Litia~Loe may be known to some for their incredibly powerful »Each Dawn Every Day«, which Mixed Signals and Left Ear Records re-released in 2020. Now they’re also taking on »Life Love Dance«, an album that first saw the light of day in the mid-nineties, a few years after the aforementioned hit. The artists are a trio who met at design school in Chicago and decided to form a band in 1986. You can clearly hear the influences the three have been exposed to. By listening to sets by Frankie Knuckles Powerplant and Ron Hardy at the Music Box, they translated this inspiration into an informed but not unoriginal sonic language.
»Peep Show«, with its booming bass line, simple bass drum and snare beat and vocals wandering in the sound space, is perhaps the coolest track on the record. Melodically, it sounds like a mixture of Gino Soccio’s »Dancer« and John Beltran’s »Dream Collage«, which was released after »Life Love Dance« however. »First World« has jam character, maybe even drawing board character, abruptly picks up speed and develops an absolutely captivating groove that would probably not be able to be created like this today. »Whisper To Me«, on the other hand, sounds more like Italo disco and reaches for the stars with its bright keys. »Life Love Dance« has to be credited for fulfilling a double function. For one thing, it is a document of the times that can hardly be overestimated, away from the usual name-dropping, and for another thing, it is still danceable, animating, fresh.
Life Love Dance
