and choruses gave way to beats and grooves — he helped turn R&B hits like "Do It ('Til You're Satisfied)" into disco classics. His hugely influential mixes are collected on a great new double-CD compilation called "A Tom Moulton Mix" (Soul Jazz); in it, you can hear the birth of modern dance music.

Dance-music producers have been subtracting ever since, finding out that less music can often move dancers more. You can hear decades' worth of subtracting when you play "A Love Moderne" (Forcetracks), a skeletal but surprisingly seductive new CD by the Swedish producer known as Unai. It's an early contender for electronic-music album of the year, and it makes Mr. Moulton's work sound positively baroque.

In 1974, Mr. Moulton did something that would soon become commonplace: he made a mix. He spent 80 hours turning some club-friendly records into a 45-minute reel-to-reel tape, which eventually became a hit at the Sandpiper, a center of Fire Island's night life. He took the same principle — keep the beat going so the dancers keep dancing — into the recording studio, and made a series of danceable remixes and re-edits.

His discovery seems obvious now: he realized that the thumping, dance-floor-friendly soul records of the early 70's would sound that much better, and thumpinger, if he made them longer. (Apparently brevity isn't the soul of soul.) He can claim to have invented the 12-inch single, although he stumbled upon the format by mistake: an engineer had run out of 7-inch vinyl.

"A Tom Moulton Mix" gathers 16 tracks, starting with "Keep On Truckin' (Part 1)," the 1973 hit by Eddie Kendricks, the former Temptation. The song lasts eight minutes on Kendricks's self-titled album; a radio edit whittled it down to three and a half. But Mr. Moulton went in the other direction: the version here lasts more than 11 minutes, and if anything it ends too soon. When that glorious beat — thundering drums, squelchy guitar, a string section darting in and out — finally gives way to the timpani heartbeat that serves as a coda, you may be expecting, or even hoping, that the song will come roaring back to life one more time.

Many of his mixes seem relatively unobtrusive, especially compared with the radical disco producers who emerged in the mid-70's. Walter Gibbons and Shep Pettibone, for example, took Mr. Moulton's approach further: they loved to turn songs into wild, weird, drum-driven experiments. But part of the joy in this compilation is the gentleness of Mr. Moulton's approach; he's invisible, unless you're paying attention. Whether he's toying with B.T. Express's "Peace Pipe" or extending the sublime novelty hit "Moonboots," by Orlando Riva Sound, Mr. Moulton makes mixes that hint at what came before and what would come after. You can hear soul songs morphing into machine music.

In the 70's, "disco" evolved from a place into a genre, and in the 80's, house and techno producers focused even more intently on rhythm tracks. It sometimes seems that dance-music producers are doing their best to finish what Mr. Moulton and others started: stripping away the songs until almost nothing's left.

Maybe the job is just about done. Certainly, some of the best electronic dance music these days is also some of the sparsest. In Germany and elsewhere, producers and D.J.'s have figured out ways to evoke disco's propulsion by using little more than hums and clicks and snippets and squiggles. It's just an extension of the Moulton doctrine: a relatively simple track, slowly mutating over 5 or 10 or even (in an age of CD's and laptops) 30 minutes, can drive dancers crazy.

Erik Moller, the Swede who records as Unai, is often counted as one of the minimalists; he's known for subtle, twitchy tracks that occasionally hint at dub reggae. "A Love Moderne," his second full-length CD, is to be released in America next month, and it's a slight departure. There are more melodies, more singing (his own), more songs. His fans will probably claim that this is his pop album, but beware: Unai fans probably have a different definition of pop than you do. (That's why they're Unai fans.)

Make no mistake: this is ghostly, sometimes eerie music. Mr. Moller is clearly still obsessed with subtle electronic textures and smudgy bass lines that could almost be computer glitches. And yet he has filled this album with strong, melancholy melodies, and unlike most of his contemporaries, he doesn't embarrass himself when he tries to sing. He often hides behind electronic filters; it's as if he recorded his voice and then erased it, leaving only a trace behind.

One track, "Heart Is to the Left," is about as close as Unai gets to a swaggering disco track. There's a sharp, unrelenting beat and an old-fashioned love lyric: "Truly I believe in you," he sings, although his voice soon disappears into the mix. And in "Modern Love," the music transforms itself through sudden cuts and gradual fades; it's a woozy composition made of gauzy synthesizers, wobbly beats, muscular bass lines, half-decayed backing vocals.

There's something pleasantly perverse about what Mr. Moller is doing: after years of making skeletal dance music, he's adding flesh to the bones he so carefully stripped. But not too much — the whole trick, in fact, is to make these skinny songs sound fleshier than they are. Whether they mean to or not, producers like him are heading back toward the disco mixes of the 1970's, only from the other side. Once it was a thrill to hear pop songs turning into electronic tracks. But it can be just as much fun to hear the process in reverse.

Also, this morning on the way to work, I nearly had one of *those moments* in my car listening to the Tom Moulton mix of Camouflage's "You've Got The Power". That part where everything drops out but the drums and then he starts bringing in the voices in sorta cyclical rounds of 'You've Got! - You've Got The Powaahhh! - You've Got! - You've Got!' plus thos string swells! OH MY GAWD!

Dustygroove.com has it for $18.99

Last week I played this song approximately 80 zillion times.

:(

Is "Make it last Forever" by Donna McGhee the same song as "Make It Last Forever" by Inner Life?

http://www.dustygroove.com/images/products/z/zzspiritofphiladelp_2_102b.jpg

was familiar with a few tracks already, but there's are many ace tracks on here that are completely new to me. Def worth picking up for the Vince Montana & The Philly Sound Orchestra "That's What Love Does" track alone. What a great, great moment in time.

Ha ha. This is really the best song ever.

can i just say that this

a) rules

b) sounds like capital-D-disco, unlike lots of the other disco comps making the rounds (dimitri, muro, joey negro, deep disco culture, etc) which in a certain way makes it even more tremendously awesome, because here's a comp that cleaves straight to all of the disco cliches and still makes it sound like the best thing ever, as opposed to "did ya know disco also means dubby reggae and banjo solos??" vibe of lots of the other comps

i should listen to this more

Weren't most of those elements introduced into that particular song by Anthony Monn?

judging by how very, very little people usually have to say about what levan or moulton or krivit or whoever have actually done to the tracks, i would guess "no"

we always hear about mancuso's koetsu cartridges and klipsch speakers and whatnot, without ever hearing about what exactly this all means except a big price tag and "oh it sounded good"

it takes one sort of person to have a working knowledge of 70s production techniques (i imagine dudes like francois k have already forgotten what they were doing, studio kinda cloudy and all that) and another sort of person to want to write rockcrit, and i imagine there's not very much overlap (phil s comes to mind, though)

xpost nice, matos

1. "frothing doo-wop"? this is what we call background vocals now?
2. wouldn't the cooing voices be part of the (cough) "frothing doo-wop"?
3. there are no synthesizers on "Keep on Truckin'"

1. "more more more" doesn't turn into the isley-brothers-esque anti-war soul-folk jam that the first thirty seconds promises

http://soundcloud.com/strut/bang-the-party-bang-bang/s-77Fw0

this 4 cd set is by far the best thing i have heard this year ....

so so so so so so so good

so so so so so so so so so good.

whenever one of these versions hit the playlist i go to the machine and go .. 'oooh of course .. '

such a great compilation/boxset ..

Yeah, probably the best disco compilation of them all. (Alongside the the first two or three "Grand 12-Inches" comps.) Basically the only flaw (if you can call it a flaw) that for obvious reasons it only has Moulton's Philly International remixes. Would love to see a career-spanning, multi-label comp of his mixes one day, but I guess licensing issues would make it impossible?

well, this set was a pure philly deal ..
but yes, a career defining set would be amazing ..
whether possible is another question.
but damn .. how awesome would such a thing be !

are you guys talking about the one with tracklist in the OP? this one is more complete http://www.discogs.com/Tom-Moulton-Philadelphia-International-Classics-The-Tom-Moulton-Remixes/release/3498587

and coincidentally i've been listening to it all day

@flopson : thats the one that i have.

tis 4 cds of pure perfection.

has convinced many of my friends as to the brilliance of disco.

i mean 10 minutes of philly vs lou rawls !

time to melt in the sheer velvetness of the groove.

Yeah, the 4 CD is what I was talking about too.

it's the best thing ever

glad to see we agree.

If you like to hear some of Moulton's pre-PI mixes, this comp was reissued on CD a few years ago, it's pretty awesome too. "Make Me Believe in You" (originally a Curtis Mayfield production) is woderfully gritty and ballsy, and "We're on the Right Track" is one of the most beautiful tracks he ever remixed.

yeah those two patti jo tracks are something else

oooh . not seen that around tuomas.

i need that.

ta for the pointer.

just bought that boxset the other day, (the moulton, philly intl one), it is fab. Great liner notes, too, moulton seems like such a rad dude in every interview i've read (like 2)

agreed.
there is a current thread re bands and books in a few years.
i would love to read toms take on the disco era.
though i am concerned he is a little too nerd-esque re editing tapes etc, given the perfection of his mixes.
surely he had to be a full on part of the studio 54/disco excess experience ?

it's so mindblowing reading/thinking about the first 12" records and improvements in audio tech in the 70s, i mean, holy shit, dancers must have been practically hallucinating hearing music sound so good in a big space for the first time.

Funny I didn't revive this earlier. Anyway, Moulton's been putting up unreleased mixes on Bandcamp. No details per se -- new? old? stuff he did for fun? -- and you gotta wonder about the exact rights issues but nonetheless:

https://tommoulton.bandcamp.com/album/the-tom-moulton-unreleased-mixes-volume-one

https://tommoulton.bandcamp.com/album/the-tom-moulton-unreleased-mixes-volume-2

Very imformative thread, thanks! A couple mentions on Rolling Reissues 2020:
From the writers of 'Last Night A DJ Saved My Life', Bill Brewster & Frank Broughton have come up trumps again with this fabulous book 'The Record Players'!!!

Leading dance music writers Brewster and Broughton detail the visionary DJs who dramatically changed the course of music: from the very first nightclub DJs, to the founders of entire genres, including northern soul, hip hop, disco, techno, drum’n’bass and beyond.

These are the obsessives, the playboys, the musical eccentrics who founded the craft of DJing, developed amazing techniques for performing with recorded music, and revolutionised the way music is conceived, created and enjoyed. They gave us new ways to have the times of our lives and forged a worldwide industry of nightlife and dance music. From unsung pioneers to overheated superstars, all the biggest DJ names are here!

Includes Tom Moulton, Francois Kevorkian, Louie Vega, Marshall Jefferson, John Peel, David Mancuso, Alfredo, Shut Up & Dance, Danielle Badelli and lots, lots more!!!!!
https://soundsoftheuniverse.com/product/the-record-players-the-story-of-dance-music-told-by-history-s-greatest-djs-by-bill-brewster-and-frank-broughton

Also just listened to...soundtrack to Tim Lawrence's book, Love Saves The Day: A History of American Dance Culture, 1970-1979, and it's a trip, as expected..."Above And Beyond" is certainly the most sensitive Edgar Winter track I've heard: voices and synths guided through sunset-tinged blue skies by Tom Moulton's production.

― dow, Thursday, July 30, 2020 Descriptions off the cuff, on the fly! Of course.

Yeah the Tim Lawrence book 'soundtracks' on Bandcamp are truly great.

Disco pioneer Tom Moulton: 'People thought I was from another planet!'