Under the Drainolith moniker, Alexander Moskos writes avant rock songs that chew slowly through the gut of North Americana like a crass and twisted experimentalist. Take “No Name (Dany Kane’s Blues)”, it plods through the folklore of a dead westerner with a Velvets sensibility towards dissonance and functions as the Hysteria LP’s introduction to prickly madness. He recorded the LP with doctors of demented rock Nate Young of Wolf Eyes and Neil Hagerty of Royal Trux, finding salvation in an underground passage into the Temple of Beastie.
Moskos is a native son of noise and experimentation, also offering his talents to AIDS Wolf, but his obsessions go further than crafting music for cave dwelling weirdos. At the opposite end of the spectrum to Moskos’ M.O. lies disco, and he has an impressive collection of Quebec-specific records.
Moskos the historian of Quebec disco has done his homework, delivering 15 years of research in an hour-long mix. We open with Robert Charlebois, who’s operating somewhere between Can and James Brown, the visionary who’s going to usher in the Quebec disco era. From there parallels can be drawn across the board, but Quebec disco is a bilingual groove movement best admired for remaining faithful to its regional tone.
Moskos offered the following words on his mix:
I’ve been collecting disco records, particularly disco records from Quebec since about 2000. A collection of hundreds of them showed up at a thrift store near my house. I came home having spent 60 bucks on 120 records and it was on. I made my first mix of Quebec Disco over 10 years ago; this is the second. Back then nobody really cared and information about it was zilch. There is a real cultural legacy of both disco clubs and studio musicians playing disco in Montreal, a bunch of it through a label/studio called Unidisc, which was based in St Henri, the neighborhood I live in. The opening track isn’t disco per se, It’s Robert Charlebois presaging what was coming. He knew. He was taking Quebec out of its past and shooting it into its future. “Sacrement!” the disco era is coming.
Drainolith’s Hysteria LP is out now on NNA Tapes.
“Kozz Quebec Disco Mix 2” tracklisting:
01 Robert Charlebois, “Engagement”
02 Disco Spéciale, “Les Québecoise”
03 Call Girl, “Call Girl”
04 Kafé, “Disco Lady”
05 Karen Silver, “Fake (Disco Mix)”
06 Nanette Workman, “Tout Est Dans Ta Tête”
07 Katmandu, “The Kat Is Back”
08 Chemise, “On The Streets”
09 Crystal Disco Band, “Nuclear”
10 Zyntheziser, “Green Onions”
11 Swan, “Missile Lane”
