Cosmic Dispatch #1

Nov 18 BTD Presents Club Cosmic with an Asian flair

We have waited a long time to throw a cosmic party in Hong Kong. Originally, we were about to begin a new party series at the now defunct Potato Head Hong Kong called Fata Morgana - BTD co-founder Ani Phoebe and ex-Potato Head Music Director Johnny Hiller were supposed to head this up. The 5th wave of COVID arrived to Hong Kong and canceled everything early January 2022, Ani went on tour for 5 months in 2022 playing in Brazil, the US, and Europe, we began with our larger production of BTD parties in November 2022, and the rest is history.

But we never gave up the dream of bringing this unique sound to Hong Kong, which to our understanding has never had a cosmic party before.

The history of the cosmic sound may have started in Europe, but it has never focused on solely European music. Daniele Baldelli, an Italian DJ who has worked for most of his life in relative obscurity until the early 2000s, deserves much of the credit for developing a ‘Cosmic Sound’ and bringing the mystery and beauty of cosmic disco to a wider audience around the world.

In April of 1979, a new club opened in Lake Garda, Italy. Simply called ‘Cosmic’, Daniele Baldelli was able to fully flourish and develop his sound here. Having begun to mix disco records at Baia, a nightclub that had just closed, at Cosmic he began to slow the pitch down even more, staying well under 120BPM. “What happened was that when I got records to listen to from the shop, there were often so many that when you took the record out of the sleeve you didn’t always check what speed they were supposed to be played at,” he says. “You’d then put the record on and think ‘Yes, this is really nice’ only to find out it’s supposed to be played at 45, not 33. So you put it on at 45 but think ‘This is shit, it’s much better at 33.’ So every time I bought a record, I would do this to see which speed sounded best.”

More than simply pitching down records, Baldelli sought out different genres and also records that nobody else would play on a dancefloor. “Disco Più was our first record shop for DJs but they also always bought one copy of all these different obscure electronic and new wave records,” says Baldelli. “It became a bit of a joke with the owner Gianni Zuffa that these records nobody wanted, they are too strange or whatever he used to say ‘don’t worry give them to Baldelli he will find a way to play it’.”

Alongside heady disco, like Queen Samantha’s “Take a Chance” and John Tropea’s “Living In a Jungle,” he’d play spacey Kosmische music from German labels Sky and Innovative Communication. He also had a penchant for sleazy new wave tracks, like Gina X’s “No G.D.M,” as well as synthpop obscurities like “Jamaica Running” by The Pool and Codek’s “Tam Tam.” Baldelli played percussion heavy African records, and blended them with early electronic sounds. He would mix in Brazilian samba sounds in afterwards and completely dictate the journey of a night.

Lake Garda was a tourist destination in Italy, and holidaymakers from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland also began to visit Cosmic and heard this sound for the first time. They would buy Baldelli’s illegal mixtapes (that sold like hotcakes) and went back to their own countries to create their own Cosmic scenes, featuring music inspired by the club.

After spending half a century immersed in club culture, Baldelli now has some perspective on what Cosmic accomplished. “When I look back at the photos of Cosmic and see this very young crowd by the DJ booth, it makes me very happy,” he says. “All these young people listening to Al Di Meola, Weather Report, Osibisa, Jan Akkerman, Airto Moreira—real musicians playing great music.”

Quotes from this Cosmic Dispatch #1 were provided by the Bandcamp Daily Feature on Daniele Baldelli and author Andy Thomas.

Presales for Club Cosmic on November 18th are highly limited - we are still waiting to share with you the full lineup which will be an Asian approach to the Cosmic Sound. This is the last full BTD production of 2023, with a special set design, lighting, and many other details. Join us!