Album Review: John Morales / ‘The M&M Sessions’ (BBE)

Dec 17th, 2009 | By admin | Category: Music Reviews

Thanks to the new science of the remix, disco’s extensions into eight-, ten- and twelve-minute workouts owed a lot to John Morales, who alongside the late Sergio Munzibai, was the king of dance floor elongation from under the glitterball. Morales’ M&M Sessions saw him graduate with honors from pause button edits made out of frustration with never having enough boogie time. With more space to move in, all of his remix targets give their absolute all with the extra 12-inches of room afforded. Forget critics of repetitious music, there was no padding out or playing for time here: blood sweat and tears were deployed from first funky beat to last. There’s a lot of putting faces to track names, and disco’s openness to cartoonish fun (Bumblebee Unlimited’s “Lady Bug”) and using the latest technological tricks (the frog-like synths of Universal Robot Band’s “Barely Breaking Even”) puts the form into platform shoe.

Musicians and big-lunged divas certainly earned their money back then, though in fairness disco-goers probably had much better stamina and longer attention spans compared to today. Featuring many a disco classic and a goldmine for future sampling habits throughout dance music, three hours of Manhattan disco/synth-soul history is an exhaustively worthwhile education.
Matt Oliver
File under: Tom Moulton, Shep Pettibone, Larry Levan