disco

By Danny Turner

Norwegian psychedelic house merchants Mungolian Jetset -- Pål Nyhus and Knut Petter Sævik to their moms -- specialize in the improbable. Take their remix of "Could You Be Loved" by (oh, that wacky hippie sense of humor) Pizzy Yelliott, which not only pushes Bob Marley's iconic chorus through Mel Blanc voices and a Salvador Dali bassline but melds Melle Mel with 50 Cent: "Don't push me 'cause/It's your birthday, it's your birthday."

Throughout this double-CD overview, most of which collects the duo's remixes, similarly silly voices and tweaked tonality push the duo's disco sprawl past the dance floor or even the sun-kissed atmosphere of similar Nordic dance artists like Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas: We Gave It All Away plays like prog-rock for bouncy castles rather than Dungeons & Dragons marathons. The reworking of Ost & Kjex's "Milano Model," subtitled "A Thrilling Mungophony in Two Parts," focuses its eleven minutes on a ...
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Mungolian Jetset is everything you love about dance music. Disco? They’ve got it. Techno? They’ve got it. Pop? They’ve got it. Call it mutant or call it Balearic, Mungolian Jetset provides the “boom-chik-clap” in ways that most acts only dabble in. On the double-CD set We Gave it All Away…Now We Are Taking it Back, the collective runs between original tracks and remixes like they own the place, creating a debut the likes of which are rare, if even existent, before now. Whether it’s on the wonkily funky “Creepy,” with a vocal track that sounds like a young Jello Biafra, or the slow but steady groove of “Darker” that the Jetset crafted with jazz trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer, one can sense higher powers are at work on moving your hind quarters. With the album’s 16 tracks averaging over eight minutes apiece, We Gave it All Away… appeals more to the background sounds of ...
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