Musique - Keep On Jumpin’ (1978/1997)

This 1978 album, long a favorite of hardcore disco fanatics, provides a great showcase for the talents of producer Patrick Adams. Like most of Adams' groups, Musique was a studio creation (featuring the talents of future solo star Jocelyn Brown) designed exclusively for the discotheque. It produced two major dancefloor favorites in the title track and "In the Bush"; the former effectively contrasts a stately string-section riff against a double-time rhythm section beat, and the latter is a lusty dance epic that contrasts bouncy, keyboard-driven verses with blaring bursts of horns and a sexy, overheated performance from the vocalists. The album is rounded out by "Summer Love," a hypnotic, mid-tempo dance ballad built on a sultry blend of strings and keyboards, and "Summer Love Theme," an all-instrumental version of "Summer Love." On the downside, Keep on Jumpin' is a bit slim on melody, but the rhythms are so insistent and the arrangements are so inventive that this flaw is easy for a disco fan to overlook. All in all, casual listeners may want to track down the hits on a compilation, but Keep on Jumpin' remains a slick, punchy album that is recommended to anyone with an interest in the club-oriented side of disco. [Collector's Note: Fans of this album should track down the Unidisc compact disc reissue, which complements the album with an array of single edits and 12" versions of "In the Bush" and "Keep on Jumpin'" that were remixed by legendary DJ Francois Kevorkian.]