A shorter one this time around, a little later than I anticipated because I had a hell of a week last week, but I also made a point to not bring my IRL stuff onto the blog so much this year so I'll put a pin in it there. A real fun one this time for a post theme - I've made multiple comments over the years that it doesn't matter so much *where* you discover some music and in fact sometimes the most random sources can be the greatest treasure trove of that kind of thing. So we come to talking about the internet meme, I have tons of songs in my collection that have been memed or featured in memes over the years, so I thought I'd shine the spotlight on a few.
This is a topic I can see myself revisiting, but today's entry is going to focus on two main examples. Electronic Music and memes go waaaaay back, we're talking back to the YTMND days, from Coburn's We Interrupt This Program soundtracking the NEDM meme, to Max Coveri's Running In The 90's being many a non-Initial D fan's intro to Eurobeat on 'lol internet' to the entire Caramelldansen phenomenon, it's been a phenomenon for a long, long time - and for a lot of folks (like me), it was often the first time hearing these tracks.
So colour me surpised when around 2015 I began to see a massive uptick in memes of a song I already knew - Bag Raiders' Shooting Stars. I'd already become quite familiar with Bag Raiders through all the electro I was consuming around the time it came out, but there were just so many questions about the whole thing. Why that specific track? Why so long after it's initial 08/09 release? That's a whole other discussion that could be a post on its own, though there was a bump in popularity in their native Australia around 2013 or so. To put all that aside, Shooting Stars was already one of my favourites from the album so I was ore than happy to see 'em get more exposure. I can highly recommend the album as a whole if you like what you hear here, the whole thing has this very fun almost pop-like feel to it that really sets it apart from all the other Electro House that was making waves around the time. Think more Chromeo than Justice.
The other one comes from Vine (cor, remember Vine?) Back in the heydey of syntheave was a clip of a woman and her cat set to HOME's Resonance. I didn't really give it much thought at the time, years later I'd run into some HOME tracks through another source and think that I recognised the style - sure enough with a little reasearch I was proved right. Between that and We're Finally Landing being used as the opening theme for SummoningSalt's deep dives into Speedrunning history, there's a good chance that you may have heard HOME before without realising. Another case of me heartily recommending the album this is from if you like the sound of this one, HOME's brand of synthwave has this lovely lo-fi streak running throughout that gives it a real comfy feeling that makes it stand out in my collection.
And it's tracks like this that remind us all of the importance of including the source with anything you make because remember: your next shitpost could be the first step on someone's musical journey. Joking aside, I do my best to credit tracks wherever possible, and it seems like on the whole people are getting better at it too (and there are song identifying bots to fill in the gaps too). It's incredible the reach that a silly viral vdeo trend can give a track, I'm willing to bet more than a handful of people had Bag Raiders become one of their favourite artists off the heels of the meme - and I'm more than happy to welcome them to the world of electronic music. There's plenty of room in this tent for all of us, and a massive list of genres to peruse and find something that suits you! And of course, until next time - stay safe and enjoy the music.
Left it a little late to do a year's end roundup, but I'm going to return to a tried and tested tradition: the good old fashioned track dump. I never really felt comfortable posting a sea of players with no commentary, so this one is going to be broken up a little with thoughts in-between, so apologies in advance if it gets a little long.
Now with that out of the way, let's take a look at what I've got. I've made no secret of my love of Eurobeat over the last few years - the sugared up evolution of Italo Disco colliding with J-Pop. I had a fair few lined up, but on listening to them back I whittled it down to just a couple - it's pretty hard to find legal streams of a lot of them anyway and in hindsight some of them were a little bit OTT. Which is an absolutely stupid thing to say I now realise, as the whole point of Eurobeat IS that it's over the top! Keeping it low key to start with, Switch really highlights those latent disco traces inherent in the genre, which makes it a good dipping in point for the curious.
I've managed to skirt one of the more silly parts of Eurobeat with these two selections, being mostly written by Italians, you do get some... interesting lyrical choices that don't quite make a whole lot of sense. On that note though, Eurobeat does a fairly decent job of maintaining a good ratio of Male to Female vocalists, it'd be very easy for the genre to fall into the latter much like the Vocal side of trance did way back when. That said, there are definitely tracks that evoke that same kind of euphoric vibe - enter So Fragile
Some Tofubeats next, I picked up some of the man's soundtrack work a while back and had been meaning to check out his works ever since. His Bandcamp is weirdly bare with releases there but not for sale (that clearly used to be as well), and releases like this one here that don't appear on Discogs or anywhere else really. Synthesizer is a prime example of why I felt the need to check his work out, a real head bopper of a slow jam, topped with liberal use of Vocoder to make the whole package complete for me.
Going total nostalgia bomb for this next one, it comes back out to play every so often, and rightfully so as it's damn good. Potentially one of the finest remixes ever from the era - Thomas Bangalter (1/2 of Daft Punk for those not in the know) spins out what was a ~1 minute interlude from DJ Mehdi's Lucky Boy into one of - if not the - electro house anthem. It hurts a little knowing that we won't hear any more Mehdi productions, I always liked the man's style and was excited to see where he'd take it, but what better way to celebrate the man than belting this one out.
Let's go a little deeper next with some Soichi Terada. Terada's return under his own name was a release I was extremely looking forward to, I first got turned his way off the heels of the (legitimately fantastic) Ape Escape soundtrack, and was pleased to find even more Drum & Bass on waiting for me. But the man actually got his start making (equally brilliant) House tracks - and that's what Asakusa Light is all about - paraphrasing Terada's own words: he's trying to capture that same feeling from those days. And on tracks like Double Spire, he really does. It helps I'm a real sucker for pitch bends though!
Speaking of capturing the spirit of yore, we have DMX Krew, who has been dwelling in that space for a long long time now. Now with DMX, you often will get some cheeky playful self aware elements in the mix, evoking old school electro of the early breakin'/electropop era, it's a genre than can be quite funny after all so why not embrace it? (see also: Chromeo). Party Life doesn't really do that, at least on the title track. The thing comes out a little more like an electroclash record, lamenting the shallow nature of the said Party Life. But you don't have to delve that deep into the analysis if you don't want, the Dub mix has an excellent groove on it and is as relentlessly catchy as the original.
Couple more to round us out, starting with what is one of the oldest digital files in my collection - Misstress Barbara's Never Could Have Your Heart. A relic of my first serious forays into the world of electronic music circa the early 00's, the first version I had of this was a naff one I pirated at like 96kbps or something like that! But even then, I was totally entranced with it. That melody (which I would later learn is pretty much a cover/sample of Move D's In/Out) is just gorgeous, and the beat work is surprisingly frantic for a House record, with machine gun hi-hats and flurries of handclaps. I reckon it'll be about 20 years I've had it in my collection next year, and I'm still as in love with it as I ever was.
And finally, the one track I post every year without fail, The Knife's New Year's Eve. Taken from the soundtrack to the film Hannah Med H, it's from around the Deep Cuts era so is very much in that extremely electropop style - the one with super sweet synths and the steel pan work as heard on tracks like Pass This On. Does the track have anything to do with NYE? Not really, it plays in a scene in the film that takes place on the night which is the reason for the title. Still, it's become a bit of a tradition, there was many a year where we'd play this while getting ready to head out for the night. And now it's a tradition here too!
And that'll about do it for now, it did end up getting a little long but nothing too ridiculous! That'll be all for this year, but rest assured I'll be back soon enough in '23 with more. Thank you for sticking with us this year, we've had a couple hiccups along the way but I don't know anyone who hasn't. I hope you've found some tracks here to enjoy and will continue to do so in future - and of course, as always: Stay safe and enjoy the music.
Took some time to catch up on the old release radar, I normally miss a thing or two here and there, but there has been a real bevy of releases as of late. Naturally, in true CVF fashion, not all of these are going to be brand new but hopefully they are still at least new to you as they are me! Let's go.
Jacek Yerka - There is peace in the Block (1994)
The biggest one that caught my eye was an anniversary re-issue of Justice's debut with some bonus tracks - it activated that part of my brain that still loves all things electro house and I dove right in. The album itself is killer as ever, and the bonus tracks are a nice treat if a bit underwhelming - I wasn't expecting to have my socks blown off or anything, but even so, some of these bonuses are just 'OK'. Still, it's always interesting to hear demo versions of the tracks - some of them are wildly different. Out of all of them though, Donna is the one that took my heart. It instantly transported me back to the heyday of this sound, back when I was an absolute Ed Banger fiend. I'd be lying if I said I didn't still have a lot of love for this sound, part of me always thought that was tinged by nostalgia but after hearing this 'new' piece for the first time I'm starting to think that's not so true. Hop in this little time capsule with me!
Keeping in reissue town with a whole heap of remasters from Makoto. Makoto's been on my radar for a long time thanks to LTJ Bukem, I have a long and well-documented love of that era of D&B after all. But it's something I don't go looking for often, plus I do like to support the artists as and when I can, and a lot of Makoto's earlier work isn't readily available digitally. Enter the Yearbook Vol. 4 compilation to see to both of those - a whole heap of remastered versions and a previously unreleased track? Yes please. And you don't have to get far into the tracklist to see the appeal for me - Joy starts off a little heavy, but that sample is just so.. well... joyful you can't help but grin, and it doesn't let up for the full 7 minute runtime. Lovely stuff.
Something else to round out the selections, Ghostly were ever so kind as to email me a 20% off code for things on their bandcamp, so I thought I'd get around to picking up Ghostly Swim 3, the previous 2 I have already from when they were freebies. I do like picking up compilations like this, it's a great way to quickly get a lot of variety and potential new artists to follow in one swoop. I've not gone far in the tracklist for my choice today, but there's plenty of goodness on offer here, from the sinister seven minutes of Redux (GAD Mix) with it's Carpenter-esque stabs to onesix-four sounds like an offshoot of Aphex Twin's Analord series in all it's squelchy glory.
Bogdan Raczynski leads the compilation - another artist who was a mainstay of Aphex Twin's Rephlex records and, like DMX Krew, is now starting to make those Rephlex releases available on bandcamp. Ggowwksstane shares a lot of that AFX mentality actually if the purposefully mangled title wasn't a clue enough. There's a lot of playfulness here without going too hard into proper full on the breakcore side of IDM. Imagine an alternate universe Richard D. James Album and you're in the right ballpark.
And that'll about do it for today, I'm going to maybe put together a little something for NYE which I've missed in previous years, but failing that I'll try and get another regular post out before years end. At any rate, hope you've found something to pique your interest here and until next time, as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.
Getting around to writing this, I was waiting until all my tech woes were sorted out. A little bit of a retrospective this time, after seeing that Justice's Planisphere is now available as a separate release, I thought it'd be good to take a closer look at it once more. It's an interesting curio of the duo's discography - originally a promo CD for a Dior show back in '08, it'd see another release on the digital version of Audio, Video, Disco in its entire long form version (that replaced other bonus track Presence from the other versions) as well. And here we are again with another standalone release, coinciding with Ed Banger's new Bandcamp push, complete with updated artwork to boot. Let's take a look.
And speaking of that artwork, it should tip you off to the kind of experience you're in store for here. On the four parts of Planisphere, the Justice boys wear their hearts on their sleeves - a 17 minute epic that encapsulates all their influences. Personally I think the whole saga works better in parts than as one continuous stream, but I suppose the full length version is more in line with the very clear prog rock influence on display, see the extended jams of say, Tangerine Dream for reference.
Part I sets the stage - channeling the cinematic opening of Genesis with some dramatic piano stabs... for about 45 seconds or so before we land both feet firmly in that Cross-era sound. If you rinsed that record as much as I did back then you'll immediately hear the similarities. Personally I find Part I to be a bit plodding in terms of pacing for the first half but then again it is supposed to be the soundtrack to a fashion show so we are missing an integral part of the experience. That all changes in the second half though, where things take a very Valentine turn around the 3 minute mark - and it is brilliant.
Part 2 leans heavily on the duo's penchant for slightly spooky soundtracks (as they did previously with the Goblin sample for Phantom) at the very beginning, before settling back into that Valentine-esque groove. At the 50 second mark we start to take off and we launch back into something that shares more in common with the heavier sides of their debut LP, very Waters Of Nazareth in execution. The shortest of the Tetralogy, it does feel very much like a bridge between the two parts, especially given the sudden change at the very end that ushers in part III.
III continues that trend, leading with that grinding, almost engine revving sound that underpinned the Justice sound of the time. I think it might be my least favourite of the bunch, but not for any particular reason - looking over my 'played' stats for them all it is the lowest of the four but that's not a great metric to measure that by as Part IV is heavily skewing those numbers, but we'll get to that in due time. Because in reality, as good as the rest of the parts are, IV really, really steals the show.
And it wastes no time making that clear from the get-go. Opening with a frankly decadent display of guitar shredding. It is between this and SebastiAn's bootleg of Killing In The Name Of I was able to get a few metal-heads into electronic back in my high school days. The crescendo of this extended jam is up there as one of the finest tracks the duo have ever made, an exclamation mark at the end of an already killer tracklist. All these years later, the build up and break at 1:10 still makes me a little excited, catapulting me back to my days of chasing the next electro banger of the week. I've said in the past I'm not the biggest fan of guitar noodling, especially in electronic music - but I'll be damned if it doesn't work wonders here. For the final 3 quarters it is a non-stop barrage of furious fretwork, an absolute tour de force.
I might not have kept up as much with Justice or the rest of the Ed Banger crew, but coming back to tracks like this never fail to bring me right back to that heyday. Planisphere has aged a little more gracefully than some other examples of the era, partly because it's not out there to be this week's hot thing for the dance floor, but even so I'm sure that it'd still get the floor filled as it is. While not as pervasive as their debut album Cross, Planisphere is widely held up as one of Justice's finest hours, and hopefully as you've heard, rightfully so. Predictably the Vinyl version sold out pretty rapidly, folks on Discogs have been begging for it for literal years if you go back and look. It might have been in stock if I'd have posted this when I originally intended to, but between tech issues and Life™ it's been delayed slightly.
Even so, I hope you've enjoyed this little look back, whether you're a Ed Banger Veteran or this is your first time. I still have to write that full breakdown of last month's bandcamp Friday, and if I don't hurry up I'll end up having to do two back to back! I'm gonna try write a couple quicker ones in the meantime too but until then, as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.
You ever stumble across a note that you'd left yourself and just plain forgotten about? that's what this post is. Around the same time I made the first version of this post I must have made a second draft for a sequel that then got buried under other posts. There was nothing to it other than a cursory list of tracks so I figured I'd come in and flesh it out, and here we are.
Claudio Bravo - Mystic Package (1967)
The main limiting factor for this one is that some of the tracks aren't on my usual bandcamp players, but that's not the end of the world. It's also not the case for this first one either. Kicking off with a bit from Kavinsky's delayed debut. After a string of home-run EPs I was very excited for Kavinsky to drop an album, which eventually came to be in OutRun. OutRun is... fine. I told myself at the time its just because I was getting a little sick of the retro electro aesthetic but even on revisiting it my opinion remains the same. By far and away the best tracks here are the ones that were already on EPs that came before, but there are a couple standouts in the original camp as well. Don't let that put you off if you've never listened to Kavinsky before, the album is a great starting point. Since originally making notes for this post the man has announced a second album as well, and the single from it is very nice. Here's one of the standout originals, Blizzard.
From there we hit up Light Club, with one of the many tracks from Hotline Miami that are seared into my brain. Their Blizzard is a perfect addition to the sequel's soundtrack, very befitting of the more surreal direction that it took. Slightly off kilter, I think I could best describe it as nervous trap, a great choice to set the atmosphere for the scenes with dialogue. Sadly, like a lot of artists from the Hotline Miami OSTs, there hasn't been a release from Light Club in nigh on 10 years at this point, though a quick thumb-through of Discogs tells me that one half of the duo is still pretty active. I always think that's a bit of a shame, if you really dug the vibe of the OSTs like I did and go looking for more you can find that well dries up pretty quickly. Having said that, some of them are still at it, M.O.O.N. of Hydrogen fame has just dropped a new album for example.
A duet of Close Your Eyes next, first with Circ. I've talked about Circ's one and only album at length in a Retro Review and my feelings remain pretty much the same - if you like slightly kitsch early 2000's electropop as much as I do then you will find a lot to love. Echoing my thoughts from last time as well, the standout moment is still that incredible and obviously euphoric trance inspired breakdown around 2 minutes in - between that and the rest of the track its a great little capsule that is a distillation of the era's 'dance music' sound (see also, the very of-the-era music video) in my mind it's in the same ballpark as records like Mylo's Destroy Rock & Roll for example.
Speaking of, we're going to head over to The Chemical Brothers' Push The Button next, an album that I've thought about doing it's own retro review of. It's a bit of a mixed bag in my opinion, but one that's a little overlooked at the same time - look past overplayed tracks like Galvanize and there's some really great moments on here, my favourite being the spectacular closer Surface To Air. Close Your Eyes follows a similar kind of arc though, a real slow burn that builds to a post-rock-esque crescendo - not always my preferred way of things but sometimes it hits the spot just right, and when it does it's lovely.
Trying to make up for the back-to-back YT players with a little bonus, first things first kicking things more downtempo with my local hero Nightmares On Wax. Taken from Thought So... it has a little bit of a different sound to the albums before and after it, and a big part of that is probably down to how the thing was recorded - the whole album is a series of sessions recorded along the way as N.O.W moved from the U.K. over to Spain. This gives the whole thing this really interesting jovial 'live' quality, it feels like one big jam session and you're along for the ride.
And finally a bit of UNKLE, specifically their first album when it was a collaboration between James Lavelle and DJ Shadow. Psyence Fiction is a great little album, it was supposed to be getting an anniversary reissue a couple years back if I remember right but nothing seems to have come of it. Regardless if you are at all into 90's trip hop or are even just a fan of DJ Shadow it's certainly worth your time, Shadow's influence is very pronounced on it. Unreal is one of my favourite tracks from the LP, and there is also a sort of 'bonus' version on the end titled Be There, featuring Ian Brown of The Stone Roses on the vocal front. It feels very natural in its execution, it's not like the vocal has just been hastily overdubbed or anything - Ian's voice suits this sound really well, it's a collaboration I'd have liked to have seen more of, with UNKLE or a similar act.
And that'll be all for this time, I think I used up all my 'same name' ammo for a little while now! A little bit more of an eclectic mix this time around, but I hope you've enjoyed these tracks as much as I have putting this all together. I'm hoping to get back on track with the posting schedule so keep an eye out for more but until then, as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.
Let me take you all back in time, back to when a younger Foxbat was your stereotypical blog surfer with a headful of House. It's not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, but it's all documented on this site for all to see, going back and reading my (incredibly self conscious and very obviously the product of a teenager) writing is always interesting - to see what's changed and what hasn't. I tend to focus on what hasn't when I've previously brought this up - I'm still a fiend for all things IDM for one - but there are also more interesting changes in opinion as well; somewhere on here you can find a solitary post where I moan about not gelling with Portishead - fast forward a decade or so and I adore 'em
This time though, if the art didn't reveal all already, we're paying another trip to the archives of Ed Banger - a formative label for me as a teen and one of the major reasons I ended up writing here in the first place. I won't dive too deep into that this time though as I already did earlier this year, naturally there is going to be a lot of crossover though! First of all what being what spurred this post on in the first place - my last complaint about a lot of Ed Banger stuff not being on Bandcamp is now null and void, as a little while ago a whole heap of the catalogue appeared on there, including a whole bunch of DJ Mehdi stuff - including that remix of Signatune by Thomas Bangalter.
Instead of retreading ground I thought I'd put another favourite up (that I'd actually forgotten about a bit) - Mehdi put out a compilation of remixes called Red Black & Blue back when, and I think we might have even done some kind of preview/review of it at the time too. A real highlight for me was his reworking of Chromeo's Waiting 4 U, one that I am surprised didn't end up appearing anywhere else other than this comp. Chromeo and Mehdi were an almost perfect match anyway as demonstrated by their collaboration on I Am Somebody and this mix only cements that further. Unlike that though, this mix of Waiting 4 U feels much more raw by comparison, the Bass that slams in after the li'l break at 0:45 sounds super distorted, like its clipping slightly, giving the whole thing this lovely bedroom bootleg feeling.
This whole post, like my last Ed Banger one could be 100% Mehdi in all honesty, but I am going to have a little bit more variety this time around. Just after one final Mehdi offering! B-Side to the Pocket Piano EP, Tunisia Bambaata always felt a little underrated to me in the grand scheme of things, it's very much in that 'Nu French Touch' style that was in vogue at the time after all. Doubly so after myself having explored the world of Future Funk, this would fit right in that scene no trouble, though it's maybe a little slower than my favourites from that genre. Anyway, my real favourite part of Tunisia Bambaata is the 'bonus track' included at the end - after the final fade we get a little 1-minute instrumental interlude that lets Mehdi show off his hip hop leanings. As a teen obsessed with Adult Swim bumps, I was all about little instrumentals like that, but I'd be lying if I didn't still have a lot of love for that style of lo-fi.
SebastiAn's remix compilation is also there, though the track list is a bit of a minefield and a lot of them aren't tagged properly with either the artist or the fact it's a SebastiAn remix. At any rate, at the time there were some real juggernauts of remixing - MSTRKRFT was always a favourite of mine, but SebastiAn got a lot of the limelight thanks to his bold choices in what to remix. Rather than just remixing whatever was new at the time, SebastiAn did a lot of paying tribute to his influences with bootleg mixes of Rage Against The Machine and others - it didn't take long for some of them to go legit however, a trend that continues to this day with Metallica commissioning him and other artists to remix the Black Album. I've chosen his remix of Klaxon's Golden Skans because it is not only one of my favourites ever, but also highlights another thing I loved about this time - there was a great crossover between folks from the Indie scene getting into Electronic music and vice-versa, I made a lot of friends that way!
There is still a distinct lack of Ed Rec. available on their bandcamp however, there are some real gems on there (especially Volume 3, but I am biased!). In light of that though we're going way back in the chronology of Ed Banger for this one here, with a catalogue number of ED010: Mr. Flash's Champions / Disco Dynamite. It's funny going back to these early releases, you can hear the direction that the 'Ed Banger' aesthetic is going to take but it isn't quite fully formed yet, there's a certain charm to it, though it's not quite aged as gracefully as the later entires of the label. Still, those early releases are still important, and an interesting listen if nothing else. Personally, I enjoy a little bit of Disco Dynamite once in a while - there are days where it hits the spot.
And that'll be all for today, I hope you have enjoyed this little time capsule we've had today - as I'm becoming all too aware of it might be the first time hearing tracks like this for some of you depending on your age! Maybe over the summer I'll do another historical dive back into the early days of Dubstep and become some kind of digital archaeologist. Anyway, I'll be back soon with another entry for you all but until then, as always - stay safe and enjoy the music.
Ed Banger Records is a very important label to me, one of the first that I started following in earnest and one that was a huge influence on myself. My taste in art, fashion and of course electronic music as a whole owed a lot to the Ed Rec crew - part of the reason I ended up writing here in the first place is because as a teen I was hooked on Electro House. Ed Banger, among others, were (and are!) quality purveyors of the genre. While my days of blog surfing for the next hottest dancefloor destroyer are behind me, the memories I have still shine bright and come back from time to time - I still have my 'Cool Cats' snapback on my desk and even use the old Cool Cats logo as my avatar in a few places!
The Ed Rec crew of the past and present is a real who's who of the electronic world, which over the years has seen many huge names join the ranks: Mr. Oizo, SebastiAn, Brekabot, Feadz, DSL, Mr. Flash and of course, Justice to name but a few. Yet out of all of them, there is one man who means just a little more to me than the rest - Mehdi Favéris-Essadi, better known as DJ Mehdi. Mehdi is behind some of my favourite tunes ever from the label, he's the man behind the first ever album released on Ed Banger Records, the Electro / Hip Hop fusion of Lucky Boy. I remember loving every single picture of him playing live sets because he always looked like he was having an absolutely amazing time. In a lot of those pictures, label master Pedro Winter (Better known as Busy P) is usually there too, also grinning from ear to ear - that isn't something exclusive to Mehdi's live sets though, any time there was an event with a few of the Ed Rec folk playing you could usually spot him up there too. This camaraderie was something else I really admired about the Ed Banger squad, when they teamed up to do remixes or DJ sets under the 'Ed Banger Allstars' banner it was always going to be a real good time.
As cliché as it sounds, the beautiful thing is that whenever someone in the creative field passes, their work survives - and the Ed Banger crew have done plenty of work on that front. Loukoums, a previously super rare mixtape type thing Mehdi did in the vein of J Dilla's Donuts was published on Ed Banger's soundcloud not long after - a selection of demos and off cuts from the run up to Lucky Boy. It's a 40 minute crash course in Mehdi's unique brand of Electro and Hip Hop - one that made him a perfect fit for Ed Banger.
Some choice timestamps for you to get started: 6:40 is a great stripped back beat with some decidedly nervous synths and the transition into the next track at 8:15 is killer every single time, the fusion of sounds on show is incredible and when the beat drops at around the 8:44 I fall in love all over again. The sudden dunk into something a little more funky at 19:43 foreshadows the eventual collaboration with Chromeo that would appear on Lucky Boy proper in I Am Somebody. Head to 30:28 to hear some good old fashioned French House in that Daft Punk / Crydamoure style, but through a Mehdi lens. The variety on show here is just amazing, and only further cemented Mehdi's position as one of my all time favourite producers.
Which brings us to the actual reason I drafted up this post in the first place - just a few days ago, the world was treated to new release from Mehdi, he's not alone mind you, it's a collaboration between Busy P, Santigold and Benjamin Epps. The story behind this newest piece is worth a post on its own: Originally started as a jam session between P and Mehdi in a rented New York apartment on their MPC 2000 and 3000 respectively, it got saved, but then ended up lost along the way. Fast forward twenty years, and Busy P finds the floppy disk with the jam saved on it. Dusting it off and giving it a new coat of paint, we have the fittingly titled MPC 2021. In a way, it's like Mehdi was never gone - the sample has his hallmarks all over it and P has done an amazing job finishing it up. While I haven't been keeping up with all things Ed Banger in recent years, I immediately felt right back at home as soon as I hit play. Mixmag also did a great rundown of it and a little Q&A with Busy P that you can read here.
I thought I'd round out with a couple more of my favourite Mehdi tracks, starting with one that I must have heard thousands of times - one that is iconically Mehdi all over. Whenever I was trying to introduce folk to the world of Ed Banger, I would point them towards the Ed Rec compilations - when Vol. 3 came out, it became my go to example of what the crew were all about. Pocket Piano is one of many standouts from the tracklist, once again highlighting Mehdi's ear for samples. It's not quite the massive electro house bangers that come to mind when you think of the era, but it is one of the tunes I think embodies the real mixture of styles and genres that are woven into the DNA of the Ed Banger identity.
The orchestral version made for the 15th anniversary of Ed Banger, the fittingly French 15 Ans was a beautiful tribute. It appears alongside many other heavy hitters from the Ed Banger catalogue. An amazing feat if only for the difficulty of adapting some of those tunes to the orchestra format, at the same time though some of them like Pocket Piano feel much more suited to it. Watching it back now as I write this I couldn't help but smile as the iconic melody made its appearance, as the wave of realisation sweeps over the crowd and the cheers rise, it all combines to make something really incredible. I'll admit I was skeptical when it was all first announced, the whole 'playing electronic music with an orchestra' was done quite a bit around the time - an opinion coloured by many a 'Ibiza Club Classics' ones that I'd seen which ranged in quality quite a bit. In hindsight was more than a bit foolish, of course they were not going to cut corners with it, they only went and got the Orchestre Lamoureux!
And finally, I could never write up a post like this without mentioning Signatune. The original is a nice little interlude on Lucky Boy, a classic jam in the style of Loukoums above - nice enough on its own but the real highlight is a reworking of it that would appear on the Lucky Girl EP and later the Lucky Boy At Night re-release. A remix by someone you may have heard of: a one Thomas Bangalter. You may recognise his name from some house records as-is, but if the name doesn't ring any bells you may know him better as the silver half of Daft Punk. It's not super complicated, Bangalter just took the main hook of of Signatune and added a beat to it - but the end result is, and remains, potentially my favourite electro house tune of the era by some ways. To this day if and when it comes up on shuffle I take the time to revisit, and just for a few minutes I'm teleported back to that time in my life. An absolute monster of a tune by two legendary figures, one that I will be still as excited to hear another 10 years from now as I am now.
And that'll be all for now. I thought I'd take a different approach that just talking about the new tune. It's been fun looking back, it's been a long time since I've talked about Mehdi as well, so I figured I owed him at least that much. Ed Banger will forever an important step on my music listening career, and I love that they're still active to this day. As I've gone through the old archives and restored a whole heap of the old posts, it's been remarkable how many people have connected over a mutual love of Ed Banger over the years - hell, as I mentioned above I probably wouldn't be here writing this now if it weren't for them, and I'll forever be thankful for that.
I'm going to go on my own extended Mehdi retrospective now, going to start with his debut album (The Story Of) Espion and work forwards from there, my favourite from it is Anything Is Possible, which I think is a fitting note to end on.
Until next time, as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.
Takashi Murakami - And Then, And Then, And Then And Then, And Then (Blue) (1996)
Couple days ago my brother decided to do one of them Spotify blend thingies - it's actually kind of a cool feature, generates a playlist of both your listens and essentially just compares / contrasts 'em. We have quite different taste but we do cross over from time to time. From there though I got super nostalgic for them halcyon days of the blog - the time where I was an absolute hype fiend who subsisted solely on blog house and constantly chasing the next electro house hit. And there we have the theme of today's post - come on board with me as we take a trip back in time and try not to have an existential crisis along the way.
And what better first stop on that trip than the Justice boys? There were so many choices I could have made and honestly I was going to just pick somethin' from the iconic † because it was (and is to this day) an absolutely stellar album. I chucked on all of my Justice on shuffle to get some inspiration, I ended up going with a deep cut. I wasn't expecting to find this one so readily available to stream in all honesty, but it seems that the Justice boys have been pretty good about archiving most of their releases digitally. I've gone with the B-Side to D.A.N.C.E - predicatably called B.E.A.T. Even if you're totally sick of the original from it being played out I'd give this one a listen, it's more of a remix of the original in reality - but it's a gorgeous tour de force of Justice's sound of the era, one that heavily foreshadows their later funkier progression rather than a straight up electro house chugger. (This one is listed as extended despite being the same length as the original release as far as I can tell)
Keeping that train going with MSTRKRFT - as one friend amusingly put it "remember those years where vowels were really uncool?". Their debut The Looks is actually before the big heyday of the blogosphere in around '07 or so, but only by a year. It's a pretty short album but each of the entries on the tracklist are all hits - 8 tracks on the original, but 9 on my copy with the bonus remix on the end. I've chosen Easy Love for our next stop on this trip, a tune pretty infamous at the time for it's typically cliche 2000's 'dance' video - that is to say, incredibly horny, You can see it in all of it's crunchy 240p glory on YouTube if you'd like. I've got a lot of love for this early MSTRKRFT work, admittedly due to my massive weakness for anything vocoded though, but I'd be lying if I didn't get a little rush of memories every time I hear Work On You or this one come up every once in a blue moon.
Kind of a contrast to the Justice lads - you can find most of Boys Noize's stuff up to a point on Bandcamp as well. I was hoping to get some stuff from Oi Oi Oi on there, as the name might suggest that is an album full of yer classic bangers that I absolutely rinsed back when. But that's fine because Power is on there - an album I don't think is quite as consistent as Oi but is still home to some pretty big shakers. Truth be told it's closing track Heart Attack that might be my most favourite of them all, but that's not keeping with the pumpin' electro of the last couple so I'm going to tweak my choice slightly. I did initially consider either Starter or Jeffer, two early standouts that I had leaked copies of back in the day - Jeffer did almost win out with it's fantastically fidgety feel, but I changed my mind at the last minute to the opening track instead. Perhaps a little bit of a cop out, but it's a really great opening track, one that I think I've heard used on TV as BGM a couple of times to boot. Coming back to it with hindsight, you can really feel the evolution from the Oi Oi Oi era, a little rocky in places but when it shines man does it shine.
And that'll do it for this time around. It's been a long time since I did a bloghouse nostalgia piece like this, I was pretty surprised to find so much of it on Bandcamp actually, so many times I've wanted to do posts like this but ended up on non-official Soundclouds or otherwise dead accounts - I did think about maybe making this one a little longer but I'm pretty content with it as-is, if only for that deep Justice cut alone. Things are winding down IRL so I may be a little more active than usual - there's a mountain of old posts that still need fixing to be re-published so it might not be 'new' content though. Still, I have the makings of another annual winter time mixtape cooking as well so that should be coming up fairly soon, will be a good time. Until next time - as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.
It's getting to be that time of month again where I start eyeing my Bandcamp list in prep for the upcoming Friday. And it seems like I've been busy, the Wishlist seems to have grown quite a bit with some things I vaguely remember putting on there. I think it's yet another case of me going 'cool cover!' and idly adding it to the wishlist as I'm known to do. Not the case for all of them though, and I'll be sharing a few of them with you today.
Kazuo Shiraga - Karin (1976)
A theme of the past couple of weeks has been me picking up stuff that I meant to and forgot about, or just for some reason never did. It's been a lot to be like 'Oh yeah this is fairly new still' and it's actually from 2017 or something. But I digress again - on that same vein though I am finally going to get my hands on Jasper Byrne's Hotline Miami 2 EP sometime soon. It's a bit of an odd one as it has three distinct release versions with a couple of extra tracks on each. The version on Byrne's bandcamp is the 5-track version - the version of Miami on here is a different mix to the one from the first game if I remember right, but it doesn't let you preview it so I can't say for certain just yet.
Despite the title this isn't just a re-tread of Byrne's additions to the actual soundtrack: the first two tracks did make it on the OST but the rest are tracks made for the Soundtrack but don't actually appear in it. I was really into the track I've picked way back when, a bit more dancefloor friendly than the usual slightly psychedelic neon vibes of what I normally associate with the Hotline OST. I may not be as into electro as I was back then but I still really like this kind of sound, Byrne has a distinct style when it comes to making them that still really fits the atmosphere while standing alone on their own as well.
Jumping forward to the present day next but keeping it on the soundtrack front. A few months ago I came across a game called Umurangi Generation and it looks like it will be supremely up my alley. Cyberpunk Photography? Hell yeah!. To my shame I've yet to actually get a hold of it, but I am reminded every time I see the artwork. It has a soundtrack by ThorHighHeels who I knew in passing from the online world, but a couple weeks ago I decided to check out their bandcamp. And I really like what I found there. There is a bit of... randomness to some of their releases for want of a better term - lots of one-offs with (deliberatley) naff album art, but there's good stuff on there. I'm sticking with the Umurangi soundtrack for now, the main game's OST isn't on their bandcamp but the DLC is - and it's 51 tracks of pure aesthetic perfection. I say that a lot when covering soundtracks I know but this time it feels more appropriate than ever!
The track I've chosen - Dancing At The Precipice belongs to a school of sound that I have little of but very much love, I can't really describe it beyond comparing it to some of the tracks from the OlliOlli2 soundtrack - that kind of slick and smooth but still sounding a little DIY kind of indie electronic. I get the feeling it would be an easy style to overdose on which is part of the reason I haven't really sought it out too much but I may have to start doing so at this rate. I will say one thing about this one though while a lot of the OlliOlli OST had this lovely dreamy vibe to it, Precipice has a ludicrously bouncy bassline backing it up that really sets it apart, evoking old memories of Speed Garage in me. A real shelf wobbler this one, definitely one that's high on my list!
And going retro once again as we bring things back down. Yet another album I had never heard of until I got deep into exploring the old 'recommended for you' side of things - Sun Electric's Kitchen. Being from 1993, I foolishly assumed it would not be readily available digitally, but it turns out R&S Records have a pretty complete archive available on their end.
It's very similar in style to the {Artificial Intelligence} stuff that Warp was putting out at the time, every time I mention the {AI} series I feel like mentioning that Warp weren't the only ones doing it around that time, here R&S have made that super clear for everyone to hear (and see, the design for this album was done by Warp mainstays The Designer's Republic whose work I adore.) I get that the Warp stuff can be a bit too ambient and sometimes a little experimental, by comparison tracks like Entrance play out more like techno of the era with just a slight nod to that ambient side. There's plenty of great moments throughout still - that bleepy break around 2:30 almost entirely summarises the sound of the era in pretty succinct fashion. It's perhaps a little more repetitive than some of the Warp stuff as well, but I'm very into it at the minute regardless, it's one that's wormed it's way into more than a few of my techy playlists.
A little bit more variety this time, that's a good thing though as for a while I was feeling like I was getting stuck in a genre rut. Here's hoping that you find some new stuff yourself based of these selections too, and in the cases of the soundtrack stuff if you like what you hear make sure to check out the respective games too! And as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.
I know I bang on a bit about how old some parts of my collection are, waxing nostalgic about getting my lil mitts on anything electronic via limewire in the early 00's. But today's something I've been planning for a while: with all those anecdotes I don't have a solid date for when they first entered my library, there's been at least 3 PC rebuilds since then so "File Created:" is no good, but today's tale is a little different because I know exactly when I got it. November 2007.
It's hard to believe it's been a whole decade since Alive 2007 entered my life. Young Foxbat was a 13 year old high-school student who'd recently gotten together with his first proper girlfriend and was deep into rekindling his love for electronic music. And what a year I picked for it, 2007 was (and remains) and absolute scorcher for all things electric, and it should come as no surprise that Alive 2007 is one of the keystones of it. It's an absolute tour de force of the Punk's discography up until that point, using material from all their albums and a few extras. As seen here with the use of Busta Rhymes' Touch It, mashing it with Oh Yeah From Homework, then transitioning that into Technologic proper, garnished with oddly enough a small part of Voyager from Discovery. Typed out like that it sounds like a bit of a mess, but if for whatever reason you've never heard it before, trust me that it is nothing short of fantastic.
It's not ever a one off though, as immediately it's followed up with Television Rules The Nation with a touch of Around The World (and as the title says, Crecendolls later). One thing I've seen about Alive 2007 but never really understood is the people who say they didn't like Human After All until this album. I'll admit I'm a little biased as I was in the throes of an electro overload at the time but nothing much about the HAA songs is really changed on these early tracks so I never could understand it. That's not to say that these live versions aren't bloody fantastic regardless though. This is one of the tunes I use to test out new soundsystems, when the full grit of Television Rules The Nation comes in at 1:00 is pretty special.
Safe to say my little mind was pretty happy with the events up to this point, but the Punk weren't even close to started yet. This one marks the first appearance of some original accompaniment, the backbone of the entire song doesn't appear elsewhere on their discography (and came to be dubbed Aura Rock by the community IIRC), you can find a million and one re-creations and edits to remove the crowd sound on the 'net but I don't think it needs it personally. The album was up there to begin with, but this was setting it well on it's way to becoming a 10/10, I try not to swear too much on here but if you've never heard this I urge you to, for it's nothing short of fucking fantastic.
Not content with just that, the album rockets straight into the top 10 of all time with a live version of perhaps the two most famous Daft Punk songs to ever exist. Oddly enough it was also released as a single from the album, but the full fat one here beats the radio edit by a long way. If the last few tracks haven't convinced you yet, Alive 2007 is more than just a glorified Daft Punk DJ set with some extra stage design, It's just an absolute masterpiece, and a milestone for electronic live albums.
If I had it my way I'd do a full track-by-track breakdown but I don't fancy getting into yet another copyright headache, so skipping forward a little in the track-list to perhaps one of the more creative re-samples on the album, Face To Face here is backed with a cut & pitched up version of the vocals from Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, it even gets a little solo time to shine around 2 minutes in or so. It's not a floor shaker like the previous examples but it's still a damn fine listen. Oh, and the ending portion of Short Circuit is one of my favourite breaddowns/outros of all time, and it's put to masterful use here, I will never not love that slow decent into glitchy-ness.
I'm skipping a few more tunes to finish off (including the Aerodynamic/One More Time mash up, which is almost criminal). Instead I'm going to leave you with the Encore to the show,which does a fantastic job of summarising my initial point of it being one huge discography tour. The Encore starts off with a reprise of the Human After All motif from the very start of the album, incorporates some bits from Para One's remix of The Prime Time Of Your Life before adding the vocal hook from short lived Thomas Bangalter & DJ Falcon collab Together. It all goes off at 5:24 though in amazing fashion, if you're wondering why the crowd goes mental, here's a video of the light show at that time (this was before the Tron OST too!). AND THEN on top of that One More Time makes another appearance, and so does Stardust's Music Sounds Better With You to boot. Absolute perfection.
I'm in love with it still even after 10 years, the same can't be said of the girlfriend I had at the time though. I still can't really wrap my head around how long its been, safe to say a whole lot has changed but the album has always been a constant, and I'm showing no signs of getting tired of it anytime soon. Here's hoping I'll be back here in another 10 come 2027 to write about it's 20 year anniversary. Until then stay tuned, stay safe, and I'll see ya soon.
Trying to be a little more active on Spotify these days, I know it's a bit of a pisser that you can't listen to stuff if you don't have an accountand all but it's the best we've got since Grooveshark died off. Anyway, I took a spin down memory lane when I went poking around, as Rockstar conveniently have playlists for pretty every much radio station ever featured in GTA from III upwards. Naturally I have to give props to Electro Choc, which as you might've guessed from the name, was supremely my jam circa 2008. Just the preview window here has some prime electronic goodness of the era.
There's some stuff missing, and little niggling things like the mix of BTTTTRY not being the right one (and also a sub 1 minute version from some compilation too), but it's still a good dollop of both the original station from François K, and the extra tunes courtesy of Crookers from The Ballad Of Gay Tony. Takes me back to many a bleary eyed 6th form night, and I still know most of these by heart nigh on a decade later. Jumping back to the first point, before I go I'm trying out doing more Spotify curation in the near future, feel free to come check my playlists out, and get a load of my ever growing infinite "To Pickup" backlog.
Hello all. You know I don't often like to get real with you all but unfortunately now calls for some real talk. Those of you who've been with us for a while will notice that the site's been pretty much a skeleton crew of me, with Sulphites or occasionally Adam popping in. The long & short of it is that I'm starting to have trouble managing all the workings of running a music blog solo, and after a few calls for writers over the years have turned up empty I think it's time for a change in how we operate.
Chicote CFC - Polysemy (2017)
What I found out in the last post is that my old system of having the promos email forward to all the writers isn't ideal, I'd forgotten to clear it out in a few months so it plain stopped emailing us new stuff. So from no on if you're wanting to send something to me, you can do so via: My Twitter, my personal Gmail if you already have it (if not you can find it on the site, I try not to post it in case of spam crawlers).
I repeat, from this day forward the promos@ilictronix.com email will no longer be in use. see above for alternative modes of contact.
Right, now that unfortunate business is out of the way, let me get back to the tunes. Another lesson learned for me, I put off picking up the Old Future Fox Gang album when it was free, now it's disappeared off the face of the internet. Thankfully we have fan soundclouds to fill in the gap. I wasn't the hugest fan of the tunes that they had featured in Hotline Miami 2, but Don't Cry For Me really scratches my instrumental itch.
About a month ago the Ed Banger soundcloud started upping a bunch of older tunes for the upcoming 100 compilation. And among them was Sktesteak from Mr. Oizo's soundrack to his own film, I like to dig it out every once in a while because it never fails to transport me back to being a 16 year old Ed Banger fanboy. Other than than, it's Oizo doing what he does best circa 2007, which was a fantastic year for electro all 'round. That slowed down ending section is bloody fantastic every time.
I managed to somehow miss that MSTRKRFT did a new LP back in July. I mean, I knew they were back doin' stuff but there's been no real hints or anything, disogs even says it ain't out in non-promo form outside of Canada yet. So let's have an impromptu first Impressions / review thing shall we?
I'd heard a few people mention this one in looking up other impressions of it, and I was pleasantly surprised to be truthful. I'd only heard Little Red Hen off this thing, and that seemed to be an expansion on their occasional kinda minimal abrasive stuff as seen on Neon Knights and such. Runaway on the other hand, is pretty much the old MSTRKRFT formula updated to 2016, honestly it could almost be a lost remix from the blog house glory days, which makes it doubly surprising why I've heard nothing about it. And as much as I'd love an LP invoking the spirit of 2007, I'm also happy that they didn't do that, more on that next.
Party Line is more abstract than your usual MSTRKRFT affair for sure, and boy is it much more abrasive than even the hardest parts of The Looks or Fist Of God, and that ending is abrupt as can be. Despite not sounding much like their ususal output and me harping on about them no retreading ground, this one still sounds like it would be at home in some DJ sets from the time. Especially going by the Mr. Oizo bootlegs I have. Speaking of...
Oizo gives it the once over too, and does some harking back of his own with that drum loop taken straight from Lyn Collins's Think (About It), the end result sounding like an amalgamation of the sounds of Analog Worms Attack, Moustache (Half A Scissor) and Lambs Anger wrapped into one. It's a little on the short side and just kind of ends without any fanfare too. There's a bunch of remixes of the other tracks too, including a Juke style rework of Runaway from blog friend from way, way back The Phantom's Revenge, here's hoping that it gets a European release and that they get included, I remember we had to wait a long time to get Fist Of God over here so there's hope yet.
You;d think after 3 years of Uni and freelance I'd know a thing or two about making sure things get there on time, well it turns out I don't and I need to chase up Celadon City about a Q&A we had planned for yesterday but no matter. As compensation have a belated usual post in its place until I know what is even going on.
Trust as soon as I moan about my soundcloud feed not turning up anything good for the umpteenth time, it actually comes through. My buddy Abbrev. once again works up something with the slightly retro vibe, I can't fault it for much, if anything I want him to re-post it in 5 months or so and see if it catches the summer blogger's ears.
You all should be no stranger to the slightly sinister synthwave from Scattle by now. I don't know why I haven't thought to check if he had a soundcloud until now but hey ho. Get a load of this for your weekly fill of shamelessly retro sounds, this time with bonus Howie Scream samples.
It's not over yet though, while Scattle could easily be at home on a film soundtrack, Magic Sword take it in a slightly different direction. From what I've heard a fair few of their songs take a while to get going, but they do in spectacular fashion; layering on sounds until you end up with some hybrid synthwave come electro house anthem. It's pretty nice.
Looking to make space on my HDD I went looking for fat I could trim. There I discovered I've had a Hotline Miami Remix EP tucked away in my steam folder for months without me realising. Well I gave it a listen last night and thought I'd share some of it with you lot.
It doesn't take long for the signature Hotline Miami aesthetic to make an appearance, it's been a long time since I immersed myself in it's neon-soaked world of ultra-violence and the days where I would subsist on a heavy diet of strictly Electro House are long gone. But I'll be damned if the soundtrack isn't full of tracks like this that make me feel the way I used to back in those blog crawling days.
It's not long before the more surreal side of the Hotline rears itself though, though you probably already guessed from the title. Imagine if Mr. Oizo gave his twisted electro styling to the soundtrack of some 80's slasher flick and you're in the right ballpark in terms of sound. I'm not a fan of the kinda cliche air raid siren sample towards the end but even then it kinda works with the vibe, and the rest of the track doesn't put a foot wrong so I'll let it go.
Rounding it out with the last track (and my favourite of the bunch). It errs more on the side of the conventional 'outrun' sound that was big a while ago, and honestly could almost be a remix of Kavinsky circa Pacific Coast Highway in parts. Wouldn't say it necessarily fits the Hotline Miami theme woven throughout the others, but I can't fault Carpenter Brut's touches here, I must remember to keep tabs on what he's up to these days.
Hello again I am back with more soundcloud goodness, after getting off my bot and going diggin' instead of waiting for my feed to update like a blog scrub. So lets 'ave a lil look shall we?
Starting off with even more from our new Seattle buds the Jones', not too long off the heels of their last release and already we have more for our plates. Once again demoing their remarkable flexibility when it comes to production, compared the indie electronic vibes of the last release we covered, this one comes out swinging with the pounding 4/4's. Truth be told it reminds me of A:xus' Suite Disappointment, and that's perfect for me.
Simon Viklund's had plenty of his soundtrack work put here by me, but he also has a tiny soundcloud with a few tunes on it. While I do wish he'd use it more there is still quality stuff on it like this. The original The Mark could have been at home as much on the dancefloor as much as it was for heistin' to but Simon went ahead and made it even better anyway. It might not ever be finished, but it's tasty in its current state anyway.
Keeping with the Vidya theme, I've been meaning to delve into the world of Carpenter Brut thanks to the Hotline. And I've found a fresh take on the whole retrowave/synthwave/outrun or whatever they're calling it this week. It takes me back to when I first found Kavinsky a long time ago, Carpenter's breed of 80's meets Electro House combo is still exciting to me, 46 seconds in on this one never fails to get me every time.
The Icarus boys the FFRR people were so nice to tell me about back when have been on the up recently, not only did I see a poster for them playing in my hometown but in my inbox was their latest est courtesy of FFRR PR!
I think you can forgive me fr being skeptical at first seeing as we've seen so many promising electronic musicians go down the shitter after they get some popularity under their belt (such as Mr. C. Harris.). But like all I'd covered from them before it opens very strong indeed, a far cry from the ravey nostalgic piano stabs they were using before. This is also the first of theirs I've heard with an actual vocal accompaniment which again could have been hit or miss, I couldn't find a credit for whoever did the vocal here but it's one of the more unique ones I've heard in dance music for a while and compliments the track well. The track is excellently structed also, it's nice to see more artists breaking the 30-second-intro-then-drop rinse/repeat mold, and with it they've easily slotted another entry on my summer playlists.
