Connections, connections... Yesterday I featured the sublime sound of Rose Royce Is It Love You're After. Today it is the turn of the man who revived, rejuvenated and relaunched that classic (or parts thereof) on the eager masses in a new form.
Many happy returns today to the dance music pioneer and DJ Mark Moore!
From his early beginnings as an acolyte of the early 80s post-Disco, post-New Romantic world of Philip Sallon's Mud Club and underground gay Italo-Disco, Mr Moore's quirky DJ style got him noticed by the mega-club Heaven, at the time the epicentre of the (mainly gay) dance music scene in London.
His love of the experimental, the new and the unusual led him to feature in his set some of the underground sounds emerging from New York and Chicago at the time, music that heavily sampled disco riffs and merged them with more modern clips - "Yeah, you know - House!". His "Pyramid" nights at Heaven were the first in the UK to play house music, and the venue attracted the likes of the Pet Shop Boys, Danny Rampling, the Shamen's Mr C, Pete Tong, Paul Oakenfold and even Liza Minnelli!
Mr Moore, inevitably, did not leave it there, and in his hands the house sound - merged with the classier end of the European electronic genre - created a launch-pad for the style of dance music we know and love today.
To celebrate his birthday, I have found a fabulous and fascinating interview with Mr Moore by the esteemed music journalist Paul Morley:
And, of course, here's his ground-breaking magnum opus (for which we are eternally grateful) - Theme From S-Express. Happy birthday to one of the greats...
Mark Moore and S-Express website
und he was lovely and talked for ages when he was at Polari last year too - a gentleman. x
ReplyDeleteHe does appear to be a charming man - as I recall I didn't get a chance to speak to him on that occasion, but I do remember how friendly he seemed... Jx
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