Purple Disco Machine Builds 'Disco Cherry' on a 1980s Kasso Sample

Purple Disco Machine has spent his career aiming disco at contemporary dancefloors, which is what makes the source of ‘Disco Cherry’, out on 8 May, worth pausing on.

The record starts with somebody else’s record. ‘Walkman’ is a Kasso track from the 1980s, out of the Italo-disco years, and everything else here is stacked on top of it. Percussion doesn’t stop rolling under it. The groove is funk. Snatches of voice arrive over the top, one of which keeps returning as an instruction to party that doesn’t let up for the length of the mix.

‘Disco Cherry’ arrives ahead of a residency at Pacha, thirteen Thursday nights running the length of the summer, which is a long enough run to build a room around. It’s the first record he’s dedicated to a residency at the club.

Born Tino Piontek, he’d grown up in East Germany and built the project on underground floors there before it turned into something international. Three billion streams. A Grammy for remix work, a stack of Diamond awards, and productions including ‘Hypnotized’ and ‘Substitution’ behind him before any of this. He’s also the second best-selling artist in Beatport’s history.

It follows ‘Ghost Town’, the record that came right before it.

The sleeve puts him behind the decks at a party staged in the 1970s, drawn from Pacha’s own early years, back when the club had only just opened and the music had not yet reached most of the places it would end up. Disco, back on the island.