In the late 70's and early 80's in Communist Romania, Rodion Ladislau Roșca and his band Rodion G.A. created a hybrid of electronic music, psychedelics, and progressive rock that, decades later, has revealed itself to be remarkably ahead of its time. After years of obscurity, and only a handful of singles ever released officially, Rodion's music is finally getting the recognition it deserves. This is the story of the music, conducted as an interview with Ion Dumitrescu of Bucharest's Future Nuggets crew. Rodion speaks from his home in Romania about way he created his music, the creative climate in Communist Romania, and the sad fact that he feels that even the renewed interest in his work is coming too late to make a difference in his life.

The Lost Tapes, the first ever commercially released album of Rodion G.A.'s music, is due May 28th on Strut Records in association with Future Nuggets and Ambassador’s Reception.

It's well known that the music libraries of the 60's and 70's have become serious sample fodder for hip-hop and electronic producers. But the music has also become a staple on adventurous dance floors a la carte, or in some cases after subtle tweaks from a gifted editor. That's exactly what Manchester producer Waiwan has done with his expert take on the Keith Mansfield classic "Crash Course." We've posted a download to our Soundcloud page, and the original version is available on Music For Dancefloors: The KPM Music Library, which is out now.

The term "sleaze" as applied to disco goes back to the mid-70s, and was used to describe the slower, often vocal-lead tracks that DJs would spin toward the end of a party, in many cases in the early hours of the morning. The always informative Horse Meat Disco guys used the sub-genre as an inspiration for one of the discs on their third compilation with us, and there is of course an ongoing and healthy debate taking place online as to what technically is and isn't bona fide "sleaze."

As Dennis Citizen Kane (the man behind the Disques Sinthomme / Ghost Town labels, one of our favorite DJs in New York, and another great source for disco history and information) is launching a new club night at the Soho Grand this Friday featuring some authentic sleaze sounds, we thought we'd take the opportunity to have him share some of his favorites.

Says Kane: "These songs are not ranked in any specific way, they are just 10 great sleazy jams, they all have tremendous atmosphere and great sonic palettes. All of them convey such an intense mood and intimacy, elegant, erotic, exotic, and modern."

Kane's newest release is a remix for Liz Torres out this week on Luxor records, and we highly recommend checking out his Disques Town podcast.

Sleaze to Please - 10 sleazed-out jams selected by Dennis Citizen Kane

10 Pino Presti - Disco Shitan

9. Shock Taktix ~ Morocko

8. Puccio Roelens - Northern Lights

7. Jo Dassin - Le Jardin Du Luxembourg ( TeeTwo Mariani Edit )

6. Night Creatures - That's the night

5. Crystal Bird - Tunnel

4. Francis Lai - #1

3. Marti Cane - Love the way you love me

2. Bob Chance - Jungle Talk

1. Double Fantasy - Food for fantasy

We hinted earlier this month at what we were working on with the Rodion G.A. project, but the full story of Rodion Ladislau Roșca is deeper than we could cover in a short video, and has yielded some of the most unique and incredible music we've ever heard. It's an honor to be able to be a part of finally sharing this music with the world at large, and to see Rodion's efforts and innovations see the recognition they deserve.

34 years ago in Romania, Rodion Roșca founded a group that came to deliver an alternative sound that was completely unique in the claustrophobic cultural landscape of those times. With only two tracks ever having received an official release (via a compilation LP on the State-owned Electrecord label), the music of Rodion Roșca’s band - composed and recorded almost entirely by its leader - has been secretly kept on dusty tapes ever since. Unheard for decades, it is finally being made available as Strut, in conjunction with Ambassador’s Reception and Future Nuggets, presents the first ever retrospective of Rodion G.A.

Rodion’s music dug a subterranean niche completely opposed to the polished surface of the mainstream sound during the stifling atmosphere of Romania under the Ceausescu regime. Rodion himself was an enigmatic figure. Half-Hungarian and half-Romanian, he grew up during the brief “open” period of 1965 to 1972 when American and English rock bands, jazz legends and international pop stars were regularly played on the radio. He lived near the border with Hungary, in Cluj, a city with a healthy music culture that spawned important prog rock groups including Cromatic and Experimental Quintet. Here, Rodion managed to find vinyl and, during the ‘70s he became known amongst friends as “King Of Records”. As such, he became steeped in the major Western artists of the era – Hendrix, The Beatles, The Who, Zeppelin – and discovered many of the more progressive and electronic bands from both East and West like East Germany’s Karat, Yes, Jethro Tull, Syrius and Skorpio from Hungary, Kraftwerk, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Matador out of Czechoslovakia and many more.

From the start, Rodion was concerned with his own style of composition and set himself apart from the rock template that dominated Romanian music during the late ‘60s. Technically and in his compositions, he was obsessed with every detail of his sound. His first sessions, as a teenager, were recorded on tape during 1969-1972 - simple, sparse and haunting pieces using reel-to-reel recorders and based around vocals, guitars and improvised drums.

In 1975-6, Roșca formed Rodion G.A., the ‘G.A.’ comprising band members Gicu Fărcaș and Adrian Căpraru. Roșca had amassed equipment and became a DIY tech wizard, improvising his own techniques of composing using reel-to-reels. Surrounded by three or four Tesla tape machines, he would record beats and guitar on one channel of the tape, then stop and add other instruments on the other – a raw means of multi-tracking. He would use the other machines (transforming a Tesla into an echo machine) to add effects and delays on both instruments and vocals. Other tools in his armoury included an East German Vermona drum machine, a toy Casio VL Tone and a little Soviet-made Faemi organ to which he added phaser, flanger and fuzz pedals.

During Rodion G.A.s active period, there was only one label operating in Romania, the State-owned Electrecord, and the band recorded two tracks at the station’s studio, which surfaced on the compilation Formații Rock Vol. 5, in 1981. The band recorded five further songs at another Electrecord session which remained unreleased apart from radio airings. During the recording session at Radio Cluj, Rodion asked the sound engineer to allow him to record all of the instrumentals onto his own Tesla machine, directly from the main mixer. Within his later productions, he would sample drum parts from this session to build new tracks. Other pieces (including some made by Rodion at home on tape machines) were picked up by national radio and Rodion G.A. even hit the top of the Romanian charts for several weeks. Beyond this brief but intense exposure, no other recordings surfaced. Undeterred, the band toured extensively during the early ‘80s.

For the band’s gigs, Rodion made his own rig by hand, complete with ‘Rodion G.A.’-branded speaker boxes and amps. From the start, the band’s sound was incomparable to other contemporaries. Other Romanian musicians like Mircea Florian had moved from a folk-rock background to experiment with more electronic productions but Rodion was different, concocting dense, visceral synth sounds set against raw programmed rhythms, intricate, unusual arrangements, with prog and classical touches.

Despite the much harsher political conditions post-'72 (the "July Thesis" of Ceaușescu), with the grip on culture and society becoming increasingly strict, a live rock scene continued to exist in Romania during the ‘70s and early ‘80s. Gigs mainly happened within a network of festivals around the country and, during the summer, in seaside towns at restaurants and clubs. Bands would push the rules, often playing Western covers and venue owners had to be careful, getting to know when inspectors might drop by. Rodion was no exception and would need to dodge the censorship absurdly often. He remembers one occasion when an inspector came to listen to a band sound check. Despite singing in Romanian, the official pulled them up for singing “yeah yeah yeah” during a chorus.

The band’s only documented performance during their career was a show on Romanian television celebrating New Year’s Eve in 1980. Rodion G.A. eventually split in 1987 after a gig at the Mangalia Festival and Rodion then walked away from music completely following the death of his mother.

Fast forward to 2012. Blogger and film-maker Luca Sorin is intrigued by the mythology around Rodion G.A. and, after months of hunting, tracks down Rodion Rosca, and posts a handful of tracks and video footage of the band’s 1980 New Year’s Eve concert online. The links come to the attention of young Romanian crew, Future Nuggets, a collective of producers and musicians as dedicated to unearthing Romania’s musical past as they are to forging new sounds and fusions for future traditions and the global community of beat diggers. Then, further conversations, a live comeback gig in Bucharest, the first in over 25 years. A partnership with Steve Kotey of Ambassador’s Reception leads to a compilation of Future Nuggets’ own studio work, Sounds Of The Unheard From Romania in 2012 and a release from their acclaimed psych-jazz project, Steaua de Mare, in April 2013.

A strange and very precious artefact, the powerful music of Rodion has a special place in the unofficial museum of sonic oddities made behind the iron curtain. Strut, in association with Future Nuggets and Ambassador's Reception, are honoured to release his first full LP, delivering the tracks - made in the past but undoubtedly for the future - that will earn him a deserved place in the international electronica pantheon. Rodion G.A.- The Lost Tapes is released on May 28th 2013, remastered from the original tape reels. Rodion G.A. backed by Steaua de Mare will be touring fully across Europe from Summer 2013.

The story of Celluloid Records is a complicated one, and one that goes deeper than the music. Vivien Goldman did a fantastic job of outlining some of the label's history and context in her liner notes for Change The Beat, and now we have the pleasure of learning even more from some of the key players in the label's storied history. Filmed in Paris and New York City, this two part series features producers and musicians Bill Laswell and DXT (formerly Grand Mixer DST) and founder / owner Jean Karakos. Part two in the series will be posted shortly. Change The Beat: The Celluloid Records Story is out now on double CD, double vinyl w/ CD insert, and digital download.

Why do we love library music so much? Take a listen to John Cameron's "Swamp Fever" for an idea. Air-tight musicianship, out-front back-beat, sparse arrangement, crisp recording, effortlessly funky. It's as if it were made with the beat lovers of the future in-mind.

"Swamp Fever" is featured on our Music For Dancefloors collection, and originally appears on one of the heaviest and most sought after of all KPM LPs, Afro Rock, recorded at Morgan Studios by John Cameron and Alan Parker in London in 1973. As well as being a library music veteran (with over a dozen different LPs recorded for KPM and Bruton Music since the '70s), Cameron is a bona fide film composer whose credits include Kes from 1969 and 1973’s A Touch Of Class (starring Glenda Jackson and George Segal) for which he received an Academy Award nomination.

Music For Dancefloors: The KPM Music Library (Deluxe version) is released on April 2nd on 2xCD (original studio recordings and live concert), 2xLP featuring the original studio recordings and 2xCD insert of the full CD content, and digital (original studio recordings and live concert).

Appia Kwa Bridge Tour goes on!

High-life legend Ebo Taylor (Ghana/Strut Records) & Afrobeat Academy announce more tourdates for february 2013.

Feb 06th 13 Madrid/ Tempo Club
Feb 07th 13 Toulouse/ Dynamo
Feb 08th 13 Nimes/ Paloma
Feb 09th 13 Cenon/ Le Rocher de Palma
Feb 12th 13 Riorges/ Les Mardi
Feb 13th 13 Kortrjik/ De Kreun
Feb 14th 13 Mulhouse/ Normatrouff
Feb 15th 13 St Germain/ La Clef
Feb 16th 13 Massy/ Paul B
Feb 17th 13 Antwerp/ Trix
Feb 19th 13 Berlin/ Lido
Feb 20th 13 Dresden/ Scheune
Feb 21st 13 Hannover/ Lux
Feb 22nd 13 Niederstetten/ Kult
Feb 23rd13 Dublin/ Choice Cuts