PICK OF THE WEEK
Tensnake
Keep On Talking (True Romance)
Mmmmm, this is lovely. It sounds like all your mates shuffling awkwardly on to the dancefloor and one of them shouting in your ear: “I’m not really feeling anything”, and you nodding in a “me neither” kind of way. But then your calves start to wobble and the roots of your hair follicles feel like they’ve eaten too much wasabi, and then you’re all there grinning at each other and doing the invisible maracas, and you already know you’re going to have to bail on Sunday lunch with the family.
Axwell And Ingrosso
On My Way (Virgin EMI)
Brits tend to be dismissive of Euro-American EDM culture but we are at unfair advantage in the UK, after 30 years at the forefront of a spectacular evolution in dance music. At this point, we are at George Clooney lothario levels, while EDM is a 14-year-old furiously ramming its grubby nails anywhere it can and climaxing every nine seconds. Axwell is basically the rotter behind the bikesheds telling you to smell his fingers, Ingrosso sniggering behind him. Don’t worry, in a few years they’ll have musically matured and will laugh this phase off like an embarrassing Female Body Inspector T-shirt.
Lonely The Brave
River, River (Hassle Records)
You know when Homer Simpson becomes obsessed with eating food in bar-form, so he compresses five pounds of spaghetti into one mouth-sized bite? Well this is like if you did that with a hundred Biffy Clyro songs and then took out some tweezers and carefully removed any semblance of feeling or light and shade. Meaningless festival rock that exists only to get a lunchtime slot on the main stage at Reading and Leeds.
DJ Fresh & Adam F
Believer (Ministry Of Sound)
I get that, at the cutting edge, drum’n’bass can be a varied, progressive genre. But at this basic end of the spectrum – let’s call it humdrum’n’bass – isn’t every song basically the same? Sorry to be your dad, but they’re literally identical beats: that’s kind of the point of the genre. This song is actually great, but it’s just the same as hundreds of other great songs. Right? Or no? Is this brave emperor’s-new-clothes music criticism or the sort of thing Louis Walsh would say? I don’t even know any more.
Deorro x Chris Brown
Five More Hours (Ultra Music)
Enjoying Chris Brown’s music is the worst. It’s like being an America-hating Ba’ath party loyalist in Iraq, but still going to the McDonald’s the US army built in Baghdad, every bite of Big Mac filled with the taste of betrayal. But what are we supposed to do, liberal Guardian readers? At some point we’re all going to admit that everything Brown has touched in the past five years has turned to gold. I want him to fail. But even on this rudimentary dance track, his falsetto is stunning. Who knew a song in which every line ends in either “party” or “started” could pose such a moral conundrum?
