Warriors

LabelDerby — DBR 20193

FunkElectronicCosmicDisco

Laurin Rinder & W. Michael Lewis were, in my opinion, one of the best disco production duos of the disco era. They may not be among the most recognizable names to the mainstream, but they were certainly among the most prolific and popular with disco enthusiasts.

Rinder and Lewis were the principal figures behind El Coco, Le Pamplemousse, Saint Tropez, Tuxedo Junction, Discognosis, as well as the soundtrack to the television series In Search Of..., among many other projects. According to a 1980 article, by then they had been involved in some 29 albums.

Laurin Rinder recalled in an interview with Discopia that they practically lived in the studio during the late 1970s:

We really had cots, beds and the whole thing, we were just pumpin’ them out. 7 days a week, 3 different projects at the same time. I played drums on everything but had to play a little differently. I had to ask the engineer, “What’s the name of this group?”

Not surprisingly, cocaine figured prominently in the madness of those years. In the same interview, Rinder admitted:

The amount of coke we did to do all this you can’t even imagine. $300 a day. I had to have plastic inserts in my nose so I could do more.

What makes their output even more remarkable is that they played the majority of the instruments themselves. Despite this, on some of their earlier recordings they did not credit themselves as musicians, instead inventing names for fictitious players on the backs of their records — partly, it seems, to create the impression of a real group.

Another reason, as Rinder explained in his DiscoMusic.com interview, was that they wanted to remain relatively anonymous so as not to damage their reputations as “legitimate” rock and jazz musicians.

Prior to disco, Rinder had already built a long career as a session and journeyman drummer, playing on numerous records from the 1950s onward, including a stint as a session musician at Motown, often without credit.

Warriors, their second album as Rinder & Lewis, is probably among the finest records they released. Even the cover — an actual photograph of their fathers on a fishing trip — makes a clever statement.

Overall, I love the sound they pursued on this LP: excellent musicianship colored by lush, smooth synthesizer textures. The cream of the crop, as strong as the whole album is, is probably the closing track, “Blue Steel.”

Forget Zoolander — this track is, for me, the culmination of the balance between synthesizers and live musicians that Rinder and Lewis achieve throughout the album. At one point, the extraordinary synths — equal parts calm and chaotic — blend seamlessly into a violin solo. Dark, haunting and sexy at the same time, it is one of the most atmospheric disco instrumentals I have heard.

It recalls another of their standout tracks, “Lust”, from the Seven Deadly Sins project (1978, AVI), so strongly that one contemporary online review (link not available) described “Blue Steel” as “Lust, Part II.” It is one of those tracks that you simply have to luxuriate in to fully appreciate.

The album’s two cover versions are also well worth hearing.

The LP opens with a synth-driven version of Johnny Otis’ “Willie and the Hand Jive”, a song about the 1950s hand-jive dance. It begins with a wonderful “I Feel Love”-esque robotic pulse before transforming, midway through, into a dark, frantic and almost paranoid synthesizer workout.

Paired with “Love Potion No. 9,” the track reached No. 20 on the Billboard disco chart in 1980.

Their other cover, “Love Potion No. 9,” opens side two. Written by Leiber and Stoller, whose material Rinder and Lewis covered more than once, it is playful and sexy in equal measure, driven by a hypnotic beat. Its cheeky lyrics form an interesting contrast with the darker soundscapes that color much of the album.

According to a 1980 interview with Rinder & Lewis, “Arabella/Home” — or at least the “Arabella” section — had originally been recorded as a rock song eight years before this album, then recast as disco for Warriors. The string arrangement is excellent, as is the pounding bass drum that drives the “Home” section.

The lightest and most playful track on the album is probably “Harlem Shuffle,” featuring guest vocalist Carmen Twillie. It is less dark in mood, avoids the more extreme synthesizer effects, and is considerably more vocal-driven than the other tracks. Of everything here, it probably comes closest to the atmosphere of many of the El Coco projects.

Much of AVI Records’ disco catalogue — and Rinder & Lewis’ productions in particular — has historically been poorly represented on CD. Apart from a Japanese reissue of El Coco’s Let’s Get It Together (1976, AVI), there was a budget compilation of El Coco material and the now out-of-print Disco 54: The AVI Collection, notable for including the nine-minute version of “Lust.”

One can only hope that the AVI catalogue eventually receives the comprehensive reissue treatment that much of Rinder & Lewis’ work deserves. Until then, record collectors will have to keep digging.

After disco, Rinder & Lewis unsurprisingly burned out. Their post-1980 AVI material has generally been regarded less favorably by disco fans, and by that point they had also begun focusing more heavily on television music, having grown tired of dealing with record labels and disputes over royalties.

After working on an album for Eloise Whitaker, Laurin Rinder left the music business, while Michael Lewis continued working in it.

What remains striking is that Rinder and Lewis were not originally steeped in disco culture at all: they entered the field largely at the suggestion of their record label. Nevertheless, across numerous aliases and projects, they managed to build an extensive and remarkably distinctive body of disco recordings.

Further reading