The title of producer Johan Agebjörn's new album isn't necessarily a reference to the 1942 Bogart-Bergman film or to the Moroccan city where it was set. Instead, it's almost certainly a nod to Casablanca Records, one of the most prominent labels of the 1970s. While it did sign the likes of Cher, Kiss, and Parliament, Casablanca was best known as a haven for disco artists, including Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Santa Esmeralda, Village People, and a deep roster of one- and no-hit wonders. It's even rumored that Steve Guttenberg's character in the Village People film Can't Stop the Music was based on Casablanca founder Neil Bogart (no relationship to Humphrey).
It's no shock that Agebjörn would invoke this bellwether of pop history for his latest album. He is one of several Swedish producers enamored with various American and European strains of disco, and his two albums with Sally Shapiro reveal a steadfast belief that heartache is best conveyed via soft vocals, shimmery synths, modulated bass lines, and pulsating beats. Casablanca Nights is his chance to play curator as well as producer, hand-picking such acts as Shapiro, CFCF, Friday Bridge, and Le Prix. The album plays like a label sampler you might dig out of the dollar bin and wonder why none of the artists made it bigger.
Despite that title, Agebjörn isn't abandoning his signature Italo disco-derived sound for a more American style. His production remains exquisitely lush and luxuriant. On "The Last Day of Summer", the relatively robust vocals by Queen of Hearts stand out on the album, and it's too bad she doesn't appear more often. Many of the vocalists blur together over the course of Casablanca Nights, although Shapiro remains Agebjörn's most captivating muse, her expressive vocals illuminating each one of her songs.
Most of Agebjörn's songs create the same sort of yearning, thumping dancefloor melancholy, differentiated more by their lyrics than by their instrumentation or their tone. As Casablanca Nights makes its way to morning, he introduces a few new sounds and tricks, to varying degrees of success. "Alice", a collaboration with Le Prix, Fred Ventura, and Shapiro, is the most intriguing detour, drumming in some new wave influences from the early 1980s to counterbalance the 1970s sounds. Thanks to the halting chorus and the dynamic boy-girl vocals, the combination of styles is intriguing, not only because these two eras have such different concerns but mostly because similar experiments on Casablanca Nights prove much less compelling.
By the time the requisite chill-out closer comes along-- "Stranger (Chill Remix)" with Halftone-- Agebjörn has already thoroughly chilled out to a sequence of downtempo songs like "Le Noir et le Blanc Sur le Piano" (where Shapiro sings in French) and "Memories of Satie" (with CFCF). Intriguing in their reach if not necessarily their execution, those two numbers weigh down the second half, such that "Stranger" doesn't sound like the sunrise to end Casablanca Nights, but an abrupt finale that plays to a long-empty dancefloor. Granted, Agebjörn's intention isn't historical re-creation or even dance-party endurance, but a kind of musical evocation that opens up more conceptual possibilities than perhaps he's willing to explore. Yet, this time-machine quality means the music serves similar purposes to its influences: The songs are meant to be immersive, enveloping, and most of all transportive. Where disco went far beyond mere escapism in the 1970s, Casablanca Nights only gets you out of 2011 for a few sweet minutes.
