Although the title might suggest a straightforward sonic revisit to those heady days of the disco dancefloor craze, Norma Jean Wright’s creative time machine has more than a sliver of contemporary cool about it too. Sure, she sets her sights on that iconic sound, but ‘Ode To Disco’ is as much a reminder that such scenes don’t exist in isolation. So for every classic disco touch that the song revels in, it is also full of soulful licks and funky grooves, not to mention plenty of sounds we recognize from today’s clubland music. Not quite old school revivalism, and not totally the sound of today…the best of both worlds.
Lyrically, though, it is much less ambiguous, celebrating the stars and sounds of those times, describing their exquisite sonic grooves and signature moves.
But it is perhaps its many remixes which pay the most homage to those times; let us not forget that it was songs such as Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ and Gloria Gaynor’s ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’ that put the extended remix on the map, an invention that fuelled the dance floors of the 70’s.
And so it is in keeping that ‘Ode To Disco’ comes with Jazz, Club, Nu-Disco and extended mixes, each taking the song into adjacent realms, both stylistically and chronologically.
If disco is ripe for reappraisal, and I think in these dark and all too serious musical times, it would be a welcome move, then ‘Ode to Disco’ and its multitudinous musical offspring are a great place to start, an EP that not only celebrates that sound but which shows us the movement’s roots and legacy and does so whilst never missing a beat or losing site of the groove. And who better to serve all this up than the former lead vocalist with Chic, one of the most recognizable bands of that era, herself.
