A Brief History Of Cosmic Disco

now that we're into 2009 and so-called 'cosmic disco' is the sound of yesteryear daddio, here's an old Swine skit we did on the origins of the 'scene without a name, except someone named it the cosmic disco scene and I called it 'Scandolearic' back in 2006 and then IDJ magazine reckoned they coined that term in 2008 but really I invented that and got it copyrighted and everything with no name scene'

The History Of Cosmic Disco

In 1937, Swedish molecular scientist Lars Larsson was experimenting in his laboratory when he accidentally spilled some pickled halibut onto his copy of Dvorak’s Poetic Tone Pictures and a new form of music was invented. He called this strange mutant brew of fishy orchestral soup, Classical StinkBeat and died penniless and broken after giving up his microscope and playing the cello with a halibut instead of a bow in the seedier bars of downtown Bergen.

Fast forward 70 years and whilst on a trip to visit his Great Aunt Matilde, production whiz kid, Prins Thomas found Larsson’s epic ‘Songs For Cello & Halibut Vol 73’ in a trawlermen’s hostel. Intrigued and fascinated by this haunting fusion of instrumentation and avant-garde anti-noise, Prins turned the Lp to 45 and pitched it up to +15 on his specially adapted ‘superpitch’ mobile turntable.

Hey presto! Cosmic Disco was born. Although never referred to as cosmic disco, Prins and his colleagues, Hans Christian Blackbelt Andersson and Peter Bjorn & Lindstrom then released a 50 minute epic every other week for the next four years on a range of labels such as Smallsound Supertown, Inuit and Lazy Viking Stereotype. Then everyone got bored. However for three days in July everyone from BBC Breakfast’s Bill Turnbull to the Icelandic Minister for Fish got very excited about the sound no-one called ‘the new bleep.’

Here are five ‘cosmic’ must haves for your collections….

1 - Silent Running Soundtrack

it’s so very lonely…..with only a robot and Joan Baez for company in deep space kidda.

2 – Muppets From Space soundtrack

Gonzo & The Gang in the ‘ultimate Muppet trip’ – ya dig what they’re saying there daddio?

3 – The Clangers Music by Vernon Elliot

Not so much a record but the very soundtrack to your childhood on Johnny Trunk’s ever boss Trunk label.

4 – Wattoo Wattoo The Bird From Outer Space Theme

The Crazy cosmic bird who came to sort out the silly geese….an allegory for cold war politics or just a daft cartoon about a space magpie? Who gives a fuck?

5 – Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds

Come on Thunderchild! The Red Weed and the martian massive get cracking on this still unbeatable slice of 70s sci-fi camp nonsense. Phil Lynott never sounded better.