The Clubs

The Paradise Garage

From 1977 to 1987 the ground breaking Paradise Garage changed the face of nightclubbing with a combination of amazing sound and visuals and the DJing skills of one of the finest record spinners of all time, Larry Levan. The NYC club was host to some of the most incredible parties of the era where punters rubbed shoulders with disco royalty (including Grace Jones, Kid Creole/August Darnell and Stevie Wonder) while Larry laid down the most eclectic of beat combinations. European 12 inches from the likes of Yazoo (Situation, featured on Elektro Diskow was a bone fide Garage Classic), Kraftwerk and Yello would find their way onto LL's decks alongside the best post and mutant disco, and later, House.  The Paradise Garage is rightly considered to be one of the greatest clubs ever.

The Muzic Box
Like almost all of the great groundbreaking clubs of the era, Chicago's Muzic Box was very much the vision of one man, Ron Hardy. Armed with an array of technical wizardry and home-made edits made with reel-to-reel tape recorders, Ron dazzled Chi-Town clubbers with a musical bombardment of Disco, Electro and proto-House. Classics on the Muzic Box floor included a special Ron re-edited Warm Leatherette by the Normal (you can find the original right here on Elektro Diskow), the Residents, Eurythmics and Talk Talk.




The Blitz Club
With its roots firmly in the punk scene (Blitz DJ and Visage member Rusty Egan was once a member of Rich Kids with Ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock) but with a love of glamour, excess and the latest underground electronic sounds the Blitz Club was home to London's next generation of electropop stars after the twin shocks of punk and post-punk. David Bowie's Kraftwerk-influenced Berlin trilogy of albums were stylistic and musical touchstones (David even famously once visited the club) along with many Elektro Diskow tunes including Telex, Roxy M and the Normal.

Boccacio Club, Ghent and New Beat
Belgium has for decades had perhaps the most interesting club culture in mainland Europe with the accent strongly on electicism and the electronic that bore fruit in the 90s Rave scene based around the city of  Ghent.

Clubs like the Bocaccio became instrumental in forming what was subsequently known as New Beat, where beats were slowed down to a Balearic pace (a track at 120 bpm was considered 'breakneck speed'). The new electro sounds proved very influential on this new style with British records meshing with homegrown tunes like Snowy Red's Euroshima and Nacht Und Nebel's Beats Of Love (both on Elektro Diskow) to produce a distinctive sound. Often the DJs would play 45rpm 12 inches at 33 rpm, heavily manipulating the pitch control of the decks to produce a woozy soundtrack for Ghent clubbers.