For a club that flies the banner of “twisted disco,” it’s a bit rum to hear their new mix lead with Leonore O’Malley’s First Be A Woman, a plea for ladies to be ladies for the sake of getting a man.
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Attitude Verdict
Our HMD boys have dug deep into their crates – bet you don’t know Bravo’s loopy hoedown Touch Me Now, Electra’s proto-house Feel Good (Carrots
And Beets) or El Coco’s frenzied whirl Afrodesia (my favourite), while
I reckon Scherrie Payne’s take on 10cc’s I’m Not In Love (fused to
Girl You’re In Love) provides your sole recognisable singalong. That said, you’ll instantly cherish First Be A Woman – it’s a cousin of I Will Survive, and Gloria Gaynor sang it too. May the summer deserve such a jubilant soundtrack.
But the lyric, “You were born to be yourself / So no matter how you feel / If you want to impress / be the opposite sex” isn’t only bizarre, it’s also pretty twisted when you picture a gaggle of hairy, sweaty, possibly even twatted Sunday night benders and their polysexual pals cutting a rug to it. (Perhaps it’s a covert invite to drag up?). Keep that picture in mind when enjoying this 64-minute mix of ’70s/’80s New York disco laced with dabs of Italo-disco, a retro sound so underexposed in gay-orotherwise clubland, it sounds right now. Without that image, or your own bears-to-trans crowd to set it alight, the un-cognescenti among you might find things tarnish slightly in the cold light of home. Not that the quality dips, just that there is little familiar about it.