Events

For their latest party at Cargo, Go!Zilla continue to provide a platform for the most innovative and interesting live electronic music performers around, matching them with like-minded DJs and a discerning, inquisitive audience. Headlining proceedings are nu-disco pioneers Faze Action, playing their first London show in over 4 years.

It’s impossible to underestimate Faze Action’s role in bringing about the richness and breadth to electronic music that we now take for granted. In 2008, disco is a recognized part of contemporary dance music’s fabric, but it wasn’t always so. Back in the mid-nineties, when the likes of Lindstrom and Todd Terje were still young pups, brothers Robin and Simon Lee released a string of essential 12”s on Nuphonic under the name Faze Action. These intricate but immediate tracks opened up whole new pathways and possibilities for club music; merging an organic, low-slung disco sensibility with heady grooves and instrumentation borrowed from funk, Latin and African traditions, all delivered with the punch and precision of cutting edge house and techno. Last year, ‘In The Trees’ was re-issued upon its 10th anniversary with stunning remixes by Carl Craig and Jerome Sydenham, affirming its classic status but also marking the beginning of a new chapter in the story of Faze Action. Since then, the Lees have been busier than ever, consolidating their disco roots with five fresh 12”s on their own FAR label and remixing the likes of Johnny Hammond, Metronomy and De lata. It’s not just the many old converts who are taking notice; a contemporary audience with a real hunger and enthusiasm for Faze Action’s incendiary brand of disco-infused house and Balearica is on board and open-eared. This rare opportunity to catch Faze Action in their original line-up, delving into their formidable back catalogue and previewing new material from their forthcoming LP, should not be missed.

Live support comes from Paris-based Etienne Jaumet, whose hypnotic, retro-futurist electronica is the perfect compliment to Faze Action’s strident disco exoticism. Jaumet is one half of Zombie Zombie, whose rip-roaring, krautrock-influenced A Land For Renegades LP is one of the year’s most exciting and accomplished debuts. As a solo performer, he delves yet deeper into a dressing box of inspirations drawn from horror movie soundtracks, vintage italo, kosmische, library music and psychedelia, concocting a sound that is sensuous, intoxicating and more than a little foreboding. Breathtaking in its imagination and cinematic scope, Jaumet’s live show – which takes in saxophone and a vast array of vintage keyboards and synthesizers - is essential viewing.

DJ sets come courtesy of Dolan Bergin and James Priestley. Bergin has been putting on east London’s Electric Minds parties since 2005, and in ’07 launched the record label of the same name. Specializing in deep disco and electronic funk workouts, Electric Minds have so far released 12”s by Yam Who?, Gatto Fritto, Stevie Kotey (Chicken Lips) and the legendary Chaz Jankel.

Priestley is Go!Zilla’s resident DJ, and also co-runs secretsundaze with Giles Smith. Secretsundaze volume 2 mixed by James and Giles hits the shops on oct 13 and as the summer parties in london come to and end, the autumn will see James tour extensively with the album.