ICFTS#06 recap, part 4: an advanced move or two, dedicated to you

A.K.A.: ‘Half a dozen of The Other’.

We pick up, then, near the beginning of what was probably the finest set I’ve heard at ICFTS to date. I should say for balance that my favourite sets often end up being be nikon’s, just because we seem to obsess about the same songs at the same time, and I should also point out that since this was probably the most successful, joyous ICFTS to date, I have no doubt that whichever of the dynamic duo DJ-ed for the final slot would have risen to the occasion. It just happened to be kick who rose to the occasion.

‘Killer Shower’ - Adamski vs. Felix Da Housecat. I don’t really have anything to say about this record other than it is what it is: Miss Kittin rhyming “magazine” with “shower scene” over an instrumental of ‘Killer’. Exactly as good, and as limited, as that sounds. It’s dancefloor filler in the sense that after an amazing tune (‘Guitar Anthem’) you shift down a gear and sustain movement while you wait for the next REALLY exciting record to drop. Look out, here it comes!

‘Rich’ – Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The last time the boys played this, I may have gone a little mental. Actually, it could have been the last three times. Okay, look, so sometimes I go a little when I’m walking down the street and this comes on my discman, but anyway, this is one of those songs that just takes on a whole new brilliant dimension, when it’s heard LOUD at about 1.30am in a club. It’s all about the way that sampled loop of guitar zones you out, the way the beat drops in, followed by Karen O’s vocal. It makes you dance in a drugged zombie shuffle, only [insert cliché about music as drugs here]. Then you explode into frenetic spastic lunacy during the anti-chorus. Then you settle back into a blissfully monotonous groove as Karen intones the coda “rich rich rich, richrichrich” forever and ever…

One of things I like about the Yeahs is that I suspect I would have liked them when I was 17, or 21, as much as I like them now. I would probably have danced in exactly the same way in a shabby Midlands indie night in 1996 as I did tonight [1] – I would probably have reacted the exact same way when I recognised the start of the song, which is to say start bouncing up and down and yelping. And I’ll do the same if they play it tonight [2].

Scissor Sisters - ’Electrobix’. The more devoted followers of this blog, if they exist, may remember that around a month and a half ago I repeatedly promised to deliver a rant about not only the brilliance of the Scissor Sisters, but also the political implications of their existence, using Electric Six’s ‘Gay Bar’ as a point of contrast. One reason this has been delayed is that my opinion of the latter track has been slowly eroded: it seems churlish to argue with ‘Gay Bar’ at this stage (I won’t rest until I hear the cover by Peaches though). But I’ve also had difficulty putting into words what makes ‘Electrobix’ so great. Is it the way it matches content to form? The way it works in lyrics that are funny as fuck but still ends up being incredibly desperate and sad, and, AND euphoric and uplifting and bitchy and and and… I dunno, maybe there are no words, just dancing. Do you sense a theme here?

So as for ’Human Fly’ by Sonovac, go read what I say about this song here. Add ridiculous dancefloor action and stir.

Gold Chains - ‘Rock The Parti’: and the crowd goes wild. Really mental. It’s like someone said: “I wouldn’t know how to dance to this song, I’d just have to hurl myself around the room”. I first heard ‘Rock The Parti’ more than a year ago – actually, it may be closer to two years now – and I remember thinking how ideal it was to be played at the right moment at the coolest party in the world. It had to wait a while, but I was right. Cometh the hour, cometh the joycore anthem. Like lasers, baby… and we know you like it like that.

The Make-Up’s cover of ‘Hey Joe’ rounds things off – another great choice, because it gives people the chance to cool down for a moment, maybe slow dance (and we do, me and Red), before it builds back up into a fuzzy, chaotic climax. The lights are coming up now and there’s talk of afterparties (after the show it’s…), and trips to the beach. Later I will end up wandering the town and sleeping in a car for an hour, but for now, all is dream…

And that’s how it ends. Until we return to begin again…

COME OUT 2NITE!

Notes:

[1] = time of dancing.
[2] = time of writing.

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…

Don't blame me for the lack of updates: I wrote something great about that !!! song and Blogger fuckin' ate it, the one time I hadn't saved something like that in Word. Gah.

Go read Freaky Trigger's latest Focus Group in the meantime.

(Oh, except I also lost a shout-out to Flux for the music, and one to Red for being a good cook and just generally marvellous. Here y'go.)