Review
Genre and Mood
Henri-Pierre Noel recorded A Fifth of Beethoven in 1979, and The Reflex reworked it more than three decades later as A Fifth of Beethoven - The Reflex Re-Vision: disco and funk with a pianist’s hands all over it. The mood is groovy and playful, energetic in the way a party is once it has stopped checking the time, and the joke of the title is never far away.
Song Summary
The tune has travelled. Walter Murphy adapted the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony into a disco instrumental in 1976, named it with a pun on a fifth of liquor, and took it to number one on the Billboard Hot 100; the next year it joined the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Noel’s version was cut in the same session as his 1979 debut album Piano and stayed unreleased until Wah Wah 45s found it. The Reflex then made the trick of recognition the point of his rework.
Musical Breakdown
At seven and a half minutes, this is a rework that knows the value of waiting.
Intro
The label put it plainly: the rework takes its time to build. The beats carry you before the source reveals itself.
Build-up
Listen under The Reflex’s beats for the funky bass and afro-flavoured percussion of the original session, while the melody stays hidden.
Main Section
The beats make way for Noel’s keyboard flourishes, and the recognition of the Walter Murphy classic begins to dawn. This is the moment the whole track is built around.
Outro
With the tune out in the open, listen to how long the rework lets the piano and the groove run together before it lets go.
Concepts in Focus
A remix often keeps the hook up front; The Reflex withholds it. By making you wait for the famous melody, he turns recognition into the climax, the same way a DJ teases a well-known record into a set.
The whole chain is a lesson in the cover version. Murphy covered Beethoven in disco; Noel covered Murphy with Haitian piano; The Reflex reworked Noel for today’s floor. Each step keeps the tune and changes the body around it.
The heart of it is syncopation. Wah Wah 45s describes Noel using the piano in a very percussive and syncopated way, almost like a drum, which brings disco and afro-jazz into his own brand of Kompa Funk. Listen to how his accents land between the beats and push the groove forward.
Artistic Context
Noel moved to Canada from Haiti and brought the island’s influences with him. In 2012 Wah Wah 45s remastered and reissued Piano, and the Canadian producer Moonstarr found two unreleased cuts from its session, this one and Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, which came out on a seven-inch in July 2013. The Reflex Re-Vision followed, previously unreleased and exclusive to the label’s compilation Wah Friends Electric 2, out digitally on 10 February 2014. It later reappeared on The Reflex Revisions in 2016. Mélissa Laveaux, heard in Mélissa Laveaux – Needle in the Hay, is another Haitian-Canadian voice.
Impact and Reception
Among the reactions Wah Wah 45s quoted for The Reflex Revisions, BBC 6 Music’s Craig Charles called the record tailor-made for the dance floor, and Mr Scruff heard Pigbag in places. It is here because it shows a tune surviving three reinventions. Wait for the piano.
