A Classic Disco A Capella in Purple Disco Machine's 'Playbox'

I wanted to produce a track for my second album that had the same feeling and flavors as my track “Body Funk” from my debut album, Soulmatic, and my track “Dished (Male Stripper)” from 2018. An italo disco/Hi-NRG rhythm track combined with a US disco vocal.

For the rhythm track, I chose “Rock The Box” by Sylvester and had this replayed by my friend Matt Johnson. With the drums, I brought back the Purple Disco Machine signature sounds like shakers, tambourines, and cowbells. The bassline is a Sequential Prophet 10.

I was actually very happy with the finished track just being instrumental. But my A&R team suggested that the vocal from First Choice’s “The Player” could really work on top of it. They were right, and here we are!

I’m a big fan of the classic Philadelphia Soul & US disco sounds, and First Choice was one of the finest artists in the scene. They are responsible for a number of stone-cold classics and “Let No Man Put Asunder” particularly is a hugely influential record in house music as an evolution out of disco. It is a wonderful thing for me to be allowed to turn their magic into new tracks.

My (now) good friends and fellow Germans Mousse T & Boris Dlugosch made a remix of First Choice’s “The Player” in 1997. That was the first time I’d heard it. I loved it and it became a firm favourite in my first DJ sets. I had also just started collecting original 70s disco when I fell in love with the sound in the mid 90s. That’s when I also tracked down an original vinyl copy.

“The Player” is a record that was released right at the beginning of the disco movement. You can hear how the groove is moving away from the funky orchestrated soul sound to the more dancefloor-focused, percussive-emerging “Disco” sound. A record made for DJs and dancers, rather than for radio airplay. The vocal and lyrics are also so cool. Soulful, with a firm message to avoid the kind of guys who cheat on their partners.

The way Tracklib makes it simple to match a beat with an acapella in the same music key takes away the hit-and-miss of going through lots of records that actually don’t sound as good together as you’d think. Sampling is a great tool for all electronic music producers. I like to balance my own releases with sample-heavy tracks and original productions. So the fact that such a great resource for legal sampling now exists will only increase the use of sampling in electronic music.