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Dance Singles of the Moment 5/26/08
Our new, semi-regular feature of notable new dance singles continues with reviews of The Juan Maclean, Audion, Kelley Polar, Low Motion Disco, Goldfrapp and Ricardo Villalobos.
Summer is upon us again, and just as the multiplexes are being crammed full of big, dumb Hollywood blockbuster action films, so the stacks at your local 12" vinyl vendor are being stuffed full of big, dumb floor-fillers. This is not a bad thing at all, as even with climate change in full swing, summer is still the time for outdoor raves, tent parties, festivals, and destination clubs in tropical climes. With that in mind, here is a small selection dance singles that might be making the summer even hotter.
The Juan Maclean, "Happy House"
DFA
What a DJ needs for huge, mixed summer crowds are cuts with massive crossover appeal, and this long-awaited new 12" by The Juan Maclean more than fits the bill. From the beginning, the DFA label made its name on club music with a broad-based appeal, getting the normally stoic hipsters and indie rock kids to embrace disco and house music, as well as winning over many veterans of the dance scene. As far as I'm concerned, The Juan Maclean is the DFA's flagship act, consistently turning out stunning singles and remixes that bring a punk irreverance to classic electro, house and disco music that feels the truest to DFA's implicit mission statement. Juan's background as a member of rock bands has kept his compositions from going too far into the glittery oblivion, even on a single like "Happy House," a piano-led chunk of epic diva house that pulls a dynamic rabbit out of its hat about eight minutes into its 12-plus-minute running time. The track, especially the piano loop and rhythm section, bears more than a passing resemblance to Dubtribe Soundsystem's "Do It Now," a deep house floor-filler from Ibiza circa 2001. It's not clear whether it's a sample or an homage, but Juan Maclean's track is different enough—with its eclectic rhythm section, full female vocals by the awesome Nancy Whang, and penultimate "launch me into space" coda—that no one will be accusing Juan of plagiarism. Those worried that the title of this single indicates a capitulation to the best-forgotten 1990s "happy hardcore" style need not fear, as the title is actually a pun from the lyrics: "You brought me home to this happy house / You're the reason for the width of my smile." The track is pure crowd-pleasing ear candy: bongos, handclaps, cowbell and funky syncopated bass; and just in case you don't like house music, the track radically shift into cosmic, Giorgio Morodor-esque italodisco territory by the end. It's at least three different songs crammed into one epic side. The Prince Language Dub Mix is exactly what its name promises, a mellow reinterpolation of the track which loses the dynamics and eclecticism of the original, but gains sophistication and complexity. Lee Douglas' remix attempts a marriage of the track's various sections with some success, producing an infectious and hard-hitting track that may rival the original for DJ exposure in the coming months.
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Audion, "Billy Says Go"
Spectral Sound
Matthew Dear's Asa Breed was my favorite album of last year, an unorthodox record that synthesized Dear's background in techno with his emerging pop tendencies, revealing hidden resonances between the two, and in the process creating an alternative historical track for both acid techno and electronic pop. However, as the music produced under his own name becomes increasingly focused on this techno-pop hybrid, it has been necessary for Dear's more minimalistic, purist, club music sensibilities to find their expression under the project names Audion, Jabberjaw and False. Of these three projects, the most consistently rewarding has been Audion, with a backlog of releases that redefine minimal techno for the coming aeon of noise, slamming together buzzsaw synths and gritty, mud-splattered rhythms for music that is textural, hard-edged and unbelievably infectious. "Billy Says Go" is no exception, all resonant thrumming kicks and crisp snares, joined by a dusty, off-kilter hand-played trebly synth. The effect is dark, hedonistic and weird-as-fuck, the perfect track for a 2:00 AM drop when all the drugs have kicked in and the floor is in danger of showing fatigue. "Snap Into It" is even darker, reformulating industrial music using the audio lexicon of techno, simultaneously soothing and sadistic, like the soft spoken leatherdaddy who ushers you into his sex sling with gentle, whispering persuasion. "Against All Odds" isn't quite as breathless as the first two tracks, although it does feature some stunning alien synth textures and coronas of ear-massaging static that push the track far past the neutral zone into the empty vacuum of deep space. Fans of experimental, industrial and noise music who scoff at the populist tendencies of techno would do well to discover the work of Matthew Dear. I won't say that there is a method to his madness, but there is certainly a madness in his method.
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Kelley Polar, "Chrysanthemum"
Environ
This single was actually released last year, so it hardly qualifies as "of the moment" in a genre that reinvents intself every two weeks, but I think it deserves some attention, especially following the recent release of Kelley Polar's full length album I Need You To Hold On While The Sky Is Falling. The full-length album is a masterpiece of high musical melodrama. Produced by the awesome Morgan Geist, I Need You is an extravagant, baroque concoction of disco, house and Arthur Russell-style classical flourishes, all permeated with mystical underpinnings that combine references to Greek mythology with esoteric musings on physics and the mind/body ontological split. Containing the two best album cuts with a fantastic remix, this 12" is a great way to gain access into the world of Kelley Polar without navigating the deep conceptual whirlpools and spiral jetties of the full-length album. "Chrysanthemum" chops up closely mic'd breathing, adds a plainly synthetic snare, before opening out into a full, resplendent synthscape, with Polar's vocals singing lyrics at once sensual and deeply fucked-up: "Make a chrysanthemum / of every human head / make a chrysanthemum / and kill them in their beds." It's indulgent in every possible way, and that's what I like about it. You have to respect an artist like Polar, a Juilliard-trained violinist, who leaps headfirst into dance music, taking the risk of producing something that might be mistaken for high camp in its unrestrained gorgeousness. "Rosenband" is more electropop than electro-disco (until the string quartet stabs come in at the chorus), and once again features lyrics that aestheticize murder at a Sophoclean pitch. Magic Tim's remix of "Rosenband" finishes out the single, creating a believable and eminently spinnable instrumental version of the song that would make it the perfect segue between a Metro Area cut and a Hercules and Love Affair track.
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Low Motion Disco, "Love Love Love" Parts 1 & 2
Eskimo
Low Motion Disco is a new act on Eskimo Records, aiming for slightly lower-BPM excursions into high-tech disco music. Everything about the music is pure cliche, from the stereo-panned bongos to the repeating piano figures, but this is an advantage for this kind of music. Although it's hard to point to any elements of "Love Love Love" that I haven't heard a thousand times before, something about it just hits right, and the execution is spot on. From reading about this project, I was hoping for something a bit more primitive and loose, like the late-period disco-fied Can. However, that's not quite what we get here, and the effect of the slowness is simply to focus the listener in on the details of the groove, the full spectrum of each synthesizer stab, the resonating corridors of reverb and space echo. The real treat of these two 12" vinyl singles, however, are the remixes. The best is by new DFA signing Still Going, who change the song so much it is hardly recognizable, adding a 303-style acid bassline entirely absent from the original, and compounding layers of audio sediment to give the track an epic hugeness that sounds positively revelatory at high volumes. I nearly shit myself when the awesome guitar vamps came in at the six-minute mark. Holy fuck. Though Still Going have definitely created the floor-filler among the remixes, LSB's more faithful, uptempo take is no slouch either. Aeroplane's take is a contender as well, emphasizing the melodies and creating a Daft Punk-style tent-burner that is sure to get some asses moving. The only remix that doesn't work for me is the Soft Rocks remix, which adds the vocals of Kathy Diamond, but fails to add any intrigue whatsoever to the groove. I think we're going to be hearing a lot more from Low Motion Disco, especially after these remixes get passed through the crucible of summer DJ sets.
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Goldfrapp, "Happiness"
Mute
I should declare at the outset that I have never really warmed up to Goldfrapp. Ever since the music underwent a drastic transformation from the cinematic, Portishead-lite of Felt Mountain into the sleek, throbbing electro-disco of Black Cherry and Supernature, I've had Alison Goldfrapp and co. pegged as bandwagon-jumpers, and the music, while often more than competent, hasn't convinced me to think otherwise. However, she has always had remarkable taste in collaborators and remixers. The list of artists she has recruited to remix her tracks is breathtaking: Mantronix, Ewan Pearson, T. Raumschmiere, Benny Benassi, Jacques Lu Cont, Alan Braxe and Fred Falke, Phones, Tiefschwarz, the DFA, Carl Craig, The Flaming Lips, and recently, Hercules and Love Affair. Her new single from the Seventh Tree album is "Happiness," and in a typically incomprehensible Mute Records attempt to confuse the marketplace, there are at least six different versions of maxi CD singles, promos and limited 7 inches already out or on the way, each containing a slightly different set of remixes. The one I've got features a remix of "Happiness" by the awesome Beyond the Wizard's Sleeve (whose last release I reviewed here), a version of "Monster Love" credited as "Goldfrapp vs. Spiritualized," and a Yeasayer remix of "Eat Yourself." The BTWS remix is, not surprisingly, the standout here; a psychedelic reimagining of the original, emphasizing vintage organ sounds, backwards tracking and lysergic phasing. I'm consistently impressed by what Erol Alkan and Richard Norris accomplish with their remixes, being faithful to the originals while introducing a chaotic element that makes everything sound unstuck in time. "Monster Love" finds J. Spacemen turnign Goldfrapp's track into, for all intents and purposes, a Spiritualized song. That means zero dancefloor potential, I'm afraid. The same with Yeasayer's remix, which steals some loops from the original and creates a fun little piece with no groove, and a running time of 2:25. So, the winner here by a landslide is BTWS, whose style is so unique as to be instantly recognizable, even when remixing an artist as far afield as Goldfrapp.
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Ricardo Villalobos, "Enfants"
Sei Es Drum
I've been totally underwhelmed by minimal house in all its iterations. Although I have occasionally heard a track such as Ricardo Villalobos' "Easy Lee" and found it quite appealing, I find long DJ sets of this sort of thing deadly. Villalobos' mega-hyped installment in the Fabric series was released recently to near-total acclaim, which I felt was incomprehensible, given that Villalobos broke the rules of a DJ mix by playing nearly exclusively his own music, and boring music at that. Now comes "Enfants," which got a lot of pre-release hype by bloggers like Philip Sherburne who never tire of enthusing over merely competent music. Though "Enfants" clearly works as a DJ tool (more on that later), I see it as the absolute creative nadir of minimalism as a dance genre. Villalobos gives us 17 minutes of a four note piano loop, a caveman-simple rhythm, and a choir of children chanting repetitively in some mysterious language. No development, no melodies, no transitions, not even a goddamned kick drum for fuck's sake! Add to this insult the fact that the piano riff is lifted from Nina Simone's "Sinnerman," and the chanting is taken directly from Christian Vander's 1995 work Baba Yaga La Sorciere, a version of Magma's seminal album Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh rearranged for a children's chorus (I guess that makes the language Kobaian). To be fair, Villalobos does admit that his track is "based on" Vander's piece, but he doesn't make it clear that it is a direct, unreworked sample, or that his piano loop bears more than a passing resemblance to a very familiar Nina Simone song. I will say that this single does work as a DJ tool, as it can be easily mixed with something else heavy on low-end, bassline and kick drums, and in that context I could imagine it being very effective. However, Villalobos isn't supposed to be producing DJ tools and loop records, he's supposed to be producing dance music. I'm afraid this doesn't qualify. The less said about the B-side, the better.
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