Afrobutt

"Disco" has meant a lot of things over its lifespan. Early on, it denoted a venue and a means?the nightclub, the DJ spinning according to his and the dancers' tastes. By the mid-'70s it became a style: swishing hi-hats, four-on-the-floor pound, synthetic like nylon (strings) or polyester (synthesizers), narcotic by default (and, OK, design), and most of all omnipresent. After that it was banished from current usage for a while even as the music it engendered, from "Billie Jean" to "Holiday" to "Let the Music Play," owned the radio and clubs.

It's the latter stuff that's occupies London DJ/producer Stevie Kotey on this very durable collection of . . . it feels sort of foolish to refer to Wunderbutt simply as "re-edits," since what he does with his source material is as important as the material itself. Disco, after all, is an atmosphere as much as a continuum: a slow-tempo Sleeping Bag excursion and frantic Studio 54-era string-cheese glop equally evoke an era when licentiousness abounded.

It certainly helps that Kotey's ear, on this evidence, leans heavily toward the off-kilter?he keeps us on our toes in more ways than one. "Lucifer Went to Church" is phased-and-faded space disco, literally?the sample source in the first couple of minutes seems to brown out every few bars. "Torro De Butt" cuts and pastes indolent bass phrases into a jagged but enticing whole that never quits sounding like it's just beginning to rev up. "Morning Bump" reconstitutes the classic Bo Diddley beat ("shave-and-a-haircut, two bits") into something whose constituent parts (echoed voices uttering "keep on," growling and glowering bass, production sheen like wet black PVC) sound utterly late-'50s, mid-'70s, and late-'00s, all at the same time.

"Disco Mudma" revisits our old friend the jazzy guitar phrase from Black Science Orchestra's "New Jersey Deep," but only as an occasional flourish atop a scratchy, bumptious groove that's already festooned with grunted "Come on!"s, videogame noises and piano that prances sideways. And Kotey does especially nice things with the glow-in-the-dark electro grooves of "The Taste (Round & Brown)" and "Wunderbutt." Both tracks are idealized crossbreeds of Space Invaders and the NYC Peech Boys; both sound as much like right now as like 1982-or-so?disco and "disco" alike.