(Credits: Far Out / Album Cover / Greyson Joralemon)
Sun 1 March 2026 12:00, UK
One of the great tragedies of any music obsessive is that you will never be able to truly, thoroughly explore all the gems of every local music scene across the globe.
As a tourist, however, you can often catch a glimpse of these faraway scenes, leading you towards songs, artists, and vinyl records that, by rights, you should have never heard, such as The Funkies and their obscure 1981 single ‘Disco Ride’.
In a world in which record shops around the world are increasingly filled to the rafters with the same reissues of Rumours, there is something to be coveted about an independent record store with a ‘local artists’ section hidden among the racks. Never was that fact truer than when I stepped foot in Tutl Records, Tórshavn, during a weekend in the eye-wateringly picturesque surroundings of the Faroe Islands.
While it remains relatively obscure outside of the North Atlantic archipelago, the Faroe Islands are home to an incredibly rich musical heritage, of which Tutl is the inarguable epicentre. Supporting a plethora of artists across the collection of islands, the label, first started back in the 1970s by Kristian Blak, who had himself moved to the islands to pursue his musical ambitions, is home to everything from the hardcore punk of Joe and the Shitboys to the alternative pop of Marianna Winter.
In addition to their incredible label work, though, Tutl also run an independent record shop in Tórshavn, in which I found that ever-elusive ‘local artists’ second-hand section alongside the label’s own original releases. Having, obviously, never heard of any of the local Faroese artists included in the section, I was forced to rely solely on the manifesto of any self-respecting crate digger – namely, if it has a cool cover, it’s probably worth listening to.
One record fit that bill better than most, and it was a seven-inch copy of ‘Disco Ride’ by a band who identified themselves as Funkies and, from the looks of the image on the cover, could not have been older than 16. Inevitably, the record ended up coming home with me back to old blighty, where it remains one of the greatest oddities in my record collection, and a song which never ceases to confuse audiences during DJ sets.
(Credits: Album Cover)
Originally released in 1981 via the short-lived Faroese label Bar Records, the single doesn’t particularly live up to its name, sharing much more in common with old-school rock and roll instrumentals than anything Giorgio Moroder lent his name to.
The core of the instrumental is built around a Shadows-esque guitar riff, and backed by an almost country-and-western drumbeat. It is, however, punctuated by endearingly retro phaser sounds, and a bizarre 80s Radio One-style self-effacing jingle describing it as “your DJ’s most hated record of the week.”
Both ‘Disco Ride’ and its American R&B-fueled flip-side, ‘It’s Just A Lie’, were original songs penned by the band’s lead guitarist and vocalist, Óla Hans Andreasen, and were clearly teenage attempts to emulate the kinds of sounds emanating from the airwaves of the nearby United Kingdom, and much further away United States.
Rather than being two-bit rip-offs, though, the songs are imbued with an endearing innocence, along with the kind of unintentional experimentation that only a teenage band could curate. After all, nobody else in 1981 was injecting futuristic disco phasers into old-school R&B instrumentals, and they certainly weren’t introducing their genuinely skilled recordings with punk-esque parodies of mainstream radio.
So far as I can tell, ‘Disco Ride’ was the only single the Funkies ever produced, although some of the band members – guitarist Terji Rasmussen, in particular – continued to be involved in the music scene of the Faroe Islands for many more years. Nevertheless, the single remains a fantastic, organic time capsule of a music scene that most of the world is completely ignorant towards.
Not only does the single form part of the unsuspectingly rich, enduring music heritage of the Faroe Islands, but, for me, it also represents the revolutionary potential of second-hand record stores, and taking chances on a record if only on the basis that it looks cool.
Music discovery has been reduced to little more than an algorithm in the modern age, but never in a million years would a streaming service or YouTube recommendation offer up an obscure disco-come-R&B instrumental from 1980s Tórshavn. For that excavation of local music scenes, independent record stores remain unbeaten, and Tutl Records is a particular goldmine.