Purple Disco Machine - Exotica Deluxe (2LP) - Purple Vinyl

Some dance records feel built for playlists. Exotica Deluxe feels built for a turntable on a Saturday night, that moment you decide the lounge room is good enough to be a dancefloor. Purple Disco Machine, the Dresden producer born Tino Piontek, has always had a knack for chrome‑polished disco and house, but this expanded edition of his 2021 second album, Exotica, shows just how well he balances pop sparkle with DJ smarts. The core LP already spun off huge singles, and the 2022 deluxe version rounded up the era’s extra gems and versions that fans had been chasing across streams and twelve‑inches.

If you came in through Hypnotized, the collaboration with Sophie and the Giants, you’ll know the vibe. It’s a clean, fizzy blend of Italo‑tinted synths, crisp claps and a bassline that glides rather than thumps. The song became a fixture on European radio, and it still lands like a midnight breeze on a sticky dancefloor. Exotica Deluxe brings that cut alongside In The Dark, another Sophie and the Giants team‑up that arrived in 2022 and kept the partnership’s hit streak alive. In The Dark is sleeker and a touch moodier, the kind of track that makes sense when the room’s lights go low and the mirror ball does the talking.

Fireworks, with Moss Kena and New York duo The Knocks, is the big dopamine hit. It’s all handclaps and glittery strings, with Kena threading a soulful vocal through the kind of arrangement that recalls French touch without feeling like a museum piece. There is dopamine too, in name and effect, on Dopamine with Eyelar, a song that sneaks bittersweet lyrics into a proper sun‑roof hook. That blend of melancholy and joy is a Purple Disco Machine calling card. He keeps the drums neat, the bass tactile and the synths just retro enough to trigger pleasant déjà vu.

Playbox is where the album leans into its inner gear‑nerd. It’s a taut groove that sounds built from equal parts drum machines and expertly chopped guitar, with little electro flourishes that nod to his crate‑digging love of Italo disco. I Remember with Elderbrook shifts the palette again, bringing a huskier vocal and a late‑night pulse that feels closer to the kind of melodic house you’d hear easing a crowd from peak hour into afters. Across the record you can hear the care in the production, the live‑feeling bass, the tidy guitar licks, the way the percussion sits in the pocket rather than shouting for attention. Interviews around the album cycle had Piontek talking about working out of his Dresden setup and chasing classic textures with modern clarity, which tracks with how these songs hit both on headphones and on a proper system.

What the deluxe tag adds is context and playability. You get the big singles in one place, plus the extra cuts and versions that DJs had been rinsing in clubs. Sequenced on wax, the rise and fall makes more sense. You can start on the pop side, flip across to the deeper moments, and then dive into those extended takes that let a groove breathe past the radio edit. If you are the kind of listener who seeks out Purple Disco Machine vinyl because the mixes translate so nicely to a room, Exotica Deluxe vinyl is the sensible pick over the standard issue.

There is a cultural story here too. Exotica arrived in late 2021 when dancefloors were flickering back to life, and its singles helped soundtrack that cautious optimism. The deluxe edition landed in 2022, folding in In The Dark just as it was taking off across Europe. That run cemented Purple Disco Machine as one of the few producers able to sit comfortably between radio and the booth. He can headline a festival, but he can also charm a Melbourne record store staffer who has been stacking disco reissues all week and still finds these hooks addictive.

If you collect, this sits nicely next to other Purple Disco Machine albums on vinyl, and it is the one I point people to when they ask where to start. It’s glossy without being disposable, nostalgic without pastiche. And for those browsing for vinyl records Australia wide, it pops up often enough that you won’t need luck to snag a copy. You can buy Purple Disco Machine records online, but it is more fun to spot this on a wall‑display, take it home, and watch the room brighten when Fireworks hits its chorus.

The litmus test is simple. Drop the needle, cue up Hypnotized or Playbox, and see how long it takes before someone asks what’s playing. Exotica Deluxe is the kind of modern disco that makes that conversation easy.