Donna's Crayons

I've been hopelessly in love with the Queen of Disco since I first discovered Donna Summer's music back in the '70s.  Her disco-era releases remain fundamental to the genre, from the 16 minute "Love To Love You Baby" (which helped popularize the extended mix), the synthesizer-driven "I Feel Love" (which birthed Eurodisco--and still sounds cutting-edge today), to the best of her dance music "concept" albums (Once Upon A Time, a modern retelling of the Cinderella tale, and Bad Girls, which tackles prostitution from the perspective of a streetwalker).  While her releases following the "death of disco" became infrequent and disappointing, her last album, Crayons, made a good case for the immortality of the Queen.  Thanks to PCPL's partnership with Freegal, one can get free and legal downloads of not only the entire album, but also remixed versions and a "bonus" track originally released only on iTunes and the European edition of Crayons.

Daft Punk - Random Access Memories

While you're up all night dancing to Daft Punk's single "Get Lucky," please note that the full CD is available for immediate download through the library's Freegal database. Since Random Access Memories' May 20th release, the album has been in constant rotation on my iTunes playlist. I spent a long time digesting the album, a far cry from the other electronic dance music I've consumed this past year (Burial's ghostly dubstep / Kaskade's dance-floor beats). My final opinion: Random Access Memories is a stellar album, a superb mixing of disco, electronic, off-Broadway, and funk. I can see how fans yearning for the rush of Alive 2007 might find R.A.M. shocking in its pacing, but I encourage you to explore Daft Punk's latest for yourself. Here is a simple guide to the tracks to get you started:

Who is Daft Punk - In 1999, a freak studio accident turned Frenchmen Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter into robots bent on making the world dance.

1. Give Life Back to Music - I love this funky opening track. Daft Punk's signature robot vocals, "Let the music in tonight/Just turn on the music" showcase their passion for making timeless music.

2. The Game of Love - Bubbly synth-pop song with sugary sweet lyrics. It straddles a strange line between "too fast for background music" and "too slow to dance to."

3. Giorgio by Moroder - This nine minute epic gives Daft Punk a chance both to pay homage to producer Giorgio Moroder (a pioneer of dance and pop music that worked on the Top Gun soundtrack) by using interview clips as the foundation for the song, while expanding on his influence with electrifying beats on their own.

Drive - Scoring a noir film with a cristal baschet and neo-80's new wave

I was very impressed with Nicolas Winding Refn's 2011 film Drive.  A lovely blend of arthouse noir and crime thriller, the film (to a certain extent) is an homage to films like Bullitt(1968), Thief(1981), and "To Live And Die In L.A." (1985).The entire film score and accompanying songs radiate an active 1980's motif. Very reminiscent of two innovative film composers of the 1980's. The first is 70's ambient/electronic band Tangerine Dream who scored memorable films like Risky Business, Legend, Firestarter, and Near Dark.  The other being electronic king Giorgio Moroder who handled 80's classics American Gigolo, Scarface, Cat People, The Neverending Story, and Flashdance.