Faze Action – Stratus Energy

I’d never heard of Faze Action till this particular release landed on my doormat. It turns out that the duo have been around since the mid-nineties, which makes me even more foolish. What I do now know, after listening to Stratus Energy is that Faze Action make high-quality disco music.Strange beast, disco. I think I might have quite liked it, had I been of age at the time. The outfits, the drugs, the clubs and the music - it was a scene, man. Disco was immortalized in film: Car Wash featured Rose Royce’s massive hit, and then there was the astronomic Saturday Night Fever. The most that grunge got was the dreadful Singles. What I’m trying to say, albeit in a somewhat convoluted manner, is that, to me, the ‘disco’ genre is aligned with a bag of crisps at worst and a couple of films, drunken nights on dodgy dancefloors and Disco Stu from The Simpsons at best.But that hasn’t stopped Faze Action. No sir. If anything, it’s spurred them into creating this retro-behemoth of distilled disco soul. And it’s not like they’re pretending to update the genre, choosing instead to graffiti their studio with the simple mantra If it ‘aint broke”¦I assume. For all I know, these 11 tracks could be undiscovered classics from the late 1970s all lovingly remastered and thrust on a winsome audience some 30 years on.Regardless, Stratus Energy gives out everything that a disco album should. Grunting 4/4 beats comprised of repetitive kick, snare, kick, snare patterns interspersed with hovering high-hats all lie beneath a glorious synthetic wash of intergalactic noise. And yes, there are cowbells and bongos too. ‘Goodlovin’ features wah guitars, a syncopated bass line skipping between octaves and delightful harmony vocals. It really could be 1979 all over again. ‘Hypnotic’ takes on Disco-Funk with a brilliant, squidgy wah-bassline and muted guitars - much like those heard on Michael Jackson’s ‘Don’t stop till you get enough’.  Paul McKenna and Derren Brown should be in the video performing funked up shoulder dancing as choreographed by one of the dancing monkeys on Strictly Come Dancing. It would be comedy gold. Please, someone, make it happen.With song titles such as ‘Venus and Mars’, ‘Starship’ and ‘Weightless’ (which is actually a brief, wafting, ambient number), you get the idea that this album is very much geared toward the space travelling market: NASA and groups like that. For the remainder of us without necessary means of interplanetary travel, Stratus Energy is an engaging ride into the stratosphere. And if we do venture into a black hole and become locked in some twisted time-space continuum; this chic, melodic album crafted with loving nostalgia should be entrancing enough to keep us engaged for a few millennium.If, however, you hate everything disco (including the crisps), then you will have stopped reading this some time ago, and still not know who Faze Action are. 78%Faze Action on Myspace