Review
Genre and Mood
Purple Disco Machine’s Body Funk is house built from disco, the style called nu-disco: Discogs files its album under house and nu-disco, and Wikipedia calls Purple Disco Machine a nu-disco and house producer. It is groovy and energetic, because its raw material is older dance records, one of them a 1982 hit.
Song Summary
Body Funk is a track by Tino Piontek, the Dresden producer and DJ who records as Purple Disco Machine. It first came out on 25 May 2017 on the Australian label Club Sweat, as a single of the original at 7:23 and a dub. In October 2017 it became the second track of his debut album Soulmatic, in a version of 4:16, which is the version the yearbook holds. MusicBrainz lists what it is built on: samples of Sylvester and Patrick Cowley’s Do Ya Wanna Funk and of Hot Streak’s Body Work.
Musical Breakdown
Main Section
No review we could find describes Body Funk part by part, so this page describes less than usual. What the sources do give is its material: the two sampled records, and Piontek as producer and arranger. Listen for the older records inside the new track.
Concepts in Focus
sampling is the heart of this track. Do Ya Wanna Funk was a 1982 dance hit recorded by the singer Sylvester and the producer Patrick Cowley, who played its synthesizers, drum machine and sequencer and died the same year. When Positiva and Virgin EMI released a short edit of Body Funk in Britain in 2019, Discogs shows Cowley and Sylvester credited as composers, alongside Curtis Hudson, Bernard Lentz and Willie Lee Duckworth.
The single’s original is a seven-minute extended mix for DJs, with a dub version beside it; the album version runs a little over four minutes.
The music video was directed by Nicole Alexander, with choreography by Del Mak, who dances in it with Brooke Brady, and a drummer, Vanessa Vendiola.
Artistic Context
Piontek was born in Dresden in 1980. His father, a record collector, introduced him to the funk of the 1970s and 1980s; he started producing in 1996 with Cubase and a few synthesizers and released his first productions in 2012. Soulmatic was his debut album, with guests such as Cee-Lo, Kool Keith and Karen Harding. Record Mirror once heard Sylvester inside Bronski Beat – Why ?; here Sylvester’s own record is inside the track.
Impact and Reception
Body Funk did not chart in the countries Wikipedia lists, but it kept moving: in 2019 Carl Cox and Dom Dolla remixed it. Piontek went on to Hypnotized with Sophie and the Giants and a Grammy in 2023 for his remix of Lizzo’s About Damn Time. Turn it up and find 1982 inside it.
