The Thousands

The adage everything old becomes new again holds on this mind-blowing compilation of ‘rare European library grooves’ courtesy of Munich’s Permanent Vacation label. Compiled by the enigmatically named Alexis Le-Tran and Jess, SPACE ODDITIES takes in 19 super-obscure cuts from subscriber-only library music albums used to score European film and TV productions from 1975 to 1984. Only a handful of people would have heard this stuff at its time of release, so, for us Southerners anyway, everything here is brand new – and sounds it – more ‘cosmic’ and freaked out than all this season’s Italians Do It Better and Lindstrom hype combined.

In the spirit of original library records, the sleeve notes have sense-heavy descriptions of each track – with things like ‘a strictly instrumental take on the deep-house genre with an erotic mood’, ‘the kind of track all the dealers would start moving to at a NYC blockparty circa 1976′, and ‘a slow esoteric cruise in the land of the robots’ indicative of the kind of seriously fresh-bent material included. Nothing sounds even remotely human – all is strictly outer-space, synthetic, the desires of a dance addicted extraterrestrial made real. Patient, flowing, textured disco experimentation from a faraway-so close European era.