It’s interesting what time period we allow for different media to be reviewed before the review becomes out of date. By ‘we’, I guess I mean myself here… The point being, I wouldn’t really feel bothered about posting a write-up of an album that was released however long ago, but I’d consider actually abandoning a live review (and have done so), or in this case a piece on a club night, after the passage of a certain amount of time. The main reason I’ve been putting it off is that while writing parts I & II shortly after the event, I was aiming to evoke the feel of the night itself rather than just describing songs from kicking_k & nikon driver’s sets one by one. Which is what these last parts feel like.
Then again, I don’t know why I’m even trying to avoid that fate, considering that in an ideal world (the one in which I blog every thing I want or intend to, when I intend to), I’d probably end up writing individual little pieces for about half these songs anyway. So here we go. Consider this a well-timed promo for Friday’s IT CAME FROM THE SEA#07, which I will almost certainly be at.
ICFTS#06 recap, part 3: the beats behind the beats
part 1
part 2
Missy Elliott, ‘Slide’ – I thought I’d lost my copy of Under Construction less than a month after buying it, but then – more than six months later – I found it in another CD case the other night. This was the track I was really missing, easily the best thing on that album and one of the finest, most unstoppable Missy/Timbaland beats to date. It just sounds so… heavy, the weight of the bass hitting the dancefloor and then lifting your ass up and dropping it down again – GUH-DUNKA-DUNK-DUNK, yes yes.
My friend Tom has a theory that New Romantic died the same day that ‘The Reflex’ by Duran Duran went in at Number One in the charts. I can’t help but suspect that Zoot Woman’s ’Living In A Magazine’ is a bridge too far in trying to go back to the heady days before this watershed. Sure, it’s undeniably successful in evoking an aesthetic, and the hook in the chorus has a certain charm. But I smell the bad kind of retro here, people, I smell nostalgia and irony, which is as annoying when practiced by hipsters as by people at a hilariously ‘wacky’ 80s night complete with disco wigs and medallions. Just a small rumble of dissent here.
Blur, ‘Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club’: I would hate to have been on the wrong part of a drug ride when this came on. It sounds strung-out, paranoid, it’s just NOT RIGHT. But you have to admire the chutzpah of a DJ willing to play a song built around the lyric “Why am I here? I’m here because I’ve got no fucking choice!” – the same kind of perverse, cheeky sentiment that inspires the very disco DJ driver to use the sound of a crowd chanting “Disco sucks! Disco sucks!” between songs, and to join in, encouraging the ICFTS punters down the front to do so too…
…Only to drop something as deliriously populist and danceable as ‘Crazy In Love’ one song later. I’m not sure I can find anything to say about this song that hasn’t been said already; more to the point, I’m not sure there were ever very many words as such to say about it. Whoops and cheers are more appropriate, hands thrown up in the air, the word “yes!” called out with conviction. Which is what we get tonight. (Footnote: I think my exposure to this song has finally reached saturation point – like that feeling you get when you’ve eaten too much chocolate. But it took a while, a long while.)
’Popular Thug’ by Nas & Kelis - what’s interesting about this song is how it plays with the knowledge that many listeners will have about the relationship between the two performers. They’re playing roles, and we know it, but the question that raises is the one continually raised by hip-hop: how much of the persona Nas projects is fictional, given that there are at least some elements of the ‘real’ here. They’re a ‘real’ couple, they’re really engaged (whether with as expensive a ring as Nas refers to or not), but it’s hard to believe that Kelis’ position here - the girl who falls for the bad guy – is how she really sees their relationship.
All very interesting, but to be honest this didn’t occur to me on the night – I just heard those tell-tell Neptunes keyboard patches, and had to work it. And has there ever been a more fucking accurate a metaphor for losing your judgment when you fancy someone than “[you] make my record skip”?
The Rapture, ‘I Need Your Love’ - I heard this in the toilets and thought: “Quick, get back on the dancefloor before everyone else does!” Their album came out this week y’know. And if Echoes flip-flops between the rock and disco halves of the collective Rapture hivemind, this is one extreme. It doesn’t sound like ‘indie dance’. It just sounds like dance. The vocals: uplifting! The minor key bleeping: classic! The saxophone: redeemed! If this isn’t the next single, then someone is insane, because it will in all likelihood send them stratospheric. Quick, get into them now before everyone else does!
Arthur Argent, ‘Hold Your Head Up (Soulwax Rmx)’. Last time, I noticed how this song served as an anthem for a certain group of – call ‘em what you will: hipsters, beautiful weirdoes, freaks. They mouth along to it and pump their fists in the air as it builds and builds. Tonight, it’s my anthem too, and I’m doing the same. Don’t ever let them know.
Speaking of anthems…
‘Guitar Anthem’ by Chicks On Speed featuring Peaches: this was number one on my current list of “OHMIGOD I have to own this!” tracks (a list which I always seem to have after an ICFTS night) for about two months. Isn’t it great when you know the moment you first hear a song that it’s the one you’ve been reading about and dying to hear? And you knew it was always going to be great, but it’s even better than that… This is the record that joins the dots between the current ‘nu’ iterations of riot grrl and electro and punk rock and synth pop… I spent much of the Saturday and Sunday after ICFTS#06 barking “We don’t play guitars!” at random people, and have been doing so at intervals ever since. This is the bastard daughter of ‘Walk This Way’ and ‘LT Tour Theme’. This is intelligence and stupidity, this is deadly serious comedy, this is a treatise on cultural attitudes to gender, technology and the myth of ‘musicianship’ in rock… This is a manifesto you can dance to (yes, again). This is an instant classic, 100% anthem as it is, but the finishing stroke of genius is the inclusion of Peaches’ appropriately contrary and combative guest verse: “C-o-S may not play guitars, but uh, P-E-A-C-H-E-S plays guitar… I play guitar… and I love it!”
Okay, final part of this in less than 24 hours…
Then again, I don’t know why I’m even trying to avoid that fate, considering that in an ideal world (the one in which I blog every thing I want or intend to, when I intend to), I’d probably end up writing individual little pieces for about half these songs anyway. So here we go. Consider this a well-timed promo for Friday’s IT CAME FROM THE SEA#07, which I will almost certainly be at.
ICFTS#06 recap, part 3: the beats behind the beats
part 1
part 2
Missy Elliott, ‘Slide’ – I thought I’d lost my copy of Under Construction less than a month after buying it, but then – more than six months later – I found it in another CD case the other night. This was the track I was really missing, easily the best thing on that album and one of the finest, most unstoppable Missy/Timbaland beats to date. It just sounds so… heavy, the weight of the bass hitting the dancefloor and then lifting your ass up and dropping it down again – GUH-DUNKA-DUNK-DUNK, yes yes.
My friend Tom has a theory that New Romantic died the same day that ‘The Reflex’ by Duran Duran went in at Number One in the charts. I can’t help but suspect that Zoot Woman’s ’Living In A Magazine’ is a bridge too far in trying to go back to the heady days before this watershed. Sure, it’s undeniably successful in evoking an aesthetic, and the hook in the chorus has a certain charm. But I smell the bad kind of retro here, people, I smell nostalgia and irony, which is as annoying when practiced by hipsters as by people at a hilariously ‘wacky’ 80s night complete with disco wigs and medallions. Just a small rumble of dissent here.
Blur, ‘Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club’: I would hate to have been on the wrong part of a drug ride when this came on. It sounds strung-out, paranoid, it’s just NOT RIGHT. But you have to admire the chutzpah of a DJ willing to play a song built around the lyric “Why am I here? I’m here because I’ve got no fucking choice!” – the same kind of perverse, cheeky sentiment that inspires the very disco DJ driver to use the sound of a crowd chanting “Disco sucks! Disco sucks!” between songs, and to join in, encouraging the ICFTS punters down the front to do so too…
…Only to drop something as deliriously populist and danceable as ‘Crazy In Love’ one song later. I’m not sure I can find anything to say about this song that hasn’t been said already; more to the point, I’m not sure there were ever very many words as such to say about it. Whoops and cheers are more appropriate, hands thrown up in the air, the word “yes!” called out with conviction. Which is what we get tonight. (Footnote: I think my exposure to this song has finally reached saturation point – like that feeling you get when you’ve eaten too much chocolate. But it took a while, a long while.)
’Popular Thug’ by Nas & Kelis - what’s interesting about this song is how it plays with the knowledge that many listeners will have about the relationship between the two performers. They’re playing roles, and we know it, but the question that raises is the one continually raised by hip-hop: how much of the persona Nas projects is fictional, given that there are at least some elements of the ‘real’ here. They’re a ‘real’ couple, they’re really engaged (whether with as expensive a ring as Nas refers to or not), but it’s hard to believe that Kelis’ position here - the girl who falls for the bad guy – is how she really sees their relationship.
All very interesting, but to be honest this didn’t occur to me on the night – I just heard those tell-tell Neptunes keyboard patches, and had to work it. And has there ever been a more fucking accurate a metaphor for losing your judgment when you fancy someone than “[you] make my record skip”?
The Rapture, ‘I Need Your Love’ - I heard this in the toilets and thought: “Quick, get back on the dancefloor before everyone else does!” Their album came out this week y’know. And if Echoes flip-flops between the rock and disco halves of the collective Rapture hivemind, this is one extreme. It doesn’t sound like ‘indie dance’. It just sounds like dance. The vocals: uplifting! The minor key bleeping: classic! The saxophone: redeemed! If this isn’t the next single, then someone is insane, because it will in all likelihood send them stratospheric. Quick, get into them now before everyone else does!
Arthur Argent, ‘Hold Your Head Up (Soulwax Rmx)’. Last time, I noticed how this song served as an anthem for a certain group of – call ‘em what you will: hipsters, beautiful weirdoes, freaks. They mouth along to it and pump their fists in the air as it builds and builds. Tonight, it’s my anthem too, and I’m doing the same. Don’t ever let them know.
Speaking of anthems…
‘Guitar Anthem’ by Chicks On Speed featuring Peaches: this was number one on my current list of “OHMIGOD I have to own this!” tracks (a list which I always seem to have after an ICFTS night) for about two months. Isn’t it great when you know the moment you first hear a song that it’s the one you’ve been reading about and dying to hear? And you knew it was always going to be great, but it’s even better than that… This is the record that joins the dots between the current ‘nu’ iterations of riot grrl and electro and punk rock and synth pop… I spent much of the Saturday and Sunday after ICFTS#06 barking “We don’t play guitars!” at random people, and have been doing so at intervals ever since. This is the bastard daughter of ‘Walk This Way’ and ‘LT Tour Theme’. This is intelligence and stupidity, this is deadly serious comedy, this is a treatise on cultural attitudes to gender, technology and the myth of ‘musicianship’ in rock… This is a manifesto you can dance to (yes, again). This is an instant classic, 100% anthem as it is, but the finishing stroke of genius is the inclusion of Peaches’ appropriately contrary and combative guest verse: “C-o-S may not play guitars, but uh, P-E-A-C-H-E-S plays guitar… I play guitar… and I love it!”
Okay, final part of this in less than 24 hours…
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