ARTISTS

Daniel Wang

Berlin (DE)
dj

Born in California and raised in Taiwan, the well-traveled producer Daniel Wang has been among the most restless and classically minded members of the dance music community over the last decade. Wang made a name for himself in the mid '90s Chicago house scene with a series of playful, funky, sample-delic 12-inches on his own Balihu label, compiled on 1998's I Was a Disco Malcontent: The Best of Balihu Records. Rooted in the pioneering disco and techno innovations of Giorgio Moroder, Kraftwerk, Francois K, Arthur Russell, the releases earned Wang a reputation for being something of a dance music purist, a notion underscored by his philosophy that the whole of house music can be summed up in 200 pieces of vinyl, while all the rest are merely variations.

Later in the '90s, Wang relocated to New York City, where he forged a friendship with the similarly retro-minded Morgan Geist of Metro Area. By this point, Wang had given up on the samples which cluttered his early releases, taking his back-to-basics ethic one step further. He'd also become an avid theremin enthusiast. In 2001, Geist's Environ label put out Wang's soulful, '70s boogie-inspired album Idealism.

Given Wang's love for all things disco, he was an appropriate choice to lead off Ghostly International's acclaimed 2002 nu-skool electro comp, Disco Nouveau. He does this in style with the thumping, funky, quite cinematic Moroder homage "Pistol Oderso."