The Black Devil Disco Club

Nearly 30 years after the first album this ‘extremely rare disco masterpiece’, gets a follow up, an epic journey into the deepest electronic disco, full of haunting vocals, warped lyrics, twisted yet
melodic electronics and crisp disco beats.

In 2004 Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label released an album by Black Devil called Disco Club, a re-issue of a long lost supposedly ‘italo disco’ classic from 1978. Given it’s absurdly ‘modern’ sound many doubted it’s authenticity, some even suggesting that it was a collaboration between Richard James and Luke Vibert.

The real story is stranger still. Although credited to Joachim Sherylee and Junior Claristidge with executive production by Jacky Giordano, the album is actually the work of obscure French producer Bernard Fevre known only for his incredibly rare electronic masterpiece ‘The Strange World of Bernard Fevre’ and the even rarer ‘Earthmessage ‘ as sampled by the Chemical Brothers on ‘Got Glint?’ from their ‘Surrender’ album.

In person Monsieur Fevre does little to dispel the mystery surrounding the album. He gives his date of birth only as ‘sometime after the 2nd World War’ and despite the appearance of being in his late forties – he puts his absurdly youthful appearance down to his first wife’s obsession with ‘alternative treatments’ – claims to have been making music since the ‘60’s under a variety of pseudonyms, none of which he cares to reveal.

Then came a ‘new album’ (28 After), so similar in sound and structure to the original album that it’s impossible to know if it was created near the time of its predecessor or in the last few years and no Mr Fevre won’t say when and where it was recorded...

He claims to speak no English and yet writes and sings in it fluently, he also claims to be completely unaware of the recent Disco revival as performed by artists such as Morgan Geist of Metro Area (a long time Black Devil fan), Lindstrom, Chicken Lips, Emperor Machine and Padded Cell and yet the Black Devil’s return seems too perfectly timed to be coincidental....is there something he’s not telling us?

2008: The third and final part in the Black Devil Cosmic trilogy is with us at last. Like it’s predecessors ‘Eight Oh Eight’ features 6 tracks all with the trademark Black Devil sound but now even more haunting and bizarre. If the last album was like ‘Giorgio Moroder meets Joy Division’ then this one is like ‘Salvador Dali meets Cerrone’, surrealistic disco for space cadets. Totally unique, yet disturbingly familiar and all with that ‘sinister, psychedelic, analogue throb’ that moves you like no other.