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Music

Disco Delights: The Best Disco Record Sleeves of All Time

We take a closer look at the incredible cover art of rare disco records.

If you live over the pond in the UK you may have already heard whispers (or loud screams) about THUMP's Disco Emporium at the Dollop NYE Party with MK and co. at the Troxy. You've probably already rushed out to find that perfectly crisp white suit for the night and thrown all your instrumental grime records in the bin and started listening to this on repeat. And who can blame you? It's going to be incredible.

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Do you know what else is incredible? The record sleeves all those masterful slices of discotheque perfection came in. Even removed from the pleasure found within their cardboard confines, these are masterpieces of design, perfect testaments to the power of the 12". So aren't we lucky that crate diggers extraordinaire Soul Jazz have lovingly trawled through rack after rack of dog-eared Casablanca singles and unloved Gibson Brothers albums and presented the world with Disco: An Encyclopedic Guide to the Cover Art of Disco. It's basically the best book you've seen in ages: thousands of lush reproduced record sleeves that'll leave you salivating and wanting to listen to every single tune mentioned because, actually, you can judge things by their covers for once.

We've been allowed to have a peek at it and choose a bunch of our favourite sleeves.

Let's start with a smattering of smut:

MTL Express' horn-heavy high-energy romp "Disco City" isn't as sharp as its Jean-Paul Goude style cover suggests but it's still a steamy, good time stomper. There's just something about that sleeve, something beguiling, something which speaks of the otherworldly magic that the best disco records exude. That blank expression! The silky pea-green wash of a background! The taut curves of the typography!

So seedy that it instantly bathes its surroundings in the deep red glow of certain streets in Amsterdam. There's something sickly and pervily wrong about this cover given the almost-innocence of the song itself, which sees Scotland's only disco chanteuse singing breathlessly about the head over heels feeling we've all felt under the mirror ball at some point in our nightlives. Still, that font combo is absolutely unbeatable.

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Before Aphex Twin popped it on the beach and Kim Kardashian used her own bum, Italian disco – not the same as Italo Disco – gang Champagne Explosion were popping their corks all over the place. The stockinged, headless figure clutching that phallic fizzy bottle is somewhat eerie. Is it a comment on the way sex and sexuality can simultaneously create and destroy identity? Or is it just a cheesy salacious front cover for a pretty bad tune called "Action is Tight" that features a cover of Jesus Christ Superstar on the flip? Either way, it's great.

That aforementioned otherworldly element to disco comes through on the covers as well. When these 12"s aren't gently sliding us into the sheets they're about to jet us up into the stratosphere in some kind of kitsch, quaint vision of the future past.

 
Somehow the music contained on Space's Deliverance is more out there than its charmingly anachronistic look at the possibilities of space age aeronautics: it's an OTT diva wail interspersed with Gregorian chant. It is both horrifically bad and incredibly compelling. Just like its cover.

The Parlet ladies, looking incredibly chic and satin-y out here in space, beamed up from the mothership. Chic but uncomfortable. Spaceships could benefit from a few cushions if you ask me.

Some real authentic bargain bin boogie here, this is cheap, nasty, grubby and grotty – the kind of record that stinks of mildew and dirty laminate. Which is charming in its own way. Just look how proud the captain is to have popped out of his triangular pod. Reassuring to know that palm trees even look exotic in the depths of outer space.

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The glitz and glamour isn't confined to the lucky few fortunate enough to experience intergalactic travel. Sometimes good old planet earth makes a nice backdrop for the front cover of a disco record.

This short and sweet slice of seriously sweaty gutbusting soul-disco is every bit as inviting as that moonlit Miami waterside above. Don't you want to just dive into that scene right now, dolled up in a pastel suit, one hand on the wheel and the other dangling out of the Corvette. A slender cigarette resting between two long, ringed fingers, the cool breeze of the outside world circulating the sweetly mixed aroma of fag smoke and aftershave in the car, while you drive aimlessly through the humid night, never wanting to stop? Don't you?

This is what record covers should be: a 12" x 12" opportunity to produce something that'll continue to amuse, intrigue, and delight for years to come. Imagine finding the following at a car boot sale.

It doesn't matter who Rinder & Lewis are or that they churned out pretty rote West Coast "progressive" disco that reeks of smug lunches at country clubs, they put two unfuckwithable old dudes on the front of a disco record and for that the world is forever in their debt. They look like a pair of gents who'd elegantly rough you up with absurdly expensive wooden tennis rackets if you suggested that Rinder & Lewis make dull music. You'd leave bloodied, bruised and honored.

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One of the genre's finest practitioners smashes it with a sublime front cover: this is one to soak up and revel in. Who hasn't dreamed of lying on a sun lounger late at night under a spotlight, by what appears to be a rooftop swimming pool?

We'll end with this calming, soothing scene, the kind of picture you'd hopefully see as you sipped coconut water through a straw and settled down to a lobster dinner on the terrace of a beach bar in some faraway paradise. This is, weirdly, another Rinder & Lewis joint. Give those men a mirrorball medal.

Every image in this article comes courtesy of Soul Jazz's more than essential book, which is out now and can be bought here. There's also an incredible compilation that accompanies the release, which you can spend your hard earned cash on here.

Join us at the sickest NYE bash ever and get your tickets for the THUMP Disco Emporium here.

Follow Josh on Twitter: @bain3z