Hometown: London.
The lineup: Kathy Diamond (vocals) and Max Skiba (music).
The background: It's weird how disco, once unarguably the unofficial soundtrack of the nation, has now become a cult curio for arthouse hipsters. Look at this poster/image of the KDMs, who comprise Polish DJ Max Skiba and London soul girl Kathy Diamond – it's not a million miles, typographically and in terms of aesthetic and atmosphere, from this one for German industrial metal band and fellow acronym-lovers KMFDM. Really weird.
The duo, who have recorded a cover of Madonna's Give Me All Your Luvin' and been remixed by Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip and Metro Area's Morgan Geist, have their debut album Kinky Dramas & Magic Stories released on Berlin-based label Gomma. We know Germany is the home of mass-appeal, mass-produced machine-driven dance music but let's be honest: this is a tiny European base for an increasingly marginalised genre. The classic disco era, too, had an underground circuit, with its independent labels and loft parties, running parallel to the mainstream scene, but now disco is a small-scale operation, despite the frequent declarations that it is about to enjoy a commercial rebirth. There was a moment in 2008 when we thought Hercules and Love Affair were going to spark a new disco wave, then again in 2009 with Shena and last year there was a similar desire for wish-fulfillment around Tensnake. Fact is, if you're talking proper big disco – not house, not techno, but disco – hits, in the last 30 years only Kylie Minogue has managed one, with Spinning Around. Disco has become, like punk, a series of codified practices the general public struggle to accept as anything beyond, at best, camp nostalgia and, at worst, kitsch karaoke.
The KDMs' record probably won't change that state of affairs, but it's worth mentioning here because it's a solid latterday disco album. Not a post-disco album – it doesn't do anything with the form or take it anywhere new, it reiterates why we fell in love with it in the first place. It knows about the subtle ravishment of shivery strings and the rhapsodic rhythmic guitar of Nile Rodgers, the bass gets slapped to within an inch of its life and there are cowbells like you wouldn't believe. Being us, we're going to complain that Kathy Diamond's vocals are a bit "soulful", a bit grunty and earthbound, a bit her from M People – disco was the one dance music genre where over(t)ly passionate singing was rarely privileged, whereas the rhythm, arrangement, production and song were.
What else? Oh yes, the titles are frequently terrible, self-help manual cliches (Never Stop Believing) or ungainly and verbose (Something's Eatin' Me), missing the point that disco was about the elegant expression of ineffable rapture and heartache. But when they get it right – opener High Wire, for example, is as lush yet coolly restrained as Diana, the album La Ross made for the Chic Organisation – the KDMs make disco seem less like a museum piece and more like a viable contemporary genre. Wonderman is a total Chic-fest. Tonight is a testament to whoever's responsible for the superb slick musicianship. This is electronic funk, but not quite the streamlined sequencer robo-disco of I Feel Love. It sounds as though human beings handled the funkily propulsive bass, and it's all the better for that. We're not sure if the purpose of this project is to remind us of the glory of disco, to remind us that when it's done right, it is the music of the spheres, to propose themselves for the disco pantheon or simply continue the legacy, but what the hell, we're ready to go Baccara (sorry) to the future with them.
The buzz: "They are the future of disco" – vulturehound.co.uk.
The truth: Yes, sir, they can boogie.
Most likely to: Make their funk the Chic funk.
Least likely to: Declare that disco sucks.
What to buy: Kinky Dramas & Magic Stories is out now on Gomma.
File next to: Chic, Jupiter, Shena, M People.
Links: gomma.de/the-kdms.
Tuesday's new band: Blood Diamonds.
