Tracklist :

A1 – Disco Story
A2 – Easy Breezy
A3 – Lords of the Mountain
A4 – Seeing is Believing
A5 – Hot Headed Girl (snippet)

B1 – Santa Maria
B2 – Needing Someone
B3 – Discokece
B4 – Voodoo Girl
B5 – Mad For Love

(play all tracks)

Produced and mixed by Ference Dobo.

Back with more Disco. I don’t know much about the music from Hungary to be honest, been there on vacation one time as a little kid and that’s it.
The only obvious thing for me is the fact that Hungary was one of the more “open” countries in the eastern block, they invited alot of big western bands (Queen for example) to play concerts infront of huge audiences (in the hundred thousands), they had a formula one grand prix from 1986 on (behind the iron curtain !) and they were the first to open the borders to austria in 1989, making it possible for thousands of people from other eastern block countries to “go west”.

However, back to the record, its Disco as I said, not entirely my cup of tea because it’s a typical record from the time when the shift from the 70s-sound to the 80s-sound took place, also alot of those tracks are too slow and boring for me, with one huge exception: B3 – “Discokece”, which is incredibly arranged. First the instrumental part and when the break with the vocals kicks in I get goosebumps, every time. Great track.

Also I found two great vids of that time from that band on youtube, have fun

Neoton Family (apparently also spelled Newton Family or Neoton Familia) have a website with a discography, but as always you can just try google to get some more information or to look on gemm.com for this record

Okay, this record is a bit of a mystery to me. First of all I can’t understand much of russian language. I had it in school for a few years but forgot almost everything about it. I still can read kyrillic letters though, and I know that “300 let” means “300 years”, But I am not sure if that is the title of the record or something else, the backside shows that the songs are done by various bands, so I just assume that this is VA.
Somehow I also have the feeling that this record is refering to the “Black Sea“, giving the picture of the beach and all (the black sea was one of the favourate and high-class vacation areas in russia back in the communist era, as a matter of fact it still is). But I can be totally wrong really.

Edit : And I am, as you can read below in the comments.

The record itself is rather enjoyable, altough being made in the mid-80s it features no synths of any form, it’s really all straight big-band style, a few songs being great for listening and a few songs providing good samples.

The song I chose today is A3-”Komsomol Irkutska”, and it is a good example for the type of “disco” I was referring about at “Zodiac”. It has disco-chords, -rhythms and -instruments, but the music is not really “driving”, keeps switching between some march- and dancestyle and the lyrics are obviously highly political, given the fact that “Komsomol” was the political organisation for the youth in Russia and “Irkutsk” is a city in Syberia. Also if you listen closely you can spot words like “fascist” in the vocals.

Got this record from one of my trips to the Czech Republic.

This thing seems to be ultra-rare but you can still try to find it on www.gemm.com.

Tracklist :

A1 – Zodiaks – 5:12 (snippet)
A2 – Pacific – 3:52
A3 – Provincials disko – 4:18

B1 – Polo – 3:17 (snippet)
B2 – Miraza – 4:02
B3 – Rokz uz leduz – 2:42
B4 – Alianse – 3:41

(play all tracks)

Janis Lusens (ARP Omni, ARP Odissey, Celesta), Zane Griva (piano, ARP Omni, vocals), Andris Silis (guitar), Ainars Asmanis (bassguitar), Andris Reinis (drums)

“Zodiac” (or “Zodiak” or “Zodiaks”) was one of the big russian bands with a huge following, quite understandable because the music is definately great. You can read up on them on the very informative Wiki-Page about the band.

This record is the most known one, “Zodiac – Instrumental Rock Group” it says on the sleeve, but actually its very 80s disco with alot of synth-sounds aswell as real drums (thank god, I hate the real 80s disco stuff with those electronic drumsounds. 80s in general are a no-go area for me.)
For my personal taste most tracks are abit too slow, but there is atleast this one track that works great to be an opener or late-night filler in a DJ set. It’s A2 – “Pacific”.

But there is a fantastic video of a livegig by Zodiac in Moscow 2006 avaiable on Youtube, gosh I wish I had been there …

The good thing is that this record is actually avaiable as CD-ReIssue all over the world (mostly in a “2 Vinyl on one CD”-Set together with “Music in the Universe”, their other great LP). Go have a look (but be aware that you need to browse abit atleast for the term “Zodiac” because of the movie from Fincher):

Amazon.de : Zodiac Disco | Zodiaks Disco | Zodiac | Zodiaks
Amazon.co.uk : Zodiac Disco | Zodiaks Disco | Zodiac | Zodiaks
Amazon.com : Zodiac Disco | Zodiaks Disco | Zodiac | Zodiaks

Or try your luck to get the original vinyl on www.gemm.com. Or search on google.