I’m all for glamorous bears shaking their thang (well maybe not Bearforce One) and Hard Ton is what you get if you mix a Beth Ditto oversized disco diva with Jamie Principle via the voice of Sylvester and the hot trash mess look of Leigh Bowery & Divine. Yep that good 😀
Saw the video and funny artwork from Hard Ton in AudioPornCentral a few days ago and they seem to be popping up everywhere – surprised the bears haven’t been all over their mix of acid house, nu-disco and disco falsetto vocals…strangely both retro and very now with the nu-disco movement, and very welcome from me as that I think was a real high-point in the last 30 years of music. And when most 80’s references people know and reproduce are fairly over-used and overdone synthpop and hair-metal references (Goldfrapp: take note!), it’s nice to hear someone hasn’t copied their homework! I spent many an hour listening to DJ International releases…when acid house and house was also referred to as ‘jacking music’.
They (for according to my research they seem to be a duo) Max and Mauro are from Venice, Italy and describe themselves as ‘The biggest disco queen of the XXI century’. Lead singer Max used to be in heavy metal bands (!) but also had a love of Italo-disco (which shows on Marilyn, the B-side of Time to Jack) which he shares with Mauro who he met through bearwww (hey I used to hang out there! :-D) and are now signed to DJ Hell’s Gigolo Records, and have their debut EP for them out ‘Selfish’ but if you hunt around you’ll find earlier tracks such as their 12″ on Permanent Vacation – the one with their acid cover of Madonna’s Music on it!
Great retro video for Losers, the kind of party I’d love to be at, even if I’d be rather underdressed:
Love Time to Jack (no idea if it’s in part a cover of Chip E’s seminal 1985 classic, sounds very similar in the chorus, although so were about 1,000 other early acid/jack records) – shame it obviously was on a small 12″ run and I missed out – hope a digital version or a re-release is in the future? WANT.
Also love this song which I suspect is about bear/chaser gay club culture (something I doubt Simon over at APC would have noticed!) in Earthquake – check out the lyrics about ‘weekend chasers are getting high’ 😀 Also you might not want to watch it at work…LOL.
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