Kano’s second album, New York Cake was a bit of a sop to the mainstream disco world. Having created one of the essential Italodisco longplayers with their eponymous debut, Kano toned down the spacey, instrumental portions of their sound and went for a more R&B feel—this resulted in some awkward moments and a few successes, but “Don’t Try to Stop Me” is not amongst them. Combining the alien black leather funk of the first record with all the sprightly downtownisms of New York Cake, it’s truly a lost classic. The vocoder-lace vocal reciting the title like a raison d’etre spars with an earnest “I must go, so let me go.” and a memorable heroic synth lead, and my friends we cannot be stopped from knocking down the walls and proceeding directly to Euroheaven. Another great moment in the long-running canon of genre-defining dance music from the Continent.

Mirage / 311
[Mallory O’Donnell]