Duke Dumont and A*M*E - Need U (100%) - Rolling UK dance pop interzone thread

and it's not like the song's appeal is driven by her charisma exactly

unfortunately the breakout pop talents from this scene will probably be the secret sheerans and secret sandés who probably had a solo deal all along like sam smith and ella eyre. those who stick to house (sinead harnett) don't seem to get off the ground in the same way and even a*m*e, who's the most explicit about wanting to make pop (and probably the most actually charismatic vocalist to date in this mini-movement), doesn't seem to be happening

though i would argue looking for a breakout pop talent isn't really the point in the first place?

I don't think this scene has thrown up a single vocalist who I give a shit about outside the context of the big dance hits. Even MNEK has a kind of dorky awkwardness to him and may turn out to be a better backroom songwriter than he his a pop star.

For now it seems like the record buying public are buying the faceless producers rather than the faces per se, and that's even allowing for people like Sam Smith with a massive record company push behind them. Duke Dumont and Rudimental are more reliably bankable names than any of the vocalists (except Sande obviously and she precedes all this really).

I think focusing on the singers for their own sake is almost always a mistake when it comes to UK pop-dance. Katy B, and Mis-Teeq if they count, are the only exceptions that comes to mind across 25 years or so.

Craig David had two good singles I guess.

https://twitter.com/kiesza/status/426873645755936768

Similar vibes from Ukraine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eihYaVddKE

So this is looking to be next week's UK number one single.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wRW57nBLMI

It's turning into a free for all...

whitney and toni are the new brandy and aaliyah

'Functional' doesn't have to be a pejorative term when it comes to dance music but that Secondcity track is horribly functional...where's the excitement there?

whole thing sounds sluggish/like the worst kind of club IMO. House for Supreme clad 16yr olds etc.

I find that track pleasantly formulaic but if you're sneering at house music for 16 year-olds this probably isn't the thread for you. I've heard a lot worse in shitty clubs over the years.

wasn't sneering, and this isn't the thread for it, but i was into house when i was 16 and wouldn't have listened to this.

tbh, i'd no doubt enjoy it a lot more in the context of a mix so I'll trawl through this thread and download some recent ones.

This kind of needs to be the sort of hyper-familiar melodic track that you drench the crowd with after a stretch of harder stuff. I don't love it by any means and it's sort of route-one but I can totally see how it would work.

mm yeah you'll definitely crack the case of the #1 pop song by pondering it in the mix

would it be wrong to post this one here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jUGAVUwhRU

Vic Mensa, "Down On My Luck"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMbA6xire3M

ooh didn't know this had a video and everything (u will know it from the shift k3y mix, where it blends in seamlessly with ryan leslie vox and sk's other assorted minor 90s-ish new yorky quirks) (crossref with disclosure i guess)

luvvit; beguiling and casually unconventional

as an aside it's probably worth observing (in this continuing climate of ppl simultaneously parlaying solo pop star oversharing with dance vocalist disposability cf sam smith thread) how obstinately anonymous sam frank (not even listed on the video title there) is

think there's like one poss two photos of him and he just looks like the sort of guy who comes round to fix your broadband

guess singing whole tunes like skream 'rollercoaster' in a marge simpson voice is a compensation of sorts idk

lol sam is literally an electrician these days! rtc your instincts can be somewhat frighteningly on point!

is anybody rating "overdrive"?

i kind of like it when i hear it, but on the other hand it feels like EDM's bid to annex the interzone

it goes both ways (Tchami, Maff Boothroyd, etc) - i think of it more as a cooperated effort by interzoners and EDM renegades to reclaim the midrange

yeah we mentioned this mini angle briefly on the ill blu thread

love 'gecko' but 'overdrive' is rather a hasty awkward record label bodge job from the bad old times

i suppose it has a sort of grisly recherche charm in that respect (the vocal of idk, ninetoes 'finder' certainly did not)

rightful pioneers of this crossover are actually the wideboys on their kiss radio show of course (hat tip to self in mirror)

sadly they were a little bit too popular (or fortunate) too soon as they've recently been given an extra hour to play with and it's since all lost its ott hyper-compressed rush now

http://www.kissfmuk.com/fnk/2014/06/07/wideboys-070614/

still tho have a butchers

i will!

the perfect follow-up to "Rather Be" that never was <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

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

(just found out that one of the Blonde guys runs Eton Messy, woah!)

this is obviously the wrong thread & both these songs are a few months old now but i'm fucked if i'm going to make a "grime in 2014" thread and i feel like they should have SOME 2014 ilx mention because they're so huge (and fwiw both in my top 10 trax of the year)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHZRHEJHS2k

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

it's like grime's prime years never ended

true, i used to look like you, but looking like a mess, nah, that's not me

http://f.cl.ly/items/0u2w1K1G082o1B3q3O0M/Screen%20Shot%202014-07-20%20at%2013.28.46.png

:o

speaking of grime did you guys see this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOIF7iUn-Z8

er lemme try that again https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NOIF7iUn-Z8

idk who this is but this is in the top 10 and i dig it a lot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk3r-K8TQ5g

i think it's the same guy who did one of the best "west coast" remixes (alongside the mk one obv) as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAg5QHqrqIM

i've been arguing with ppl at work about whether "faded" promotes DUI or subtly discourages it

That ZHU thing was in the Australian charts for months I think. Has that Peking Duk track made it to the UK yet?

Haha yeah, this has been huge here.

That plus the lyrics always make me think of Pendulum's "Coma" (different Pendulum) even though they don't really sound anything alike.

Probably a bit harder than this thread usually goes it but fuck it there's no general purpose interzone thread, and it's taken me ages to ID this from Purge's 'House of Ill Repute Vol 4' mix. Luvvit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcyojxV-bTo

Similar apprehension that I'm posting on the right thread but er, guys, is it just me that's taken this long to realize that everything on Hot Haus is "buy on sight"?

don't think anyone's really bothered about what goes on what thread these days

besides me that is, i'm fucking disgusted w/ all of u

(And really UTTU too but at least with HH it's at least theoretically possible to actually afford all of them)

xpost Haha I'd want it no other way.

yeah funnily enough on the o/t subject tho i too kinda never really warmed to uttu etc to pay much attention beyond the q sphere but dj haus' sets on rinse recently really got me buggin!! the last two are on his soundcloud check em out

https://soundcloud.com/hothausrecs/rinse-fm-dj-haus-31st-july-2014
https://soundcloud.com/hothausrecs/rinse-fm-dj-haus-16th-july-2014

Nice. Maybe this IS the right thread! I feel like HH is starting to hit the loosey goosey, occasionally jackin' and frequently shameless side of the interzone.. Territory largely ceded by the statelier deep house (in the classic sense) takin-you-on-a-journey mode of most of UTTU.

But of course it's a dialectic. (Like in those sets, actually!)

I could have just linked to this comment for the 15 July set

Giles Dickerson at 3:16:
I love a DJ that can slam the dance floor and still keep it tastefull and smart. Nailed it.

but i guess I had to work it out for myself.

how does tim make his corrections sound all encouraging and shit, this is what i'm trying to work out rn

Oh go on, I can take it.

maybe hot haus isn't really in the interzone at all apart from trumpet & badman - it's just house - but it feels informed by it

actually shit, i don't know, some of it is TOTALLY interzone - the label houses enough variety to not be able to pin down (tick VG obv)

idk tbph trace i would say u have maybe tied yourself up in knots better off cut than untangled

i mean i could spend the next day or seven illustrating on the blackboard a spirograph galaxy of venn diagrams of intersecting interzones representing my personal interpretation of what a gwan ecologically but really it's not like that... they're not lawless "whee my spotify playlist is real life it's gr8 being bourgeois" zones but nor are they set in heavy stone to tie yourself to and jump in the river with either

as far as this specific thread remit goes i swear to god ppl u could literally have called it "rolling bits annie mac takes a shine to (some of which that end up charting)" and it would have done the job fine

yeah. it's funny to me how quickly my own interzone interests have changed - i'm vastly less interested in the purringly professional manifestations of bass-house these days for some reason - your gorgon cities and redlights and koves and kidnap kids. i don't know why. it doesn't feel like it's really gone anywhere too interesting, when for a coupla months it felt like it could go anywhere. for awhile i felt like jackin was the other pole to that, the balancing weight, but hearing all this hot haus stuff, with its sleeve graphics that look like they're made by somebody's cousin who says he knows how to do graffiti and their kind of loosey gooseyness, well, that can be another

i was gonna post this in the house/techno thread then i thought it might actually appeal here more

https://soundcloud.com/houndstoothlbl/marquis-hawkes-cant-find-a-reason-1

just obsessive

too poppy for this thread?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03O2yKUgrKw

Mike Mago ft. Dragonette "Outlines"

given that the thread title references a song that went to No.1 in the uk charts i'd say it's hard to be too poppy here! however.... the recent incursions of oliver heldens and spinnin' records does mark a shift from the black butter/pmr axis of yore. i think the only rule probably, my ontological prevarication upthread notwithstanding, is that if you think it's interzone, it's interzone

http://i.imgur.com/gKnFITb.gif