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A spectre is haunting Europe…swing is not dead. It doesn’t even smell. Freshly powdered, dressed in a stylish electro suit, for the umpteenth time it rises again from the declared dead and swirls cheekily with its feather boa across the capitals’ dance floors. In London, Paris or Berlin – people are swinging again. But as the youth of today has exchanged the gramophone for the turntable, the DJs are the new conférenciers and they proffer electro swing. Tribute is being paid to the classics and masters of their art like Duke Ellington, Fred Astaire, Ella Fitzgerald or Bing Crosby, who are getting sampled and dusted. Often you can hear the odd klezmer clarinete or guitar licks a la Django Reinhardt – Jewish and Gypsy swing. The players are not necessarily from Eastern Europe though. Many Western European DJs and producers, especially in the fields of electro and house, now spice up their beat patterns with homemade samples. Thanks to virtual networks there is a busy exchange of new productions going on almost every day and sparkling electro swing parties are being thrown every weekend. Similar to Balkan music conquering the clubs a few years back, swing is now hitting the dance floor. The master minds behind that come from all over the place: Kormac from Ireland, Noze from France, Movits! from Sweden, and as with the Balkan boom a lot is going on in Germany. And in Eastern Europe, of course! Shazalakazoo in Serbia, Matt Kowalsky in Poland or Mo Fun in Russia – the DJs are discovering swing. Glamour is returning to the techno catacombs. Burlesque beats. Even dubsteppers need melodies from time to time.
On our Swing Diskoteka we tried to present you with a wide spectrum of this new phenomenon. Ranging from club sounds by Eldoko or cinescope scores from Smokey Bandits up to rather handmade songs by the likes of Jewdyssee or Movits! Many of the tracks here are exclusive to this compilation. When compiling it, our main focus relied on the dance floor. Music for sunrise parties. But Swing Diskoteka also works while cruising with the windows down. From a music history point of view it’s exciting to see how the different scenes are mixing now. This is even educational, as marginalized or half-forgotten music styles like klezmer, gypsy or now swing are playfully being woven into 2011’s sound carpet. Old school stylers meet rave kids in the Swing Diskoteka. The joie de vivre of swing meets the energy of electro. Finally..
Armin Siebert
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