Twenty-two of this selection's thirty-one cuts sit in a minor key. That figure, more than any name involved, sets the temperature: the nu disco breathing here isn't mirrorball euphoria but danceable melancholy, and the key map confirms it with an almost obsessive pull toward the note D. Nine tracks orbit it — six in D minor, three in D major — from Dr Packer's rework of 'Mood' to Don Laka's 'Stages', forming the harmonic ground everything else moves across.
The major keys, scarce as they are, feel like clearings in the woods. 'Everything Starts ?' opens one early in A major; Melba Moore's 'Pick Me Up, I'll Dance' brightens things in F; and Cerrone's 'Give Me Love' — the French disco veteran's original has been circulating since the late seventies — climbs to E major at 127 BPM, perhaps the brightest spot of the set. And it hardly seems accidental that the closer, 'The Compass Point' by Francois K, Dimitri From Paris and DJ Rocca, resolves into G-flat major after eight minutes: the whole record walks from shadow toward light.
Time as landscape
Durations draw their own relief. At one end, 'Surrender to the Night' wraps up its business in 3:09; at the other, the two longest cuts both carry Prins Thomas's signature: his Diskomiks of 'Feeling Wide' (9:42, in A-flat major) and his edit of 'Stages' (8:33). It squares with what the Norwegian — Lindstrøm's longtime partner in space disco and the man behind Full Pupp — preaches about the art of the edit: don't trim away what makes a track special, give it room instead.
One curious triangle remains: Dave Lee signs two reworks on Z Records, the label he founded in 1990, and surfaces a third time as Joey Negro, the alias he retired in 2020, on the only cut tagged outside nu disco: Double Exposure's 'Everyman' for Salsoul. Past and present of the same man, sharing the same record bag.
Sources: Wikipedia · RA · RBMA · Discogs
