BORN WITH A DESIRE - BLACK VINYL by TONY PALKOVIC

A trailblazing amalgam of elevator-friendly R&B and synth-forward smooth jazz, Tony Palkovic’s 1986 debut goes down easy as a huff of dentist-issued nitrous. Born With A Desire’s silky grooves and bursts of drum machine 1.0 endure as an ’80s vision of future earth where 8-bit graphics and pastel palettes swath a synthesizer Shangri La.

For a year-and-a-half Palkovic conceived of and refined these series of rhythmic patterns, and chord progressions and changes, using a very limited early stage drum machine, polyphonic synth and guitar. He recorded each song at home in the evenings after clocking out from a day job in sales, and pressed a 1,000 copies for his Deep Water label. “I got about 50 copies out there, and that’s when everything got tough,” he said.

Shortly after the release of Born With A Desire, Palkovic’s mother grew ill and he became her primary caretaker. Then, as it so often goes, money became tight. Under pressure from life’s demands, he retreated from making records and playing out in local clubs. “Believe it or not, I threw away hundreds of copies of Born With A Desire because I had to move,” he lamented.