11. Deodato
I keep saying this, but again it’s a record that takes you somewhere else – but the thing is, when you get to the end you want to play it again to see if it’ll do the same thing again… and it does! Again and again, you can actually be as one with this record. He’s giving you the full story with this record, it’s not just functional, but every single element you want to listen to and appreciate. Deodato was reliably brilliant at making those types of records that would do that for you. I would love to understand what someone like him was thinking: did they go, "right we’re going to make a track that is going to set every single dancefloor in the country on fire"? I mean, yes, he probably did to be fair – but then how do you go about that? Or was it just go in, lay down a groove, muck around in the studio, go and have some food? And of course, he produced and arranged multi million selling records, but he didn’t care about being at the forefront – nobody who isn’t an obsessive knows who Deodato is, but I don’t think he cares, he just had his craft and did it perfectly. The talent and genius of studio guys like him is something else, but I feel like they’re a dying breed, and it’s really important for me to talk about them, to remind people what they’re about. They’re just as important as the people in the front.
