Hills Of Katmandu – Tantra – Released 1979, DDD Recordings
Hills Of Katmandu is the 1979 long-play debut from Tantra, a project from Italian composer/producer Celso Valli. It consists of two extended disco tracks, the title track on the A side and Wishbone on the B side.
So yeah. It’s Italian. And it’s disco.
And it’s fucking badass.
Now disco, I don’t do disco. Or at least that was my thinking for decades, despite being a fan of various disco variants for pretty much my entire life.
Turns out, even when I wore my hair long and was headbanging in moshpits, I was a disco fan all along and didn’t realise it.
That’s because I was brought up, for lack of a better term, to view disco as a bad word.
A term synonymous with lurid shirts with oversized collars open at the chest displaying lairy star sign medallions, matching flared trousers, platform shoes, mirror balls and cocaine sleazeballs and those annoying tossers who insist on going “ooooh ooh!” whenever they hear a four/four kick/high-hat combo.
Fuck all that Saturday Night Fever bullshit am I rite?
But then a few years back I had a breakthrough of sorts. A confluence of influences resulted in my dabbling with disco, learning its true history, discovering sample sources, picking up records here and there, exploring those missing links between those early pioneers and the music disco would eventually become.
With that came the slow realisation that what I thought was disco wasn’t actually disco at all. Turns out the Bee Gees’ Stayin’ Alive isn’t disco any more than 2 Unlimited’s No Limits is techno.
Digging through dusty crates I discovered sounds that ranged from percussive and minimalistic to orchestral cinematic and, more often than not, deeply psychedelic. Music that not only served as the initial building blocks of hiphop but also the connective tissue between funk and soul on the one side, and house and techno on the other.
It was also around about the same time I began hanging out more with a DJ friend of mine whose expansive record collection and unparalleled Technics skills made me extremely jealous and only mildly bitter, but none of that matters when you have someone introducing you to new music.
It helped that both of us were born in the same year and often discussed this as a topic. A lot of interesting music was released the same year we were, which brings me to the topic of Tantra.
This is one of the first tracks that properly sold me on disco. Serendipity sometimes works slowly though, and it’s fair to say I’ve come across the artwork for years through my various music groups and communities, it began to feel like that album cover was following me around everywhere before I finally took the plunge asking, “what’s this all about then…?”
Before subsequently discovering I was a disco fan my whole life.
Hills Of Katmandu – Tantra
The title track starts off with standard disco beat and a distinctly “Italo” synth arpeggio complete with slappy bass and bongos and a riffing guitar.
Next some shrill synth leads come slicing through the mix as the track gradually starts building, building…
There’s choral vocals in the background, occasional snake charmer synths on the right and left channels, a whole cornucopia of exotic Katmandantics, basically.
I mean yeah, on the one hand this is disco as it gets, so it can get really cheesy, but at the same time the musicianship and composition exhibited here is something to behold.
Much like the snake in the charmer’s basket, we find ourselves writhing to the rhythm as the track goes off on various tangents, most of which are quite uplifting though around the 6-and-a-half-minute mark things take a really cheesy twist to remind us that we’re not quite out of the 70s yet…
Yeah, this is more like the disco that exists in my head… bit too much of a tangy fromage flavour for my tastes here, though I do generally enjoy my “sweet smelling substances…”
We then get an extended sequence based on this melody before the main synth bassline returns around the ten-minute mark, on top of this we get some stripped-down percussion, with some phasing added to the synth bass for extra trippyness.
Different track elements come in and out and again that sense of building, building building….
This is progressive house years before the invention of house and its masterclass in how to build and sustain momentum on the dancefloor.
Well, that’s until after the 14 min mark when we get back to the cheesy bit… boo,..
I mean, in a way, this is the perfect dance music template for all who would follow,
including the inevitable cheesy singing bit that obliterates my dancefloor boner like so many hands in the air piano presets and girly house divas.
But that’s a personal preference. For others it’s the payoff. The sweet desert after the main course of dancing to the same basic groove for several minutes at a time.
Anyways, on to the next track, Wishbone, which, again, starts off with a steady four-four beat and more quirky percussion before a large filter sweeping synth washes over our eardrums.
The fact that this 45-year-old groove wouldn’t feel out of place on today’s dancefloors is a testament to how ahead of its time this track truly is.
It’s only when the bass and guitar make an appearance that we realise this is actually a piece of live music, and not sequenced electronic music, though you’d be forgiven for thinking so.
The addition of sitars shouldn’t work by praise be the disco devil they do.
To be fair, this is another one of those epic everything-but-the-kitchen sink disco productions, the very model of coke-fuelled 70s disco excess, with a huge spectrum of instruments, sounds and effects on here, all riding the same simple bass and drum groove.
On paper none of this should work but in practice the result is mesmerising.
The vocals really grab me on this one too. The lyrics are catchy and nonsensical, as all trippy dance music lyrics should be. I mean… I guess they could be viewed as inspirational under the right circumstances, go pull a wishbone yourself and let me know how you get on…
Fuckin ‘ell this is funky though!
Wishbone – Tantra
Honestly I’m finding it hard to type because my shoulders keep shimmying from side to side and I really just want to get up from my desk and DANCE…
This tune is soooo damn good. And it’s disco, and I should hate it, I’ve years of conditioning telling me to do so but I can’t because I love it.
This, right here, is the track that converted me to a disco denizen after decades of eye-rolling derision.
It’s sometimes it’s uncanny to believe this is actually 45 years old, right up until that moment becomes impossible to ignore. Which is kinda how I feel really.
But one thing that’s undeniable is that, despite the myriad changes in fashion, society, sounds, styles, musical genres, production techniques and recording technology, go on any dancefloor tonight and you’ll still hear echoes of this release, and others of the same era and calibre.
Disco doesn’t suck. In reality it fucking rocks.