Way back in 1981, two musicians got together to make a record. Mike Collins played guitar and had just bought a Roland CR78 - the first programmable drum machine. Keith O’Connell played Fender Rhodes piano and Prophet 5 synthesizer. Excited about the quirky and unusual instrumental track they’d composed, when the duo entered London’s Utopia Studios to finish off their creation, neither could have predicted what was to follow... Now viewed by many as one of the most influential early electronic dance records, ‘Rude Movements’ was swiftly picked up on by David Mancuso, who used it to devastating effect at his infamous ‘Loft Parties’, in turn introducing it to Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles, David Morales and Kenny Dope, a group of young DJs who would go on to write the blueprint for dance music as we know it.
In the early '80s, fellow British musicians, producers, and flatmates Mike Collins and Keith O'Connell began recording music at home in their off hours. Calling themselves Sunpalace, they crafted a handful of funky, lo-fi instrumental jams using synths, guitars, basses, and a drum machine. Signing to Passion Records in 1983, they released the single "Winning," backed by "Rude Movements." The LP eventually caught the attention of club DJs, including New York's David Mancuso, who began spinning it at his famed Loft party. Despite their cult success, Sunpalace never really took off and Collins and O'Connell eventually moved on to other projects. The 2016 BBE anthology Raw Movements/Rude Movements brings together all of Sunpalace's recordings, as well as some previously unreleased demos. Primarily, these are bass'n'drum-machine-heavy tunes punctuated with Collins' Nile Rodgers-esque electric guitar flourishes and O'Connell's Rhodes keyboard and Prophet 5 synth lines. The duo often recorded their jams during late-night party sessions fueled by the requisite accouterments, and there are even little traces of captured microphone chatter and background apartment noise; at one point someone says "I think I have to lie down...". It's sort of like if Stanley Clarke and George Duke had done home recordings on an eight-track machine. Tracks like "What's the Time," "Palace Strut," and "Street Beat," are robotically funky anthems that conjure images of leather-clad break-dancers, mustachioed dudes valeting their Ferraris, and harem-panted disco dancers boogying the night away. Similarly engaging, the duo's "I'm Going to Lie Down," with its sax and flute overdubs, seems to portend the burgeoning acid jazz scene of the '90s -- after all, this was London. Also included are several tracks recorded around 1983 with more of a full-band sound. These reveal what Sunpalace might have sounded like had they kept going. Always a side project, Sunpalace slowly faded away as O'Connell took on more session work and Collins shifted into soundtrack mode, eventually contributing to productions with such luminaries as Ryuchii Sakamoto and Mitch Easter. While their jazzy, funk- and disco-inflected grooves might have sounded a bit chintzy in the early '80s, when reevaluated in the wake of such throwback acts as Daft Punk and Boulevards, Sunpalace now sound mind-blowingly hip specifically because of their home demo origins. Ultimately, the tracks on Raw Movements/Rude Movements capture brief but forever golden moments in time.
| Raw Movements |
| A1 | Raw Movements | 5:52 |
| A2 | Love Train II | 4:47 |
| A3 | Palace Strut | 4:10 |
| B1 | Coral Reef | 4:52 |
| B2 | Street Beat | 4:41 |
| B3 | What's The Time | 5:53 |
| Rude Movements |
| C1 | Rude Movements | 7:49 |
| C2 | Movement I | 6:10 |
| D1 | Movement II | 7:40 |
| D2 | Movement III | 7:59 |
