Track-By-Track: O/B #30
In lieu of writing at length about the gorgeous ‘Disco Express’ by Plastic Surprise, which you can listen to just below this text, I’ve put together a short list of train-related bangers from my collection.
All aboard! And please tell me your favourite railway raving tunes. I can’t get enough.
(NB I’ve learnt that you can’t comment on substack without an account, so if you can’t be arsed with that just email/message me.)
Plastic Surprise - Disco Express (Unidisc, 1980)
(Discogs)
Riccardo Cioni & DJFT Band - Choo Choo Train (Master Dee Jay, 1983)
Sublime nonsense–chug from Riccardo Cioni. This is the kind of tune most people will hate you for playing, but it’s worth it for those select few who will love it. I’m in the latter camp, obviously. Camp being the operative word.
See also: Brian Auger’s ‘Night Train To Nowhere’, Casablanca’s ‘Wonderful Train’, Dance Reaction’s ‘Disco Train’ and, of course, the quintessential italo disco train anthem ‘Orient Express’ by Wish Key.
NYC Peech Boys - On A Journey (Island, 1983)
You, me, fly away.
You, me, on a journey.
The smokey train carriage in which this track sets off on its journey is conjured right from the word go, as one of the Peech boys walks the corridor asking to inspect the passengers’ tickets. In Italian of course.
The way they integrate musical tones and motifs from all parts of the world into their unhurried garage stomp is wonderful. For some it might sound like just another cringe example of Orientalism in music*, but to me it’s a joyful and mind-expanding trip.
(*Important note: I love cringe examples of Orientalism in music.)
Boo Williams Vs Glenn Underground - Motion Sickness (Maad, 1995)
Boo & Glenn weren’t the first to stick train noises over a banging house track, but this was definitely the first time I heard something like it in a club, when Prosumer played it a mere 10 minutes into his set at Süd Electronic’s 8th Birthday in 2008.
I still remember how exhilarated (and sweaty) we were as he launched bassline after bassline at us, and how flabbergasting it was to hear a train horn zooming unexpectedly right across the dancefloor. Just listening to the opening moments of this set is enough to give me goosebumps more than 12 years later.
See also: Risse’s ‘House Train’, Ralphi Rosario’s mix of ‘House Express’ and Groovestyle’s ‘Freedom Train’.
The Railway Raver - Manton’s Run (Rephlex, 1998)
Unusally for me, it’s not the bittersweet harmonies of ‘Mine Storm’ or ‘The Elizabethan Pornograph Smugglers’, nor the melancholy brokenness of ‘The Eyes Of Garfield’, that most does it for me on The Railway Raver’s exceptional and singular Drop Acid Not Bombs LP.
No, it’s the most abrasive and obtuse track, ‘Mantons’ Run (On The Run)', with its inside-out washing machine noises and needling alien radar, stopping and starting at random (and completely off beat, by the way).
I like this track so much I put it in my Spaced 04 mix way back when, sandwiched between Jamal Moss and 214, both of whom I imagine are fans.
Herbert - Moving Like A Train (Smith N Hack Remix) (Smith N Hack, 2007)
Since they released this track a couple of years before the likes of Sis’s ‘Trompeta’ and Samim’s ‘Heater’, it’s hard not to lay responsibility for those monstrosities and/or significant cultural moments (depending on who you talk to) squarely at Smith N Hack’s door.
Sure, plenty of producers were playing around with trumpets or whatever, not least Matthew Herbert himself with his Big Band project, but it was the tongue-in-cheek brass section cut-up job by Errorsmith and Soundhack (who I covered recently) that fully swept the mnml dancefloor just as I was leaving university. And when you hear that jaunty-to-the-point-of-tearing-your-ears-off riff for the nth time you can’t help but sense *that* trumpet and *that* accordion looming ominously on the horizon.
By the way, if you actually clicked on the video for ‘Heater’, I’m truly sorry.
Kosh - Catch The Train (Casa Voyager, 2018)
Astounding solo debut from Moroccan electro producer Kosh, on the then new kid on the block Casa Voyager. They’ve come a long way since then and I’m still buying pretty much all of their records, which can be said for only a handful of new labels of recent years.
I will say that I miss some of the attitude of this tune in Kosh’s more recent output, and when I saw him play live at Lux just before the pandemic I felt a cleanness in his set that verged dangerously on the clinical. This track, by contrast, is as badass and playful as they come:
You know what to do!
Catch the train!
Trains seem to be a Casa preoccupation, what with label owner Driss Bennis’s stunner ‘Night Train’ on Basic Moves (under his DJ.Booth alias) and the G-funk bounce of Clafrica’s ‘Intercity Bahn’.
Note: this is an entry in the Track-By-Track series for my mix for O/B.
Track-By-Track is a series that looks back at records you will have heard in my mixes, one by one in the order they were played. Who made them, and when? How did I come across them? And what do they make me feel?