Metro Area (and if you want also Morgan Geist) (and now Storm Queen)

although it's stuck with ME for three years in a way that amazing-at-the-time dance tracks often don't so i guess that's it

There's not much on this thread but I'm sure I've seen extensive repping for Look Right Through on ILX in the past. The MK mix is effectively a reboot in commercial terms, it's allowed the song to filter through an entirely different scene (the original would never have been playlisted on 1xtra).

This isn't exactly a new phenomenon - Let Me Be Your Fantasy had been around for like two years by the time it hit number one. It's a symbol of a British dance ecosystem that's functioning properly again. The internet helps as well, it's been getting mad Shazam tags which helps the record company put weight behind it, although that may be a bit chicken/egg.

Original > MK Mix though.

Also factor in the worlds of disco, house and garage being closer together than they've ever been, probably.

I wonder does MK genuinely have a knack for hitting the UK pop zeitgeist like this or has he just got lucky twice. To my ears there's never been anything partic notable abt his stuff but that prob says more abt my ears. I think if anything the Jpdeci remix was the apex of this sound but it never did much.

Jpdeci = Jodeci obv

Whoa, amazing; here's hoping the UK success will spill over to other regions.

^^so this song from three years ago that received two posts here is going to be number one this week

there is definitely a lot of Storm Queen talk on some of the rolling threads. maybe a little less on Look Right Through since it was the first one but when the other two dropped people were like NEW STORM QUEEN OMG

this hitting #1 is so cool.

there was loads of talk, it was one of the biggest records of that year.

I'm gonna go bat for the MK mix here, which is obviously not exactly a fully drawn and pathos-laden song in the way the original is, but is just so compulsive it doesn't matter. There's something about his organ-riff basslines that are totally magical (see also his remix of Katy B's "What Love Is Made Of").

The MK Dub is better, really, it wastes less time paying tribute to the original's structure.

Agreed about the Dub being better. I still have a lot of time for MK dubs in general. Old Murk as well. They mined a similar vein that keeps aging well. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qWXtlHuaZg

nice momus cameo in the new video

re: "Look Right Through" talk on ILx, from Tim's 2010 EOY thread:

It seems like there's usually at least one great storming male diva house throwback tune each year - last year, of course, was Azari & III's "Reckless With Your Love", which not only was excellent as a house tune but also was to my mind is one of the great diva-house songs, and a song that simply wouldn't make sense delivered in any other style or manner. Like a lot of music that hits me thematically as well as viscerally it's the kind of thing that makes me wish I made music. But then diva vocal house has that effect quite often, the short-circuit between surface dazzle and hidden depths so irresistible that even people who stumble on seeming superficiality elsewhere intuitively understand its logic - it's the kind of music, in short, that brings out the best in its listeners fully as much as its makers.

"Look Right Through" (produced by Morgan Geist) isn't quite as fine a song as "Reckless With Your Love", but that's an unfair comparison: "Look Right Through" is lesser only in that it seems content to be a charming, impassioned, exhortative diva anthem about unrequited desire, carefree in its classicism - though formally, of course, it's heartbroken, resentful, oddly philosophical. But these traits emerge in classicist male diva house like hereditary features, inevitable and right-seeming as your right arm. Of course who's to say that there isn't a similarly moving deeper story lurking underneath: as far as I can tell the singer shifts from a drug addict or drunkard lover to a series of one night stands to a realisation that everyone in the world takes him for granted. Shit gets pretty real in this song.

Still, in some ways "Look Right Through" is more track than song: so much of the delight of this tune inheres in its ceaseless mutation, moving restlessly from rudimentary house percussion to shimmering, shivering synth chords and noodly arpeggios and bumping bass, before a bleepy breakdown that in no way preprares you for the tune's sudden headlong plunge into booming, bottom of a well bass at the four minute mark, as the diva wails "am I a piece of glass in your mind??" From there the tune almost disintegrates into murky dub-house, before those nervous synth-chords suddenly emerge, flittering above your ears as delicately as ever. It's great dancefloor trickery, and in the club "Look Right Through" provokes ever greater displays of enthusiasm from dancers with each shifting articulation. I think part of it is sheer surprise: "Look Right Through" is so musically and performatively generous in a style that hardly requires it, you could churn out endless derivations of "Love Won't Turn Around" and everyone would lap it up, but instead Geist and his diva Damon Scott shower you with hooks and ideas like it's the last chance they'll ever get.

― Tim F, Monday, 20 December 2010 12:42 (2 years ago)

& r|t|c precog as usual:

mk dub of storm queen's 'look right through' is arguably one of the most influential cuts of the year imo but not in any way that would get attention here

― r|t|c, Thursday, 24 January 2013 15:06 (9 months ago)

Tim's post is OTM, especially about that "hort-circuit between surface dazzle and hidden depths", which I think is one of the major things I latch onto in overtly happy pop. Anyway,this is the best number one in recent memory.

*short, oops, C+p error

http://www.officialcharts.com/music-charts/

Not heard MK version but original is far better than the 2 records that followed it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfe2d9Yrfuc

also

Not heard MK version but original is far better than the 2 records that followed it

so wrong!

big congrats to mr. geist.

don't get this:

http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/storm-queen-scores-first-uk-number-1-with-look-right-through-2600/

it's not the OG tune that has gone to no. 1 is it? it's the MK vocal remix? what's been playlisted on R1 for weeks now? yet they're calling it "look right through" full stop?

Got this one cheap recently too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exaR9koGISc

its the MK vocal remix that gets played on the radio and that got it to number 1, if it was called look right through (MK vocal remix) it probably wouldn't have got to number 1. i really don't like this version but i'm still happy that metro area are making a pile of cash.

fwiw i think i like each original SQ track more than the last. let's make mistakes is the pinnacle.

2nd is my fave.

This is hardly the first time people have conflated a successful remix with an original version (that didn't chart separately) - who bothers to specify that the version of Robin S's "Show Me Love" they like is the Stonebridge Club Version?

i wonder if defected will try to repeat the success by doing the same to the other two records?

"it goes on" is my have too.

fave. bloody autocorrect.

I'm fully expecting Defected to commission MK mixes of one of the other two singles.

if it was called look right through (MK vocal remix) it probably wouldn't have got to number 1.

What do you mean by this?

large numbers of people are buying a tune not a remix. if they were buying a remix its just confusing for people and the promotional push doesn't gel with that.

So the version that's being sold now doesn't advertise the fact that it's a remix?

the one cog linked upthread one of my favorite "microhouse" tracks

fwiw the original is included in the remix EP, but tim's right, whether a song is the remix or not is hardly ever specified in the official chart listings (see also "professional widow")

loving this at no 1 though

Lol I remember when "professional widow" was on the charts and for some time I just assumed it was the original and was like o_O

It's actually specified as (MK REMIX) on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UK_Singles_Chart_number_ones_of_the_2010s#2013

which feels needlessly pedantic

but then I'm trying to remember the last time there was a club track at #1 but primarily a remix of the original and struggling

The MK Vocal Remix is the one which will be on Now 86 next week.

Eleven years ago, the first album I reviewed for Uncut was by Metro Area. Now Morgan Geist is number one. This makes me feel good.

credit where it's due

No Galleria chat yet? I think I prefer Mezzanine to Calling Card but the fan-made video for CC is a lot of fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzrFOZb8wfY

Hadn't seen that fan video, sweet! Galleria chat happened in other threads (freestyle ones?) but glad it exists & wish it'd had more traction in various EOY things considering what other 80s pastiches did.

Also, breaking news:
https://twitter.com/MorganGeistNYC/status/690235600004321280

Darshan and I put together a @Spotify playlist of some of the music that inspired each track on our @MetroAreaNYC album. Hope you enjoy it. https://t.co/0jGJUkZTfQ

— Morgan Geist (@MorganGeistNYC) November 20, 2017

Fun little "album X-Ray" playlist for the Metro Area s/t - hearing the Larry Levan dub of "Somebody New" immediately after "Miura" is a penny-dropping moment.

could you post that playlist etc? i don't use spotify.

Pretty new to Spotify myself, so found the first tool I could that converts something to plaintext:

Metro Area: Album X-Ray
Join Metro Area on a journey through the music that influenced their eponymous debut album. Each Metro Area title in the tracklist is immediately followed by a sampling of songs that inspired its creation!

Metro Area - Dance Reaction
Gino Soccio - Try It Out
Bobby Thurston - You Got What It Takes
Dance Reaction - Disco Train
Metro Area - Miura
Jamaica Girls - Somebody New (Larry Levan Dub Mix)
Lipps Inc. - Funkytown
Eddy Grant - Living On the Frontline
Metro Area - Piña
Sylvester - I Need Somebody To Love Tonight
Kid Creole And The Coconuts - I'm A Wonderful Thing, Baby
Balil - 3/4 Heart
Metro Area - Square-Pattern Aura
Indian Ocean - School Bell / Treehouse (Mixed with Love by Walter Gibbons)
Wet - That's The Game - Instrumental
The Human League - Only After Dark
Metro Area - Machine Vibes
Ron Trent - Morning Fever - Album Edit
Mikki - Dance Lover - Extended Mix
Time Zone - Wildstyle
Metro Area - Evidence
Michael Wilson - Groove It to Your Body
Syreeta - Can't Shake Your Love - Larry Levan Mix
Touchdown - Ease Your Mind - Extended Mix
Metro Area - Atmosphrique
Daniel Wang - Like Some Dream I Can't Stop Dreaming
El Coco - Cocomotion - Single Version
New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle - (7'' Remix Edit) [2015 Remastered Version]
Metro Area - Soft Hoop
The S.O.S Band - High Hopes
Brandi Wells - Watch Out - Remix
Curtis Hairston - I Want You (All Tonight) - JM After-Session M&M Mix
Metro Area - Let's Get...
War - Galaxy
Cloud One - Atmosphere Strut
Debbie Deb - When I Hear Music
Metro Area - Orange Alert
Prince - Controversy
Pal Joey - Gettin' Hot
Stephen Duffy - Kiss Me (1985)
Metro Area - Strut
Mr. Fingers - Can You Feel It
Gayle Adams - Love Fever
West Phillips - Sucker for a Pretty Face - I'm Just a
Metro Area - Caught Up
Kleeer - Happy Me
Inner Life - I'm Caught Up - In a One Night Love Affair
Advance - Take Me to the Top
Peter Brown - Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me [Long Version]

excellent, thanks a lot!

oh hell yeah

Oh wow! Classic album and fascinating playlist to join it! Wish all artists made this for their albums, always love hearing the influences behind each song.

There's a nice remaster now out of the original Metro Area LP, with a cleaner sound (especially in the bass) and segues between tracks removed. No bonus tracks.

and you can get it on cassette.

I'm ready for my Storm Queen album, Mr. Geist.

sometimes i think this album is the best thing that ever happened to me

I've been looking for a Metro Area live dj mix that I lost awhile ago... it started with Queen Samantha's "take a chance" and segued into Visual's "the music's got me"... and it's like 3 hours long, iirc? Wish I had it back.

The world may be falling apart, but if you feel like buying a triple-vinyl package at this juncture may I suggest our 3LP @MetroAreaNYC repress? About 300 copies are hitting stores now. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/vaz1j5qcpH

— Morgan Geist (@MorganGeistNYC) September 21, 2020

new storm queen single!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9EToZqCACI