Downturn treatments
(adds mp3 link)
This has been sprinkling disco-house waters for a while but I still stopped and gawped when i saw the audio-visual package on Basshunter’s 50 Club Classics on Freeview’s Hits channel (it was a slow night). We may have seen the best of German-led digital synthetic danse, but on the evidence of this and many other current tunes it’s still filtering into the mainstream and is likely to be hanging around for a while yet.
Then you listen again and you realize how subdued all the elements are in Seamus Haji’s mix – the bassline, the House of God percussion sound, the weak vocals. BootyLuv, where the two Big Brovaz laydeez are the front of a usually more r&b sound, have had their sound blanched and the image blacked down to represent the uniform individuality of the dancefloor (if not the predominantly white dancehole of the mininal space). All the stems are much more played down than anything Basshunter would allow in his offensively pragmatic productions. Or for that matter in bassline, house played by grimestars or any other liminal mutant doing the rounds. Funky house rejects a surfeit of ‘electronic’ elements, of course.
But, still, this is a sleek bit of eurotronica, where the sexed up spectacle (rather than the finding your own space or the aggressive having it of earlier rave tropes) is key. This electronic dance has been made for a boogie, not a trance-off. As Joe the Plumber from, er, Swadlincote, wrestles with financial meltdown and the even-worse-than-mediocrity of this new reality, I saw hope in this aspirant diversion from the mundane of this eroticised e, champers and female-led public privileging of the moment. Or maybe I should watch more pop-dance videos to realise this is practically a genre now.
Contrast this with the distinctly manly retreat into the deterministic chaos of the narked self of Too Young to Love from London newcomers Big Pink, as recommended by the Fader. The premise and promise of the first minute is never really bettered, but it can’t help to be arresting in its Seefeel-MBV-Mondays squally soundclash, and would quite possibly have saved indie-dunce had it come out in 1991.
This, however, is yet more Amen ritualz.
This has been sprinkling disco-house waters for a while but I still stopped and gawped when i saw the audio-visual package on Basshunter’s 50 Club Classics on Freeview’s Hits channel (it was a slow night). We may have seen the best of German-led digital synthetic danse, but on the evidence of this and many other current tunes it’s still filtering into the mainstream and is likely to be hanging around for a while yet.
Then you listen again and you realize how subdued all the elements are in Seamus Haji’s mix – the bassline, the House of God percussion sound, the weak vocals. BootyLuv, where the two Big Brovaz laydeez are the front of a usually more r&b sound, have had their sound blanched and the image blacked down to represent the uniform individuality of the dancefloor (if not the predominantly white dancehole of the mininal space). All the stems are much more played down than anything Basshunter would allow in his offensively pragmatic productions. Or for that matter in bassline, house played by grimestars or any other liminal mutant doing the rounds. Funky house rejects a surfeit of ‘electronic’ elements, of course.
But, still, this is a sleek bit of eurotronica, where the sexed up spectacle (rather than the finding your own space or the aggressive having it of earlier rave tropes) is key. This electronic dance has been made for a boogie, not a trance-off. As Joe the Plumber from, er, Swadlincote, wrestles with financial meltdown and the even-worse-than-mediocrity of this new reality, I saw hope in this aspirant diversion from the mundane of this eroticised e, champers and female-led public privileging of the moment. Or maybe I should watch more pop-dance videos to realise this is practically a genre now.
Contrast this with the distinctly manly retreat into the deterministic chaos of the narked self of Too Young to Love from London newcomers Big Pink, as recommended by the Fader. The premise and promise of the first minute is never really bettered, but it can’t help to be arresting in its Seefeel-MBV-Mondays squally soundclash, and would quite possibly have saved indie-dunce had it come out in 1991.
This, however, is yet more Amen ritualz.
posted by Culla at 7:33 pm
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