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Alex Moulton

Exodus

(Expansion Team; US: 27 May 2008; UK: 9 Jun 2008)

There was a time, roughly 1975-1979 to narrow it down, when an album like this would have been pivotal. It’s an epic disco adventure through a Vangelis Blade Runner realm, complete with bouncy heartbeats and synth soundscapes as dense and the LA smog. However, since the golden age of coked-up clubbing, the funky house plague has taken all the best dirtball licks, sleazy horns, and slick strings, and four-four beat them into commercial sterility and beyond.


Unleashed to a generation of music fans with attention spans shorter than a one-bar sample, I’m not sure how many people will “get” this record. Those who do will already have a few early Cerrone albums in their library, and Exodus will sit proudly along side them. The debut album from Expansion Team boss Alex Moulton is a record caught out of time and succeeds amazingly as a time capsule. It will find the modest, appreciative audience it deserves, but it’s too unique and self-contained to bring disco back into the mainstream. The crossover appeal is fairly narrow. And yet, I find myself face down in a pile of powdered stimulants wondering if my iPhone dreams at night. Exodus is a real oddity.

Rating:

Based in East Vancouver, Ranta has been a freelance music scribe since 2004. His bylines have appeared in such publications as Exclaim!, CBC Music, PopMatters and Tiny Mix Tapes. He has also performed jury duty for the Polaris Music Prize, Pazz & Jop, and Juno Awards. Ranta graduated with distinction from SFU's Contemporary Arts program with a BFA in music in the summer of 2012.


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