- Long before there was anything like an edits scene, Ray Mang was breathing new life into moldy oldies. Releases on his superbly-titled Mangled label have treated tracks not as finished products but as instruments made to be played, hit, beaten, warped and into sweaty work-outs—CD comps titled Mangled and Mangled Again are highly worth tracking down. The latest bit of mangling is a four-track collab with Dave Jay of Mondo Disco/Twisted Tongue. Hard to say if it's Jay's hand in the mix or what, but they're heavy on the dubby drum tip, forsaking some of the slinkier sides of disco found on earlier Mangled jams for rolling, deep-space percussive grooves.
"Vaz-o-lene" kicks things off with thunderous disco-drum bursts anchored by some big and proud acid bass. While it's led by a field of crazed tom-toms, the tune also entertains a number of exotic invasions: Vaguely Middle Eastern woodwinds snake up and down, and are overtaken by weird mumbling shamans and expressive bellydance exhaltations, all of which swoop in and out before you can get a grip on them. "Get On Down" starts right in the middle of a dub-drum lazer-synth war in outer space, so you might want to duck. (I would very much like to "get on down," but I'm not sure I can find where "down" is, because I'm moving blindly through a psychedelic forest of conga breaks.)
On the flip, "Charly Says" packs an energy-drink punch with super-catchy vocals in some incomprehensible tongue (Portuguese?) over a massively electro-funky groove. It makes me feel like I'm partying in a weird neighborhood of some country I've never been to before. "Be Good" ends on a slower, lighter tip, with some nice New Beat crunch to it, a big macho snare and lumbering chords. If you close your eyes when you listen, you can feel yourself magically whisked away to late '80s Belgium.
Four bits of solid dance floor fodder, more notches on the catalog belt, and promising precursors to the man's forthcoming DFA single with the singular Lady Miss Kier. Hopefully, though, that won't be your only exposure to the guy's work—it's wise to catch him in his natural edit habitat, doing what he does best.
TracklistA1 Vaz-o-lene
A2 Get Down
B1 Charly Says
B2 Be Good