Rooie Disco / Disco Rojo
Double CD in silkscreened tin-can holds various inserts housed in an stamped outer paper bag.
Limited to 150 copies. All music 2022.
Review Vital Weekly
DE FABRIEK/ESPLENDOR GEOMETRICO – ROOIE DISCO/DISCO ROJO (2CD by Unifab)
Nothing was short of a shock when De Fabriek released ‘Made In Spain’ in the late 80s. A blast that I hadn’t seen coming, following the various cassettes I heard from the group and their two LPs, ‘Schafttijdsamba’ and ‘Neveleiland’. ‘Made In Spain’ was literally made in Spain, a release by Discos Esplendor Geometrico (re-issued by BFE Records, see Vital Weekly 1151), the label that started releasing music by the band of the same name, but grew into a fully operational label. De Fabriek had, almost chameleon-like, started to use the same musical idiom as their Spanish friends. That included harsh rhythms, radio transmissions, and noise, and their sound came very close to their Spanish counterparts. Here we have a double CD, with one disc containing music by De Fabriek and one by Esplendor Geometrico. As much as I followed De Fabriek’s music over the years, I admit that the Esplendor
Geometrico I haven’t heard a proper release in a long time. The last thing I heard is when their music went from industrial to something more (hard) techno. ‘Rooie Disco/Disco Rojo’ means ‘red disco’ and comes in a metal box with a few circle-shaped pieces of paper and a hand stamped paper bag. Red and black are the colours, and it looks like an 80s package. I started with De Fabriek, where we find main man R. van Dellen, label boss M. Hohmann, old comrade P. van Vliet and recent members P. Ehrmann, D. Reneman, R. Seiden Faden, S. Steiner and Q. Dierick. Chameleon-like music is what I learned over the past forty years is what De Fabriek. They avoid no musical style (it seems), and it’s no longer a surprise to see them return to that classic Esplendor Geometrico sound. Big fat machine rhythms that go straight into a battered MS-20 adding a few radio waves and spoken word samples. At the same time, the music is not always like disco, the strong motorik drive is a constant presence in
many of these pieces, which could lead to some serious robotic moves. Still, the music always sounds very playful; humour isn’t shunned here. Great one.
Esplendor Geometrico has fewer pieces and takes less time, but, surprisingly, they, too, stay with a theme of red disco, i.e. nothing too dance-like, but that excellent straight-forward industrial hard rhythm sound. Perhaps not as distorted as on their earliest work (documented on ‘1980-1982’, one of my all-time favourite CD releases), as these works show a bit more refinement in their brutalist approach, also when comparing this to De Fabriek, but the differences are marginal. Perhaps this is the kind of music they still do, or maybe something they returned to for the occasion, I don’t know, but it made me think I should investigate this group’s history a bit more, as I noticed I still enjoy this kind of rhythm ‘n noise a lot. FdW