The Last Dance is the fourth EP and seventh overall release by English post-rock and experimental rock band Disco Inferno. The EP was the band's third release to develop their innovative production and sample-based approach. After initially recording sessions for the EP with their original producer Charlie McIntosh, the band's label, Rough Trade Records was unsatisfied with the sessions, and instead the band worked with a new producer, Michael Johnson, famous for his work with New Order. His production ethic included a period of pre-production, the first time the band had used this process.
The EP consists of four tracks and is considered by music journalists to be a highly eclectic release. It was released by Rough Trade Records in November 1993 in the UK alone, with the title track released as a white label single. The EP cover was the band's first of many of the band's artworks designed by Fuel with photography from David Spero. The EP was mostly overlooked upon its release but has subsequently been praised, alongside the rest of the band's output in this era, to be highly innovative. The EP was taken out of print shortly after release but was remastered and re-released as part of the compilation The 5 EPs in November 2011.
Background
Disco Inferno was formed in 1989 in Essex by teenagers Ian Crause (guitars and vocals), Paul Willmott (bass), Daniel Gish (keyboards) and Rob Whatley (drums), although Gish soon quit the band to join Bark Psychosis, leaving Disco Inferno to become a trio. Although the band was initially a post-punk band heavily influenced by bands such as Joy Division and Wire, Crause soon became infatuated with the unique sounds of bands My Bloody Valentine and the Young Gods, as well as the Bomb Squad's revolutionary production and sampling on the music of Public Enemy, and with the release of the Summer's Last Sound EP, released later on in 1992, the band's musical style changed towards sample-based electronic sounds. The band "hit upon a seemingly simple but ultimately world-opening idea" with the EP: to write their instruments through samplers, and unlike their contemporaries who sampled elements of music, film dialogue or other media, Disco Inferno "engaged with the whole world," using their set-up to record sounds ranging from running water, the wind, whistling birds, boots, car crashes and angry voices.
Although it was not a commercial success, the uncompromising, innovative and experimental sound of Summer's Last Sound was praised, leading the group to expand the approach with their next release, the EP A Rock to Cling To (1992), their first release on Rough Trade Records after their previous label, Cheree closed. According to Andy Kellman of Allmusic, the new label "saved the band's life, as the members believed that they were too challenging for anyone else to understand or care for." The band became characterized as one of the first post-rock bands. Rather than release another full-length album, they decided to release another EP in the sample-based approach, beginning work on The Last Dance in 1993.
Recording The band initially recorded sessions for The Last Dance with Charlie McIntosh, but these sessions were rejected by the band's label Rough Trade, so for the first time in the band's career, they worked with a different producer—Michael Johnson, most famous for his engineering work with New Order, with the further assistance of engineer John Rivers. Nonetheless, MacIntosh is still credited as a producer and engineer in the EP's liner notes. Paul Wilmott recalled that he initially felt that working with Johnson "was a betrayal to Charlie," while Ian Crause commented that "it did feel strange," adding that he thought McIntosh "was a bit hurt, but our manager rallied us, and we did it. It was definitely the right thing to have done." Johnson's approach was different from McIntosh's for numerous reasons; most unusually for the band, Johnson arranged a period of pre-production for them, something they had not done before.
The band and Johnson booked into a rehearsal room in Walthamstow, East London, and spent a couple of days working on the title track, largely putting together a drum track with Johnson's drum machine. Wilmott recalled that he "thought Crause embraced it more than [Wilmott] did purely for the New Order connection," with him commenting that "I was a little unsure as it seemed to go against what we were working towards. But once we got in to the studio, it became more exciting." In 2011, Crause recalled that, "along with Second Language, The Last Dance was probably the most painless time in the studio. We were in a semi-rural location in the Midlands. Rob and I even managed to go out for a long countryside drive one evening, which would have been out of the question in [London] unless we wanted to see a wild kebab wrapper in its natural habitat." In retrospect, Johnson commented that he always found working with bands inspired by Joy Division and New Order to be a positive thing, saying "it meant they were open to my ideas and weren't suspicious or too wary about my methods and suggestions. The bands always had plenty of originality, so they were trying to do their own thing, too." Crause said that "When Michael suggested something, we just did it. I probably flinched when he said Rob should play a normal drum kit again, but I wouldn't have said anything. The pre-stated aim was to let him take us away from our rehearsal-room sound into a pop sound. It's probably safe to say that we entered Planet Normal during these sessions and did what everyone else was doing."
Music The Last Dance was the band's first EP to contain four songs instead of two, although as with the band's other EPs, it is sometimes considered a single. According to Ned Raggett of Pitchfork Media, "The Last Dance was in many ways a profound change from the group's previous releases" and ranges "from the serene sonic calm" of "Scattered Showers" to the "extreme frenzy" of "D.I. Go Pop." Writing for Allmusic, he said that The Last Dance was "a teaser for the astonishing D. I. Go Pop album (as with all the threesome's other singles, it contained nothing from an actual album), which "captured the band perfecting the low-key, crisp sound that characterized their more accessible numbers and their total, uncompromising extremism." According to Jonny Mugwamp of Fact Mag, "The Last Dance features two similar versions of the title song that find the band working in unexpectedly melodic and relatively sample-free New Order-ish territory – sonically, at least" which are "offset by two other songs." He considered the EP to be an "overload." Dan Cooper-Gavin of Drowned in Sound called the EP the band's most "difficult" so far, saying "The Last Dance is significant, then, as the concept of radio-friendliness enters the band’s consciousness."
"The Last Dance"
The EP opens with its title track. Music journalist Tom Ewing called it "the least formally groundbreaking of DI’s records," but noted that "the moment [he] heard it, I was floored by its originality and sense of purpose." Unlike the band's other songs in the era, the amount of samples in the song is kept to a minimum, with the only apparent samples being a constant ticking of clocks and a crowd chanting in the distance. Nonetheless, Ewing stated that "The Last Dance" is also the band's "wisest, most moving song, a meditation on history, on the impossibility of making something new in art, and on the need to try and do so anyhow. It’s also their most musically endearing, a tune as taut and poignant as anything Wire ever recorded, with delicate guitar lines meshing and weaving, always pretty but always understated."
Although Crause's singing "was barely singing at all," "he made it a virtue, his slightly breathless voice sounding urgent, desperate to communicate, but at the same time faltering." On "The Last Dance,", he sighs, "Was there ever a time / Like this?" just before the guitars "skid all over the track," and according to Ewing, "it's as inspiring as it is heartbreaking." Raggett noted that had another band recorded the song, the result "would have been a pleasant post-punk slice of energy, something which could have been recorded by New Order, Echo and the Bunnymen, or perhaps even the Field Mice. Here, though, limits are pushed just enough. Crause's voice sounds just alien enough with subtle distortion -- the samples he triggers with his guitar -- rather than the lovely, echoed chiming itself -- help carry the song. Wilmot's bass and Whatley's drums are very much to the fore, disturbing the expected mix as a result." Nick Southall of Stylus Magazine called the song "straight-ahead post-punk pop music but re-imagined and reconstructed with added detail taken from the world outside."
"D. I. Go Pop"
"D. I. Go Pop" was "essentially put together like a garage band" and consists of a second-long sample of the My Bloody Valentine song "You Made Me Realise", taken from the band's 1988 EP of the same name, pitched across Crause's guitar "with the unpredictable fret release firing off samples at a much higher pitch by chance," giving it an even more chaotic feel. Raggett described the song, saying "after a pleasant radio announcer sample, an incredibly messed-up loop of sound -- the band is in it somewhere, but not as much as all the other strange noises and notes crammed into the music -- serves as the bed for a perversely simple but completely uneasy listening melody. Crause delivers his lyrics with a slight urgency, but no more, over the bedlam." In 2011, Mugwamp of Fact Mag said the song is "like a hyper-compressed, furious and deadly serious Butthole Surfers circa Locust Abortion Technician," which "still prompts one of my fondest memories of what were truly horrible times in my life, when a bewildered housemate stormed into my room yelling 'Why the fuck are you listening to three songs at once!'"
Crause recalled that "That sample does make you jump, doesn't it? I sometimes dreaded starting it off, especially when it was coming through a full PA. It's like waiting for a firework to go off-- you know the bang's coming, it's just the waiting for it that does your nerves in. I can't remember the exact lyrics, but we were starting to laugh between ourselves about our lack of success, and I was also beginning to increasingly think of us as a cartoon band to reflect our total hopelessness, which I got from Paul, who was the chief giggler. So you pretend it wasn't that important all along, even though it's killing you. Cartoon purgatory would be where this obviously made-up tale put us: a world of black irony." The song shares its name with the band's second album, D. I. Go Pop, also recorded in 1993 but released afterwards in 1994. Mugwamp stated the song "revealed exactly what was to be waiting" on the album. Andrew Unterberger of Stylus Magazine said the sound of the song "is something like a Buzzcocks single whose RPM can’t seem to remain steady, constantly spinning faster and slowing down again. The stuttering guitar riff is absolutely mesmerizing, sounding like the group is struggling to get it out as quickly as possible. How the song manages to unearth some really gorgeous hooks out of the mess is just unbelievable." Jon Dale of Dusted Magazine, interpreting the song's lyrical content, said:
"The Long Dance"