Alec R. Costandinos

The king of the eurodisco sound in the 1970's. Alec wrote for and produced many disco artists including Love and Kisses, Don Ray, Tony Rallo, Cerrone, Paris Connection, Sphinx, Sumeria and Alan Hawkshaw. Alec's "solo" albums contain some of the greatest eurodisco tracks of all time. His albums often had a historical or classical theme, the best known of these being "Romeo and Juliet", which was used in the disco movie "Thank God it's Friday" (although it was not on the soundtrack album). Disco is often slammed for being unambitious and - to put it mildly - subintellectual, but you can't say that about the work of Egypt-born Greco-Armenian Parisian Alec R. Costandinos: his album-length, literature-based, classically-influenced epics are as far-reaching and grandiose as anything by art-rockers like Emerson Lake and Palmer or Yes. While so much disco, both European and American, relentlessly pounded listeners with the same groove for minutes on end, Costandinos continually varied his arrangements - making full, innovative use of orchestras and a small army of vocalists - and mastered the art of shading from one piece of music to another so gradually you never noticed what he was up to until it was over. In 1991, his Greatest Hits album surfaced, which featured a few of his early dancefloor anthems in their epic glory, but for the most part, his work remained out of print, obscuring his relevance as one of the disco era's premier producers. Over a decade later, he resurfaced with his own official website http://costandinos.com/. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.