Various

★★★ Discophilia Belgica SDBAN. CD/DL/LP

Eccentric collection of Belgian ‘next-door disco and local space music 1975-1987’.

Belgium has a sometimesmomentous popular music history – think Jacques Brel, Django Reinhardt, Les Disques du Crépuscule… All the same, homespun disco from Flanders field seems ultra-niche – until you’re immersed in its wonky delights, that is. Curated by local crate-diggers Loud E & The Wild, these 30 obscure, mostly non-professionally produced A-sides run the gamut from Euro-disco cheese to faux Saturday Night Fever strut – from fromage to homage, if you will – and much in between. Naturally, octave bass runs, popping syndrums and stabbing violins abound, but among the disco tropes lie delightful anomalies like Flame’s Groovin’ To The Music, which could be a collaboration between Stereolab and a low-budget Deodato; the unlikely folk-pop-meets-Giorgio Moroder-futurism of Rendez-Vous’ My Blue Bird; and Raymond Joniaux’s All’ A Bi Bi, which brings Arabic horns and Morricone-esque jaw harps to the Low Countries dancefloor. Disco sucks? Not in Benelux.