LCD Soundsystem, 45:33

As cofounder of DFA Records, early producer of the Rapture, and leader of LCD Soundsystem, James Murphy is the crucial bridge between yesterday's punk and today's disco. A veteran of several rock bands, the New Jersey-born, New York-based rebel nevertheless knows underground dance music, as his Special Disco Version club nights behind the turntables have proven. Whereas his conventional albums bring together post-punk, art-rock and various club beats, 2006's 45:33 offers an electronic update on the mutant disco sounds of Ze Records and New York's kindred early-'80s acts like Konk and Dinosaur L. Commissioned by Nike and initially sold as music specially designed to compliment jogging, Murphy later admitted that this was just a ruse for him to create a nonstop work in the spirit of Ash Ra Tempel guitarist Manuel Göttsching's pioneering 1984 trance epic, E2-E4, a Paradise Garage classic.

Indeed, 45:33 feels as though it was modeled after disco pioneer David Mancuso's strategy of sequencing music at his club, The Loft, as a reflection of nature's energy flow over the course of a day: It starts with a gentle warm-up, followed by a steady surge of movement, a burst of sustained activity, and then a restful cool-down. That arc — also the structure of most narrative fiction — became the ideal for many disco DJs playing lengthy sets for serious dancers, and here Murphy condenses it into a continuous 46-minute piece. He'd later recycle the third section for "Someone Great" on his 2007 disc Sound of Silver, but here it's a squiggly synth-led instrumental not unlike Patrick Adams's space disco jams with Cloud One. The section before it features Murphy at his most soulful; his impression of an '80s club crooner is almost as good as his imitation David Bowie, and the blaring, Arthur Russell-esque horns shortly after the 25-minute mark help make 45:33 LCD Soundsystem at its most ecstatic — and therefore, most disco.