Some musical partnerships seem to require a leap of faith or a suspension of our collective disbelief; others progress come along so naturally that the synergy almost seems fated, their work resolutely undeniable. Brooklyn-based Metro Area (Morgan Geist and Darshan Jesrani) is of the latter group without doubt: a beautifully harmonious relationship wherein the duo push and pull in all the right directions without compromise. Although both listened to pop RnB/electro of the mid 80s growing up in quiet pockets of the East coast (Darshan in Poughkeepsie, New York and Morgan in New Jersey), they independently found themselves drawn to synthesizers and the techy side of producing long before they discovered one another.

Morgan Geist: “I feel like I was designed to do studio work or electronic music; it must be in my genes or something. When I was little I used to tape myself playing something on the piano and then I’d rewind, play it back and play over it. So before I even had a sequencer, I was doing live multi-tracking when I was quite small. And I remember my dad had ‘Future Shock’ by Herbie Hancock; I remember reading the back of that record and triying to figure out what a Memory Moog and Mini Moog were. Speaking of which, weirdly enough – it’s like fate set it up for me – when I was really young, I had a babysitter who was a musician and he used to bring over synthesizer catalogues. I used to look at these Roland catalogues and, even though I didn’t know what they were, just the synth names – like, Juno and Jupiter – it was the kind of shit that a little boy could get into. I got a keyboard as soon as I could, when I was about 15.”

Darshan Jesrani: “My dad had a lot of Indian music, as he’s from Bombay. He used to play Lata Mangeshkar and all the hi-fi stuff was in the living room, so I gravitated toward it by looking through all of the records. He also had an open-reel tape deck and I used to play with that a lot. One of Kiss FM’s DJs, Shep Bettibone, did special remixes of R&B hits and very early rap, and those were amazing to me, because he would stretch out and edit the songs and emphasise all the electronic, trippy sounds and textures in them. These were really dance-y and oriented towards club play; they really caught my ear and imagination. That really propelled me in the synthesizer direction, along with a lot of synth-pop stuff like Devo and Thomas Dolby. There was a confluence of things that led me into synthesizer stuff, but I didn’t actually get a synthesizer till I was about 16.” but I didn’t actually get a synthesizer till I was about 16.”

As Morgan and Darshan migrated towards equally remote areas of America for college (Darshan staying in the east coast and Morgan relocating to the Midwest) and gradually coaxed releases from the closed confines of their dorms (Morgan even started his label, Environ, in his dorm room), they simultaneously lived their formative years feeling somewhat misunderstood and somewhat misplaced musically. It’s a sentiment that’s rung true from when they met each other on email lists in the days before internet forums through their early days when the two first teamed up as an avant-garde, creatively unbound production/DJ team.

Darshan Jesrani: “Because we went to school in such isolated areas, we were both on these music mailing lists. It was the text email equivalent of chat boards. From the conversations we were having on the mailing lists, I really liked where Morgan was coming from. A friend of mine had one of his first records and I was really into it. I don’t think we met until right after we graduated, around ’95 or ’96. We met in the city, at a record store on 14th Street, just to get some records and chat. We tried to make some things together around 1996, first experiments. I think Morgan and I have different, but complimentary, angles that we approach the music from. Taken broadly, we’re into the same thing, but we have slightly different styles, or we’ll play slightly different records – sometimes we overlap.”

Morgan Geist: “When we first met, we had similar tastes but coming from a different perspective. Like with Ron Trent or Derrick Carter, I would have something coming from the more abstract tracky Chicago side, and he was more into the house side of it. It was sort of revelatory, because we’d have almost the same artists in our collections but we didn’t know each other’s records.”

With disco-infused sounds seducing unsuspecting Londoners across a wide spectrum of independent scenes, step beyond the pigeon-holed scenesters and step up to Metro Area’s brand of obscure disco, which they have promoted with no regard for hype or popularity since their very first dancefloor explorations. Both gifted producers with a knack for textures and dynamics, Metro Area embraces sweetly tuned synths and warm grooves, effortlessly unifying the synthetic and the organic and, likewise, fusing early Detroit techno and Chicago house with 70s boogie and Harlem-birthed underground disco. While their vibrant releases (from the depth of ‘Atmospherique’ on Metro Area 1 in ‘97 to the shimmering brilliance of ‘Miura’ on 2001’s Metro Area 4 to the classy disco shine of ‘07’s Metro Area 7) are deemed nothing short of classic today, it took a little while for the rest of the world to catch up.

Morgan Geist: “In college, I always felt out of step with everyone – even at Oberlin in ‘95, I’d DJ Chicago Trax records, Detroit techno records and Kraftwerk, and people would fucking run off the floor. (laughs) I felt completely isolated when I was there. That’s why I’d go to Detroit and Chicago, just to get away. So I started DJing in college, and then Darshan and I started playing together. And we were playing disco, so it was also a phase of feeling out of step – for a long time, I felt like people didn’t really get it, and all of a sudden, people sort of came around. I keep hearing people say how there’s some disco renaissance now, and I don’t really understand where why people are saying that – I would say it happened in 2001, 2002, 2003. Maybe it’s just because Hercules & Love Affair is everywhere now? Or maybe it’s because I’m in New York.”

Fabric 43, an artistically arranged and brightly coloured journey through Metro Area’s vast record collections, remains as reflective as it is forward-thinking. Metro Area deliver a peerless jam-packed mix of Easy Street dance classics (World Premiere’s “Share The Night”) through to 80’s club hits (“Work For Love” by Ministry), with a generous helping of disco and boogie anthems and electropop output from the likes of Premiere Class. Poppy and infectious, retro and yet timeless, Fabric 43 dazzles with uplifting dancefloor gold.

Darshan Jesrani: “It’s a really mixed bag of music, but it’s all really groovy stuff. There’s some not so obvious disco, there’s some sort of really spare and weird NY house tracks – we had to figure out how to make it cohesive. We did a few of our own custom deep tracks and made some little drum tracks and little mixing utilities to throw in there as well.”

Morgan Geist: “We’re trying to not put in the classic records that we’ve played forever. We wanted to explore an area that’s not mined so heavily, but still have an emphasis on the older disco stuff. So we thought we’d do a mid 80s sort of thing, which is kind of a neglected time period but there’s some really nice records from then. With fabric mix CDs, it can sometimes be so homogenous; it’s like this perfect, classy, very coherent single thought. But that’s not how we DJ, so I think we decided we’d try and touch on a lot of different things, almost like a party mix. We’ve made some rhythm tracks to tie it all together, our own original edits. I actually really hate the re-edit culture that’s going on, where everything’s just a bootleg or an edit. I’m really pro personal-use-edits, that’s what edits should be anyway.”

Minimaland Feedback: “disco is back”

Tracklist:
01 Babla’s Disco Sensation – Ghar Aya Mera Pardesi (Intro)
02 World Premiere – Share the Night (Breakdown Mix)
03 Ministry – Work for Love (Dub Mix)
04 The Disco Four – Move to the Groove (Instrumental)
05 Skratch – You Should Have Known Better (Instrumental)
06 Barbara Norris – Heavy Hitter (Dub Version)
07 Gary’s Gang – Makin’ Music (Dub Mix)
08 Voyage – Souvenirs
09 Five Special – Why Leave Us Alone (Long Version)
10 Ray Martinez – The Natives are Restless
11 Dreamhouse – I Can Feel It
12 Mascara – Baja (Instrumental Dub Version)
13 Play by Numbers – Cloud Nine (Ready Mix)
14 Midway – Set it Out (Funky Breakdown Mix)
15 Heaven 17 – Penthouse and Pavement
16 Data – Blow (Remix)
17 Atmosphere – Swede’s Scandal
18 Wiretap – X-Rated Man
19 Plez – I Can’t Stop (Acid Rainforest Mix)
20 Baby Oliver – Feelings2
21 Jean Luc Ponty – Open Mind (Special Dance Mix)
22 Premiere Class – Poupée Flash
23 Devo – Freedom of Choice

Rls Date: 10.11.2008 Usa: 25.11.2008