Words + Mix SIMONE TRABUCCHI
In the cosmic disco golden age (’80-’82) here in Italy, from the sexy East Riviera’s dancefloors until the spaceship-like console on Lake Garda, a clique of visionary yet naive DJs were spinning reggae at double speed. Alternate tempo of tracks was their thing, a small feature that created a legendary sound and aesthetic.
Later in the decade, a Dutch DJ called Moortje accidentally spinned a dancehall record at the wrong (double) speed, and he create a sub-genre called bubbling. The music became quite popular in the Netherlands and in Curacao, where Moortje was originally from. But the government associated its lyrics with an anti-establishment attitude, so they banned and destroyed bubbling tapes and parties.
This mix starts from the same sources as my first mix for Club Adriatico: instrumental digital dancehall.
When I started to record I (PAN 80) I wasn’t really aware of the bubbling sub-genre, but a few fellas (Physical Therapy and Gabber Eleganza) who heard my demos suggested listening to some legendary Moortje tapes. So, in between takes, I was playing around, speeding up my 7” collection on my brother Jim’s Stanton who, along with Big Simone (Simone Bertuzzi, the other half of Invernomuto), came back from Colombia with rough MP3s of an exciting BPM-accelerated new genre that was sampling (mostly) Congolese high life and soukous in a disruptive way, in between dembow and footwork….
STILL’s debut album, ‘I’, is now available through PAN and streaming in full below via Bandcamp.
