#14 Joakim – On the Beach (Superpitcher Remix) (2017)

Joakim Bouaziz is well-known figure on the French electronic music scene, although now based in New York. An artist in his own right, he is also a producer, DJ, and record label owner. His production history goes back to the early 2000s, with several releases on the Parisian label, Versatile Records. He launched his own Tigersushi imprint in 2002, and began putting out an array of new and reissued music from the likes of Cluster, Maurice Fulton and Metro Area. In 2013, he began the vinyl-only Crowdspacer imprint, from which this record is released. The record itself is an 11 minute-long Italo-disco, minimal cover version, somewhat incongruously perhaps, of the Neil Young song, On the Beach, from the 1974 album of the same name. Clinical, propulsive, machine-like, with a hint of Suicide’s first album thrown in, it’s the sort of track I bet that Gary Numan wishes he could have released, (assuming he did dance music, of course). It’s this very versatility and originality in approach that has marked Joakim out as one of the outstanding polymathic (is that a word?) performers on the current electronic music scene. Perhaps it’s best left to his website to sum him up: “Joakim has left his fingerprints on current electro, modernizing and hybridizing it, with no concern for schools and genres, taking his inspiration from new wave as well as krautrock, noise and disco, soul and pop, ambient and house.”