Disco Sympathie vinyl

While largely unknown this side of the English Channel, Benjamin Vidal is one of France's most notorious crate diggers and record collectors. It's nice to see Gilb'r and company giving him a chance to showcase these digging skills via a compilation of his own on Versatile. Disco Sympathie differs from many bog standard disco compilations as it focuses entirely on French music from the early 1980s. The names are unfamiliar, and the sounds even more so; a hotchpotch of quirky, tongue-in-cheek cuts that variously doff a beret to American boogie, British and German synth-wave, eccentric synth-pop and the kind of expansive post-disco madness that thrills and intrigues in equal measure. It also features Sonia's "Sur Ma Musique", a hidden gem from 1980 that joins the dots between tongue-in-cheek Italo and throbbing synth-pop. It's not an expensive record, but it's certainly a great one.