Altered Zones

Washington, DC's Peoples Potential Unlimited imprint specializes in uncovering lost or rare gems from obscure moments in the history of funk, usually extracting the most poignant and potent bits from an important transition point for the genre: when the synthesizer came into the picture. You can hear the transformation from the raw disco of the '70s to the colorful grooves of the '80s play out in 2009's PPU Family Album compilation. But lately, label man Andrew Morgan has gravitated towards the freaky electronics of the latter part of that era with his reissues.

His latest find, Superlife's 1982 proto-techno party anthem, "Go Bananas," is the epitome of freaky right from the opening line, "I'm a crazy robot and I'm running out of time." This urgent utterance is delivered by a deep, mechanized vocoder that sounds huge in its spacious environment of Kraftwerk-esque backing vocals, reverberating monkey noises, and acidic bass blasts. It's no wonder that Danan Potts-- aka Superlife-- was spending a lot of time around the Recording Institute of Detroit with Techno godfather Juan Atkins; you can totally feel some Belleville magic brewing in this early artifact of Detroit's budding renaissance. Included in the the Go Bananas 12" are the original track, an instrumental version, and new versions by Maxmillion Dunbar, Legowelt, Peanut Butter Wolf, and Steve Summers. Clips of each are included in the sampler mp3 below. --Matt Sullivan, Altered Zones

MP3: Superlife: "Go Bananas (Sampler)"

The test pressings of Go Bananas have sold out on PPU, but the official vinyl release is due soon, and you can grab it digitally on iTunes