(October 2009) PEOPLES POTENTIAL UNLIMITED sounds either like a 1980’s self-help company or an offshoot of the Komsomol of Leningrad. PPU are neither of the above, but a disco and funk imprint based in North Carolina. The US was the cradle of disco and funk some thirty years ago, but rock dug the grave while an aggressive anti-gay movement helped to bury the sound. However, the music never truly died with diehard fans still living out there. Peoples Potential Unlimited are searching through archives and discographies to find lost disco and funk gems and bring them back to your turntables and CD players. The label came to life in 2006 and already has an impressive back catalogue of vinyl and has recently brought its first CD album to the list.
In the 1980’s, two major league baseball players, Lenny Randle and Thad Bosley came together, laid down their bats and catcher’s mitts to form the disco funk group Ballplayers. In 1983 their debut album, Just A Chance came out on Randle Enterprises. For over 25 years now the Ball Players have been in disco retirement, but PPU have called the duo up to bat a four tracker 7″: Universal Language. The record opens with the dark disco soul work of “American Worker.” Immediately the listener is transported into the shadows of funk corners as the United States toiler is deconstructed and layered over with soft jazzy tones and beats. The “American Worker,” with its sleazy slides and backroom sound, is immediately transformed into something beyond the Fordist dream as dollar bills and the night flow over this record. “Bos Music” follows with a much more playful feel of early synthesizer sounds. The track has a much more studio aspect to it, seeming like Randle and Bosley working together to find their sound through their major league wages. The title track opens the B-Side and is unashamedly funk influenced with an undeniable disco kick. “Universal Language” maintains the tongue tied loneliness these tracks seem to postulate, holding the social notes endemic of the late seventies and early eighties sound but keeping the alienation. “Jam with Us” ends the four-tracker, worming its way either deep vocals and a pleasant funk. The tracks do not sound like they are from 1983, most likely they were created at an earlier date; but they sound ten years before the synthesizer drenched 1980’s, bringing a retro freshness in their melancholic softness.
Crunch is an artist found within PPU’s rich archive. No, it isn’t the Tipper pseudonym but a funk outfit. The two tracker 7″ opens with “Cruise” and it hits the listener that this record is way beyond its time. Everything is being flooded today by disco house, easy to mix and indiscriminately similar in sound. “Cruise” is not this, it is a proper piece of disco funk that flows and ebbs through clever beat changes and melody constructs to produce a dancefloor friendly track. The early synthesizers of “Cruise” are turned up for “Funky Beat,” a knob twiddling extravaganza of disco proportions. Vocals arrive in the form of dark male baritones to inject a proto-house aspect to finish the 7″ off on.
PPU have moved into new territory recently, putting on their first CD album; Glass Pyramid’s Unreleased Cassette Demos. The album is a veritable treasure chest of lost and unreleased disco funk tracks. “Country Cowboy” starts as the album means as it starts to go on, blending classic disco vocals with a funky beat and addictive bassline. Throughout the album vocal and bonus tracks are brought together. Some of the tracks have been released before, and it is those that have been airspace in the past that really stand tall on amongst the tracks. Nevertheless, the entire album brings disco back to life through true pioneers of the sound; exemplified by the warm vocals and catchy hooks in “Who’s Girl are You?” and tracks across the jam packed action.
Disco has found new ground year on year for some time now. It has taken on different forms, electro disco and nu disco perhaps gaining greatest favor. Peoples Potential Unlimited are working as archaeologists, unearthing classics lost in the dusty crates on collectors and half abandoned record stores. The label is bringing a new aspect of disco back to turntables, and now CD players. Edits have diluted the past, with too few giving original disco records the esteem they deserve. Peoples Potential Unlimited are turning this on their head, giving the sound and artists of the time the acclaim that today is being edited away.
For more information about Peoples Potential Unlimited, visit their website here.
