na: cerrone

Most narratives of European disco in the ’70s tend to start and end with Giorgio Moroder. That’s just silly.

There were plenty of other producers working on the Continent, pumping out funky dance music for the masses. One of the best was Cerrone. Sure, he started much later than Moroder (in 1976), but sold a ton of records – 25 million to be exact. So why is Cerrone seemingly forgotten? Well, for one, many of his records were criminally out-of-print in the States until last year’s reissue campaign. (Blame that one on the disco backlash of the ’80s. )Oh – and this dance music at its absolute cheesiest. You’d be hard-pressed to find tunes more ripe for the mocking.

Daft Punk and other French musicians have never had much of a problem with cheese, however. And thank goodness for that. Their contemporary, producer Bob Sinclar, collects some of Cerrone’s greatest moments on Cerrone by Bob Sinclar, remixing and editing them to craft a seamless mix of classic ’70s hits like “Love in C Minor,” “Supernature” and “Love Is the Answer.” The latter suffers miserably from Sinclar’s update – and so do a few other tracks here – but for a quick and dirty primer on Cerrone, this is the best that eMusic’s got.