2007 that was (by Tim)

Balearic Part 2:

Perhaps the other key difference between Balearic and disco-punk is the way in which the two styles pursue their strategies of intensification. Disco-punk approaches its desired fusion very seriously, combining urgent disco rhythms with the most honest-to-goodness rock signifiers it can think of (jagged guitars, shrieked vocals, songs about girls and politics), as if to say: “I can be both of these things absolutely without compromise.” Balearic’s strategy is more oblique, preferring to fail on both rock and dance music’s terms, as if by doing so it could establish a new yardstick. As dance music it’s too torpid, decadent and tentative; as rock it’s simultaneously blanched-out and excessively manicured. A lot of my favourite records this year felt a bit like inspired failures: on Kathy Diamond’s gorgeous ballad “I Need You”, the arrangement drifts from deep sublimated bass riffs into an unnecessarily loud and showy percussion work-out, the yawning gap between Kathy’s delicacy and the robustness of the drums coming on like some lurid combination of alcohol and pink lemonade I can’t stay away from.

Kathy Diamond – I Need You
http://www.zshare.net/audio/7019331e142227/

Of course at the edges “Balearic” begins to break down and become nothing more than a convenient tag for describing stuff I liked that otherwise I’d have to group separately. But the genre works this way too: Erol Alkan’s Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve project doesn’t have much of a solid aesthetic identity beyond a gimmicky love of backwards guitar – used to great effect on the sighing, surround-sound folk of their remix of Findley Brown’s “Losing the Will to Survive”. The remix of Midlake’s “Roscoe” is even more subtle, more like a proper 80s extended mix than a remix (it actually reminds me of the extended mixes The Cure had done for the singles from Disintegration): all shimmering keyboards and slippery backwards guitar being subsumed into the glorious harmonies of the original song. Perhaps Alkan and his co-producer Richard Norris knew they didn’t have to do much to perfect “Roscoe”: as a rock song I find this deeply treasurable and inscrutably affecting.

Midlake – Roscoe (Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/72147876f273a4/

The Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve remix of Badly Drawn Boy’s “Promises” is more radical: you can hear the duo trying and failing to produce something brilliant from less sterling material (A Mountain of One’s effort is much better, but “effort” is the right word – its overblown avalanche of sound feels like hard work for creator and listener alike). Reverso 68 succeed where Alkan and Norris fail, concocting moody MOR disco with all the duo’s classic touches – hushed and reverent strings, breathy swirls of synthesiser, heartpiercing Chic guitar, breezy bongo patterns and a bassline as old and as constant as the universe itself.

The first piece I wrote on “Balearic revivalism” was almost three years ago, talking about Reverso 68 remixes and their deep forest vibe: humid, luscious and decadent in excessive plushness. The not-terribly-prolific production team have hardly changed their sound in this time, but they haven’t needed to – like spiders at the centre of an enormous web, they’ve been able to sit and watch dance music come to them. “Promises” isn’t their best work but it’s perhaps their ultimate, their effortless disco grooves finding a perfect partner in Badly Drawn Boy’s vocals – here sounding particularly ghostly and melancholy as they glance off Reverso 68’s carefree arrangement. If much of Reverso 68’s work is unabashedly utopian, this feels conflicted, wondering: does dancing your cares away somehow dishonour what you care about?

Badly Drawn Boy – Promises (Reverso 68 Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/7215764dcf9792/

In many ways, all this nu-balearic is a feminised (perhaps effete) take on the sort of hoary “beardo disco” offered by Rub’n’Tug or DJ Harvey, but with beardo’s rock signifiers stripped of their proletariat masculinity in favour of androgynous and worldly refinement – if the hypothetical pinnacle of beardo disco would be a DJ edit of Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock’n’Roll” (play it next to Zazu’s “Captain Starlight” for maximum thrills), Balearic already found its ideal standard of soft-hands androgyny in Todd Terje’s astonishingly pretty, dub-drenched remix of Paul Simon’s “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” (although I reckon a disco version of The Dream Academy’s “Life in a Northern Town” would also work nicely – apart from Dario G, I mean). Of course, the two sounds overlap significantly, not least because one senses that the pomo bad taste running through them both is born of knowing too much music history rather than not enough: widely accepted consensus picks begin to seem too obvious, while the dodgy marginalia of genres acquire an aura of comparative freshness and unpredictability.

Paul Simon – Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes (Tangoterje Edit)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/737340969272d0/

“Marginalia” might be overstating it somewhat: “Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes” is hardly obscure. But in a sense it’s contextually marginal: hitherto, it was by no means clear that this song and hip dancefloors had much if anything to do with one another, and the Paul Simon’s 80s output has long been verboten as a reference point for new artists (if anything, the sudden success of Vampire Weekend supports rather than refutes my point). The same is doubly true of Bob Seger, not to mention all the big middle of the road guitar rock bands of the 80s – Foreigner, The Doobie Brothers, Journey etc. All of will inevitably be receiving the Balearic “edit” treatment at some point soon. Some already have: Rune Lindbaek’s edit of Toto’s “Africa” suffers only by its failure to top the cod-spiritual, touristic glamour of the original.

While Dolly Parton is both relatively respected and no stranger to dance music – of late I’ve been obsessed with house versions of her cover of “Peace Train” – the Peter Visti edit of “Jolene” has something of the same frission about it… a well-known and loved hit that nonetheless has little business being reproduced as a cosmic disco epic. My MP3 copy of Visti’s edit appears to have been ripped at 33rpm rather than (the proper) 45rpm, but sounds great in a totally new way: slow, ponderous, and melancholy, it approaches the 4X4 beat as if it were the soundtrack to an arduous quest for enlightenment. Dolly’s voice, sounding male and oddly, resonantly histrionic in the way so many 80s rock singers were inclined to, throbs with distress. The sudden new homoerotic connotations don’t hurt either.

Dolly Parton – Jolene (Peter Visti Edit)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/7375265fba4b1c/

!!!!!

I've only heard the Midlake, of this lot, and really enjoyed it. Particularly looking forward to this section.

tim f i kiss you. been looking for that reverso 68 remix for ages. the mountain of one remix is one of my favourites from last year (the "overblown avalanche of sound" may have been hard work for the creator but not this listener, it makes me teary. i know what you mean though)(ps. whisper it but i even have a soft spot for the original despite disliking damon gough's voice a bit). this whole thread is a gift btw.

Actually TBH the thing that keeps me from absolutely loving the AMO1 remix of "Promises" is that I don't know whether i'm supposed to play it at 33rpm or 45rpm, so I'm never sure if I'm actually listening to it at the right speed.

i've only ever heard it at 33 (i assume, is it slo-mo at 45?). i think it's the best thing amo1 have done.

the whole EP of "promises" remixes is really pretty great. and so is the peter visti "jolene"--i have 2 mp3s ripped at 45 and 33 each and both sound awesome in their own special way.

but tim you really should upload stuff i havent heard! i was really excited when i saw youd bumped this but i have all of those songs. sheesh.

Yeah how dare he

no "caramellas" tim? That mixed with the r68 dub of promises was gold for me during the end of last year.

Isn't much of this stuff also kinda screwed and chopped synth pop?

oh god I cannot thank you enough for the Cassie and Fantasia songs, ESPECIALLY the latter

also, have you heard the Beyond the Wizards Sleeve remix of the Real Ones' "Outlaw"? Same basic technique of just expanding on what's already there in the song (they even keep the verse-chorus-verse structure, which is rad since "Outlaw" is such a great little celebration of pop classicism anyway). Also notable (in a really good way) for being possibly the least wistful BtWS production yet.

a disco version of The Dream Academy’s “Life in a Northern Town” would also work nicely

Well, as Tim said, it's already happened with Dario G's "Sunchyme":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY2OFztWiuY

a thread they'll speak of ages to come! amazing work here tim, can't thank you enough...

that said, no love for pilooski's edit of beggin'?!

the lex described a song as space battle techno in friday's guardian!

Stereotyp – "Keepin’ Me (Fauna Flash Remix)" -

Obsessed with this! UB-sessed! Sort of a less baroque "Don’t Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up (Ewan’s Objects In Space remix)."

Still, it'd never occur to me to call it minimal (house) in any significant way. An interesting genre question - does the addition of soulful diva voices automatically negate the "minimal" and make the track something else, e.g. Euro house or deep house?

Ha ha Kevin I almost posted that for you on the Dixon thread, but thought it might be too stiff/euro given you liked the first 1/2 of the Dixon set more than the second. It also reminds me a lot of that Martin Buttrich remix of Tracey Thorn.

Both tunes are "minimal" insofar as they sound a bit like Kompakt or Mobilee tributes to early-to-mid nineties Basic Channel house records (see "I'm Your Brother" - billed to Round One - and especially "Find A Way" billed to Round Two).

They're mostly artier and less diva but some similar records from the last few years along these lines:

1) Rodney Hunter - Wanna Groove? (Christian Prommer Remix) - Prommer's a member of Fauna Flash
2) Sebo K ft. Prosumer - Moved
3) Hell ft. Billie Ray Martin - Je Regrette Everything (Superpitcher Remix)

But most of all (though not European or minimal), Armand Van Helden's "Conscience", one of the greatest and most undersung vocal anthems of the last ten years.

Ugh, I love that Je Regrette remix.

Dumb question, Tim, but is there any chance you might be able to pack all these songs into one convenient download spot...

the lex described a song as space battle techno in friday's guardian!

yeah it was son of raw 'a black man in space'. not very battle-y, maybe it could be playing in the cantina. one of my favourites this year so far too. pepe bradock's new one was mentioned in the same feature!

lex thieving, who'd have thunk

oh yeah and it was petridis mentioning the bradock! xp

The Lex has been saying he coined 'space battle techno' last year.

Hey Tim, have you heard Ewan Pearson's mix for Allez Allez?

I'd been trying to place where I'd heard that BtWS mix of Midlake, and it's on here, along with Hatchback, Kate Bush, Can, Vangelis... It's Ewan Pearson does balearic, kind of. Anyway, it's LUSH.

x-post Well it'd be pretty easy to debunk that theory. I like these memes until they become concrete and all of a sudden everything must be space battle techno. Or the actual amount of stuff that sounds like that is overstated.

i more prefer space exploration techno, like "ginger" by speedy j

I prefer techno!

yes me too. but sometimes i like to add adjectives onto words in order to describe them more specifically.

"welcome to Ronan's techno shop, may i help you?"

"have you got any kind of... dark, moody.. kinda.. techno?"

"we've got techno son, if you want something moody try the hair salon next door, nora's always complaining about something. good afternoon!"

xpost

Space exploration techno would still sound, well, "spacey", though wouldn't it? What I like about space battle techno as a description is it doesn't evoke any of those psychedelic signifiers. It conjures up cold precision, hard vacuum, trillion-year-old dying suns, galaxy-spanning civilisational conflicts! That sort of thing. Not sure how many records live up to this, though.

(This reminds me that I must read the new Iain M Banks.)

There's no sound in space so only silent records count as space battle techno.

haha@tracer....

I do like adjectives to describe things indeed, I just have some reservations about shoehorning stuff into them I guess.

It's not a trend surely? I've never been to a night where they play stuff that sounds like "Then & Before" and "Seven" and "In The Trees" (insert remix credits as required) for more than a track or two at a time. Mind you I haven't been out that much in the last six months!

If we're gonna talk etymology, credit to Vahid: I think he started a thread asking about "deep space techno" or something along those lines, mentioning some of the Carl Craig mixes and Villalobos's remix of "Cell Phone's Dead" (which is less "battle" and more "the engine's broken and our spaceship is gliding through an asteroid belt very slowly").

I would have thought it goes without saying that "space battle techno" is a pretty ridiculous sub-genre term for any context other than a music message board - I kind of enjoy using ridiculous terminology.
And abstract situation descriptions like that never catch on. There's a reason that dance music likes words like "minimal", "deep", "funky", "bouncy", "intelligent". "Haircut house" and ""hairdresser house" are the closest perhaps, and even then such titles tend to be functionalist and perjorative (I like the notion, though, that there is house for while you're having your hair cut and house for when you've had it cut and want to show it off - presumably Kompakt et. al. are pre-haircut house?).

Ned I don't have any server space and even if there was a free server I could load everything too I'd be seriously disinclined given how slow my computer is. On the other hand I could make a page which contains all the links in a row.

No need, just curious! Thanks much.

What was going to be the third part of my Balearic wrap-up mutated into this article for Idolator on Mungolian Jet Set. To make it up to you all, here is the Mungolian Jet Set remix of Mari Boine's "It Ain't Necessarily Evil":

http://www.zshare.net/audio/956047512a0bd2/

Don't think I'm likely to add to this any more. Here's a gratuitous extra - Tinchy Strider's "Wonder":

http://www.zshare.net/audio/7280022f21f8f3/

tim please do this again

thanks,
max

wow. yes, please do.

I'll just syndicate from Facebook again.

Aeroplane ft. Kathy Diamond - Whispers

http://www.zshare.net/audio/18731000adb8e0fb/

Aeroplane basically have the same set of ideas with every track (set up low-slung disco beats with burbling italo synth-riffs, add some oddly melancholy bass and Nile Rogers guitar scratching, dig up a few more atmospheric synth-sweeps, keep layering things until everything gets ridiculously anthemic and bittersweet, stir and serve) but it's such a good strategy that it transcends its own cynicism - like, what, now that they've stumbled across the perfect blueprint they're supposed to do something different?

"Whispers" is marginally distinct owing to the wonderfully unruffled vocals of Kathy Diamond, whose tightly controlled performance, rather like Gwen Stefani's "Cool", reminds me of the Baroness in The Sound of Music, first winning and then graciously sacrificing the Captain who really was totally unworthy of her anyway.

Miley Cyrus - See You Again

http://www.zshare.net/audio/18729610b0dcb403/

One of those great pop songs that seems to get better and better as it goes along, until you realise that Miley was just holding herself in reserve and lulling you into a false sense of complacency.

The convoluted musings of "See You Again" start off rather general (as in "I can't wait to see you again" means she really wants to see this guy) and then becomes super-specific - she embarrassed herself last time she saw him and won't make that mistake again. The line "the next time we hang out I will redeem myself, my heart can't rest 'till then!" is then the moment where it all starts to seem a bit creepy and stalkerish, but in a, well, c'mon this is MILEY kind of way, so you can't really hold her slightly scary fixation against her.

Absolute best moment: the final chorus, where Miley sounds like she's run right off a cliff without looking down, Coyote style, and then the muscular kick-drum arrives, all guns blazing, to say she's gonna blow this school to pieces.

Solange - I Decided (Part Two)

http://www.zshare.net/audio/187517286ea7ccde/

Ms Younger Knowles tries very hard to be that space-age jetpacked superwoman you used to know by the name of Imani Coppola, except actually most of her new stuff sounds a bit like Amerie's first two albums. This is a good thing!

Still rather typically I end up liking "I Decided Pt 2" most of all her work (give or take "Sandcastle Disco", possibly to be posted here later).

The toe-tapping jazz-ballet patter of “I Decided Pt. 1” is fine but rather arch, sounding a bit like an off-Broadway paean to Motown, and largely relying on Solange's brilliantly declamatory vocals to make it work. On “I Decided Pt. 2”, a straight-to-the-point remix of its predecessor by erstwhile commercial house merchants the Freemasons, she unabashedly embraces streamlined pop form, her sassy performance somehow finding a new urgency amidst the very anonymity of song’s sugary, Phil Spector meets glam strut arrangement. Call it “generic”, but here the term is a compliment: any hint of eccentricity would just be a blemish marring the song’s perfectly proportioned, irresistibly svelte figure.

Crazy Cousinz - Bongo Jam

http://www.zshare.net/audio/187474684ab384d6/

There's so many reasons why UK "funky house" has been my raison d'etre this year (and it's nice to have one again), but one big reason is that these guys are unafraid of serving up cheeseburgers with extra cheese. Accordingly, "Bongo Jam" is to tribal percussion as 10CC's "Dreadlock Holiday" is to reggae.

Basically it's impossible to overstate the greatness of this track, though less as a peerless example of funky house than as a superlative pop song – perhaps it’s the “Sweet Like Chocolate” of funky house? Yes, the groove is killer: the supple bongo percussion, those marvellous “woooh!” sounds, the maracas, the faux-menace of those moaning backing vocals. But really, this is all about that vocal: “Sometimes I wake up early in the morning, to play my con-con-congo"... You mean you don't?
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Shy Child - Cause & Effect

http://www.zshare.net/audio/18930532c87ab611/

It was eight years ago, but I remember it like yesterday: at some birthday drinks at an unassuming pub, the hoary pub band pulling out all the chestnuts (“Brown Eyed Girl” etc.) and running them through with a grim protestant workmanship that further drained already desiccated “classics”. So far so typical, but then right at the end, the previously uninspired drummer struck up a 4X4 beat, a hitherto unheard keyboardist started unleashing trancey chords, and to my dawning horror and delight, the band launched into a live rendition of Chicane ft. Bryan Adams’ “Don’t Give Up”.

Which was awful, but if it had been GREAT it might have sounded a bit like “Cause and Effect”.

I’m already very positively disposed to Shy Child’s love of rhythm and maximalist synthesizer pyrotechnics; here, both are exploited to a ridiculous extent, with the track morphing from DJ Sammy-style atmospheric arpeggios through acid house bleeping and finally settling into the woozy warp speed churn of goa trance, sort of. Where "Don't Give Up" seemed to achieve its yearning soar a little too easily (soaring being the natural state of trance-pop), “Cause and Effect” benefits from the friction between the music's effortless lift-off and the singer’s yelpy but grounded call and response chanting. It's probably the best rock song and the best trance song I've heard this year, and as a side-benefit shows up just how myopic the usual conceptions of "dance-rock" can be - almost the first thought that ran through my head was "why hasn't someone tried this before?"

Lil Wayne - A Milli

http://www.zshare.net/audio/18978220a976b7b1/

It’s pretty much impossible to write about Lil’ Wayne at this stage without seeming like a newjack, but maybe I should just own the newjack status on this one and make like every other rock critic trying not to be exposed as a hip hop fraud (the weird “oh, you!” thing about being in Australia is that whenever I’ve ever tried to talk to other Oz people about Lil’ Wayne they’ve looked at me all leery and suspicious, if not blank and uncomprehending; meanwhile in the US he’s been overexposed since like forever).

More generally I just don’t trust myself to get across why I love something like “A Milli”, largely because I’m not good at writing about hip hop lyrics. Mostly what I like about Weezy – apart from the obvious stuff like his way with a simile, his repertoire of vocal effects and accents and so on – is just that he likes a corny one-liner as much as I do. But don’t ask me to try to express it better, ‘cos it looks so weak written down. I can’t explain why “It ain’t trickin’ if you got it, but you like a bitch with no ass, you ain’t got shit” makes me laugh.

“A Milli”, like my other favourite Weezy track “Donks” (from the Lil’ Weezyana mixtape) is self-consciously hyper-minimal and repetitive, in this case literally sounding like a skipping cd as it stutters over a deep screwed vocal reciting “A milli a milli a milli a milli a mi a mi a milli a milli a milli a milli a mi am am a milli…” All the better to give the impression of an endless now: no narrative, no point really, just an endless succession of silly jokes and dubious rhymes over a beat you could listen to forever. But there is some variation in “A Milli” after all: the most delicate yet desultory snare shots, intermittently ratatatting like a gangsta’s boo-boom chik punchline signal.

Hercules & Love Affair – Blind (Club Mix)

http://www.zshare.net/audio/189320740f9d08e3/

Rather predictably I love the Hercules & Love Affair album (especially the brilliant first three tracks), and even more predictably I think the use of Anthony’s voice on several tracks is inspired, making for the most histrionic, unstable dance-pop since The Associates’ “Party Fears Two”. But Anthony’s key track – lead single “Blind” – strikes me as a bit underwhelming in its original form, edging back from the icy primitive house-pop of H&LA at their best and into a vaguely flaccid, churning take on disco-revivalism that peaked years and years and years ago on the Playgroup album, the excellent horn contributions notwithstanding.

Luckily H&LA saw fit to make this brilliant, none-more-epic “club mix”: and truly, this does demolish the dancefloor more thoroughly, but that’s only half the story. Around a relentless house pulse (think Nitro Deluxe’s “Let’s Get Brutal” but more, ahem, brutal; Master C & J’s “Dub Love” is even closer actually) floats a succession of ever more creepy effects, from eerie keyboards to poltergeist-like horns trapped in dub housing, to distant baleful dance-off stomping, to eerie buzzsaw whines that make me flash on Depeche Mode’s Black Celebration album. In and throughout all of this, Anthony’s astonishingly solitary, blasted performance, a guilt-wracked quiver of the unfulfilment that literalises all the longing and emptiness secretly beating in the heart of all diva house.

Jordin Sparks ft Chris Brown - No Air

http://www.zshare.net/audio/18978844f0cd537c/

Oddly for an American Idol winner, on her own material Jordin usually performs most strongly when she realises that her baby-Mariah voice actually works best prosecuting baby-Janet material (see for example current single “One Step At A Time”): fluttery and almost ostentatiously pretty, with Jordin’s voice never resting on a single note for more than a moment – with Janet this is done to obscure her vocal limitations, with Jordin it’s a choice.

“No Air” is a bit risky therefore, with Jordin lingering lugubriously over heartbroken notes and phrases like she’s been shot in the chest. But death-fixated pop songs are the exception to every rule, and this suicide note is simply gorgeous, a deep pool of intoxicating emotion perfect for every wallower. Chris Brown also does fantastic, understated work, his gentle, yearning delivery providing a trace paper outline of a hidden mountain of regret.

If the song is devastated, the arrangement is utopian, all twinkling starlight tinkles and the most graceful stuttering kickdrum. The chorus, when the two get wrapped up in suffocating clouds of cumulus synthesiser is probably the largest moment in pop this year, like two giant space babies finding each other in a Hollywood remake of 2001: A Space Odyssey redone as a romance. And we haven’t gotten to the fabulous artificial strings in the last two minutes, then that absolutely desolate, almost discordant harmonised moan, and then the stadium drums come in, and, oh… words fail, truly they do.

Tosh - Action

http://www.zshare.net/audio/1893309652a27e87/

After peaking with an intense obsession circa 2003, my engagement with dancehall has waned only to the point that I hear enough to suspect I’m missing a lot of amazing stuff. “Action” is one of those charming uptempo girly numbers that even dancehall skeptics can’t deny (he says – underwhelmed responses below plz); if you squint it’s like the chorus of Beenie Man and Miss Ting’s “Dude” expanded into a whole song, which is a fantastic idea really. Tosh is sweet and lighthearted, but nonetheless knows what she wants and is having none of yr prevarication – “G’wan wit ya bag a mout’, an ya bag a talk!” she starts off as if she’s already seen right through you. That kind of thing is like catnip for me. It helps that “Action” has such an awesome arrangement, a retro yet vaguely Oriental pots’n’pants percussive groove, and an irresistible sense of rising joy. I play this a lot in the morning.

Donaeo - African Warrior

http://www.zshare.net/audio/1887844919b1cc52/

Donaeo was responsible for one of grime’s earliest and still most purely fun anthems, 2002’s “Bounce”, a fabulously sillytrack that managed to mock menace and still sound kinda menacing in spite of itself. In 2005 he made “Bark”, a slightly tuffer but still cheeky number that has one of Danny Weed’s best production efforts (there was stuff in between but I’m giving you the abridged version). Now he’s jumped on the UK funky bandwagon, initially with the vocally smooth, rhythmically rude “Devil In A Blue Dress” – abandoning rapping for a yearnin’, bustin’ R&B performance over rippling syncopated kickdrums.

The even-better follow-up “African Warrior” splits the difference between “Bark and “Devil In A Blue Dress”, and things are now sounding rather aggressive. There’s also a lot of R Kelly aping going on here, from the double entendre lyrics (“I’m an African warrior, rolling with my stick in my hand” – needless to say I misheard this the first time through) to the hoarse vocals for the chorus, to the lilting singjay quasi-rap interludes. The groove is absolutely cavernous, a surround-sound explosion of spiralling tribal drums reminiscent of Lenky’s dancehall riddim Dreamweaver (e.g. Elephant Man's "Blessed", Chico's "Thick & Thin"), and an evil speaker-tearing bassline straight from Sticky’s “Booo”.

T2 & Addictive - Gonna Be Mine

http://www.zshare.net/audio/194487493c836937/

Have to admit to not following UK’s bassline scene very closely this year, especially after UK funky house became my drug of choice some time in May or so. This was my favourite track of the ones I’ve heard, which is not that surprising since it was probably the scene’s biggest 2008 hit aside from the underwhelming “What’s It Gonna Be” by Platinum & H20. Otherwise what I said on facebook re bassline last year still stands:

"Bassline is kind of like the return of speed garage – the bumpy sped-up four-to-the-floor version of garage which immediately preceded 2-step. The big difference is that Bassline is harder and nastier, with all the remaining New York garage-style organic sensuousness purged in favour of a cold, metallic sound that can often seem surprisingly close to electro-house: stiff house percussion, razor-sharp synth riffs and enormous, glinting basslines. Otherwise, the raw ingredients that made speed garage such potent dance and pop music remain present: gratuitously catchy vocals, including lots of fabulous post-Todd Edwards cut-up monstrosities, a restless magpie approach to sonic source material, and a great line in awesomely profane pop songs."

“Gonna Be Mine” is particularly notable for its sweet (if strident) diva vocal and slashing beats that sound like Freddie Krueger and Edward Scissorhands playing clapping games. The human vocals on the one hand and sickly music on the other make for predictably enjoyable vibe of so-wrong-it’s-right buzzy intensity, sort of like when you have a legitimate reason to take wonderful painkillers, and the pain and the bliss are duking it out in your body.

Jennifer Hudson - Spotlight

http://www.zshare.net/audio/18822591c51aebdc/

Unlike most of my friends, I enjoyed Dream Girls on the first run through, and liked it much much more the second time. "Spotlight" wasn't in the film, and if it had been would have stuck out rather like "You Must Love Me" did in Evita, but nevertheless this continues Hudson's performance essentially; you can hear her substantial chest quiver as she injects heartbreaking melodrama into oddly expositional lyrics like "is this relationship fulfilling your needs as well as mine?"

But if "Spotlight" can feel set-piece-ish lyrically, this rococo vibe is counterbalanced by the utter simplicity of the music, calm piano ripples and sighing strings formally rotating round one of those oh-so-oh-eight steady 4X4 beats, here signifying... resilience, persistence, a refusal to be bowed down, and other emotions perfect for the blackened stage and the lone star illuminated by a single... well, you get the picture.

Leave it to Hudson to find a theatrical core in Stargate's otherwise utilitarian production style, but when she launches into the stratosphere for the ridiculously soppy middle-eight any ambivalence I might have felt gets swept aside by the brute force of her emotional manipulation. You oughta show her some deference.

The Veronicas – Untouched

http://www.zshare.net/audio/18979489640c32b3/

First The Veronicas raised insouciance to an artform. Now they’ve become like gamblers who don’t know when/how to quit while they’re ahead, and are rapidly descending into full-blown self-parody – the video for new single “Take Me On The Floor” is like if Bladerunner had been set in the aisles of Supre. “Untouched” caught them at their best: from their robotically identical haircuts (predictably, one of them has now gone totally yuck to distinguish herself) to the utterly blank performances to the kinda ridiculous but still compelling warp-speed spoken word verses to a chorus that is to my mind formally perfect (we’re talking ABBA level here).

It’s worth quoting the chorus in full: “I feel so untouched and/I miss you so much that/I just can’t resist you/it’s not enough to say that I miss you/I feel so untouched right/now need you so much, some/how I can’t forget you/been going crazy since the moment I met you.” Okay, so that scans rather like standard-issue pop-lyrics, but the way it all hangs together, the sheer pedantry of its internal rhyming, reminds me of one of those ridiculously elaborate borders that medieval illuminators would draw on the borders of pages in copied out religious texts (think The Name of the Rose) – a perfectly balanced, perfectly dovetailing pattern of exquisite detail that bespeaks immense, practised skill.

I don’t really want The Veronicas to become full-blown electro-pop, ‘cuz their personalities aren’t strong enough to demarcate them from the rest of the “Sex Shooter”-style sexy sexy mersh electro-house-pop that is so persistently popular in Australia (this is my issue with “Take Me On The Floor”, which admittedly is very earworm-ish). “Untouched” achieves the perfect balance, decorating its future-rock electro-churn with slashing, rococo string riffs straight from “Papa Don’t Preach”. The purified sound of 1987, and totally irresistible.