#14: Bounce - Calvin Harris ft. Kelis

Paolo asked me to rate this. While at first humbled (oh shut up, I totally was), I went about it in a calm and professional manner (oh shut up, I totally did) and gave it a calm and unbiased review (oh shut up, I totally did). I've used part of my Facebook review below.

I'll cut to the chase. The video's crap. It's better than a bunch of other videos I've seen. Anyway. About the song: if the portion between ~2'56" and ~3'11" was removed completely I'd rate it three, maybe four stars (out of five). As it stands I give it two at best - and that's generous - because that fifteen seconds is the epitome of what I hate in "house" music and it annoys me that Calvin Harris is pandering to the lowest common denominator. I usually respect him. Having said that, it's better than a bunch of other grungy electronic tracks that have been released lately, thinly disguised as "house". A good example is LMFAO. On a scale of one to "music that makes me melt because of its deliciousness", songs like the Party Rock Anthem score negative; Bounce is in danger of doing the same thing, simply because of the grungy little bit involved. Oh, Calvin Harris, please don't drop any more. Working with Dizzee Rascal is acceptable. Working with Akon is not. So at least you have that over David Guetta. (Yeah, having a go at David Guetta is getting boring. If he hasn't read this by now he probably never will.) But anyway. Bounce is decent. I like how it's not three-and-half minutes of crap. I don't like how it's three-and-half minutes. I like the depth that the music has. I don't like the fifteen seconds between ~2'56" and ~3"11. I like how it's not RnB despite the fact that the title sounds exactly like it. I don't like how overplayed it is. So, pretty much neutral. It won't go in my collection until those fifteen seconds are removed. Here. Have a grain of salt to go with that review.

#13: Dance Rock

Let's start with the catchy shit first, yeah? Then we can move on to the older stuff.

Number one is a reasonably new track, described to me as "reggae rock". Couldn't agree more. What I also agree with is the fact that Triple J played it the other day as my alarm and I recognised it immediately when Rach' played it in the car a few hours ago as a song that had been stuck in my head earlier that day. It's fucking catchy and I love it. And to think, I was going to hunt through my entire music collection (of nearly 9K songs) to hunt the thing down, and have it be a fruitless search. Contrary to Up Up Up, however, this song does belong in my collection. I'd say this is more dancy than reggae rock so I'd call it a hybrid. And I'd call it amazing. No, I don't suddenly like rock. No, I'm not suddenly about to move over to Mick Jagger. I just think that we should start respecting dancy and catchy tracks that are just totally awesome. I would go so far as to say that it deserves its own genre name. The next song fits right in, too:

This one is older. But not by much. I remember hunting this track down after December last year. Can't remember exactly when. But hey, they're from Ballarat and that's proof that Ballarat is so much better than my home town because this song is just as good. It ticks all my boxes. No mentioning the song title in the lyrics: tick. Upbeat, dancy beat combined with upbeat, dancy melody: tick. Two verses, two choruses: tick. Song evolves: tick. 3'16" length: OK, it's not perfect. But hell, a club remix wouldn't be too hard to sort out. I like it. And I also reckon it deserves a little more than "obscurity" from Australia, especially since they're a band called Gold Fields who come from the gold fields... wait, I SEE WHUT THEY DID THAR. Still, it's halfway rock and halfway dance and for some reason the two genres mesh really really well. And yes, I almost spelt "mesh" with an 'x'. "Mexh". Holy crap, I've invented a new word. And I wish I could invent songs like this, very similar example band:

Wait, it's wrong to call them an "example". These guys are the epitome of dancy rock. In fact, I'd say they almost pioneered it if I didn't know better. Alright, this wasn't exactly the best song to work with because it's more synth than guitar but my gods these guys are geniuses. (genii?) Apparently they're influenced by 80s disco. I can see that. Around 2'42" and onwards there's a few sounds and styles reminiscent of Vangelis (amazing pioneer) and that's probably one of the reasons I fell in love with this particular song. Also because the video features sports. And various sports. Not cricket though. I like cricket. And I like Cut Copy. Buy their albums. And enjoy your guide to dance rock, supplemented by this slightly more synthy but equally kickass band:

If you think that video is weird, you should see their stage show. If you think that video is cool, you should see their stage show. If you think that video is psychedelic, you should see their stage show. If you didn't like the video but still loved the song. you should see their stage show. If you hate this song, I challenge you to listen to Shempi and still claim you don't like them.

#12: CJ's Addictions 3

It's been a long time since new stuff's come out that is really decent so I'll fire away with some current addictions.

Oh man, D. Ramirez has a gift for electronic music. If you don't remember or know him, you will when you hear this (yes I gave you the instrumental version, if you don't like it you can suck my keyboard. Instrumental music is brilliant, which is a topic for another post). He remixed both these songs into awesomeness - I haven't heard Yeah Yeah's original but my gods did he make Lost so much better. I turned the original of Lost off after 25" because I just couldn't take another generic female vocalist over an upbeat dreamy almost-trancey tune, because that shit gets stale fast. Don't get me wrong, I find some of them decent. For about ten seconds. It sounds too much like September. And September sounds too much like Cascada. And Cascada sounds too much like September. I swear someone pushed Ctrl+C on one and carbon-copied the other with Ctrl+V. But yeah, D. Ramirez is incredible. Look up more of his stuff. A good place to start is his own track, the very cheeky La Discotek. If that's not your thing, hunt down his remix of Junk by Ferry Corsten and Guru.

Which leads me into something a little more obscure.

YES. I had to give you the full version. I posted this on Facebook with a comment to the effect of "Listen to it, love it, buy my book". It's a nice, dreamy-electro-without-being-dreamy-trance track. Ethereal. That's the word. It's not a clone of Robert Miles trying to screw dream-trance fans out of all their money (incidentally, Robert Miles as the pioneer was pretty awesome but the genre went downhill faster than an avalanche on heat) by just putting a few piano soundbites in the middle of an otherwise poorly-made trance beat. It's a song. The lyrics (although somewhat indecipherable) are really nice, especially for a male vocalist. His vocals on this song are the male equivalent of the female singer Kaskade normally collaborates with (whose name I can't recall right now). And Kaskade's stuff makes me melt faster than an avalanche on heat. I owe a lot to Zan Rowe (who, incidentally, doesn't know I exist) for playing this song on Triple J one morning, and waking me up in a good mood. She seems to have a knack for doing that - she woke me up with Street another morning. This morning, however, she gave me this:

I'm kinda disappointed by this song. Not because it's bad, but because of Flight Facilities' (somewhat small, but growing) fanbase. To "liberate" a quote from Yahtzee: unfortunately, Foreign Language is in the uncomfortable position of necessarily having to be compared to Crave You. Crave You exploded and Foreign Language has to live up to that. Having said that, Foreign Language is exactly what I've been craving (excuse the pun) since Crave You came out: another decent throwback to when EDM was actually good: 1977 (when Jean-Michel Jarre released Oxygéne) to 2009 (when David Guetta switched sides). I place Foreign Language somewhere in the late 1980s, maybe early 1990s. Now that EDM is all commercial and shit, the lowest common denominator has been satisfied but music snobs like me aren't. Alright, some of it's good (if about 15 seconds were cut out of Bounce by Calvin Harris and... whoever the hell did the vocals, it would be on this blog). Some of it's good (Swedish House Mafia and Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, for example. Oh, and Example are OK, too). Some of it's fantastic (Aston Shuffle WOOOOO! Bag Raiders WOOOOO! Bloody Beetroots WOOOOO!). But a lot of it is (quoting Bernard Black) tossycock. Bring us back to proper EDM before all this grungy shit came along. You producers were Doing It Right for over thirty years and in the last two and a bit you've killed my faith in EDM ever becoming a hit. Flight Facilities are taking a step in the right direction with both songs. Hell, they're taking a giant leap in the right direction. Hopefully it'll catch on and pretty soon EDM will become the avalanche on heat that my naïve teenaged self predicted some eight years ago.

#11: A Thing For Me - Metronomy

Before I begin, I'm going to put it out there: this song is average. It's not rap, it's not hiphop, it's not metal, it's not music that makes you deaf. It's freaky, bleepy electronica, and I find it an average song. So there.

The song is still well and truly worth a mention purely because of the video. OK, at first it looks like a really crappy karaoke song - even worse, if the band are there playing/singing, because I absolutely detest music videos that do all that boring crap - but hell, at ~0'15" things start taking an interesting turn, and ten seconds later comes the SHAZAM moment when you realise that this could be kinda cool. Even better is at ~0'40" when the puns start and ~1'30" when they get even better. This almost matches the Treadmill Video in terms of sheer brilliance. Almost. Except it doesn't. Because the Treadmill Video has a better song accompanying it. But not by much. It's like comparing a cocktail to an identical cocktail, except with an umbrella.

If you're looking for a better version of the song, try the Breakbot remix. If you're looking for a better video, try the original. Hell, I want to see the original video chopped and changed to fit in with the Breakbot remix. Somebody do it. I don't have the software, expertise, schedule, or motivation. I'm lazy. And I'll lazily move on to my next glow(er)ing review. (I'm currently aiming my gunsights at the Black Eyed Peas.)

#10: Swoon - The Chemical Brothers

A word about remixes. A lot of people don't like them because they wreck all that is good and holy about the original (if the original was good, or holy for that matter). Still more say that the remixers have absolutely no creativity and pretty much steal the idea from the original. Nothing could be further from the truth. A remix is the vision of two different artists meshed together to create something different altogether. Maybe the artists have similar tastes, maybe they don't. Either way, it's refreshing to see something a little bit different to the same sort of crap that some artists chuck out. And speaking of crap, here is our case in point (which is anything BUT crap):

The original version of Swoon by the Chemical Brothers. Quick review: it's a pretty epic song. There. Easy. The only thing easier would be reviewing Angger Dimas' stuff: with a few exceptions, most of his songs can be described with four-letter words. But anyway. Below is the Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas remix:

Here is the Boys Noize "Summer" remix:

And finally, this is the Don Diablo remix:

Hopefully you can see the obvious and not-so-obvious differences between the four tracks. My humble (I swear!) opinion is that the Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas remix is a little more average than the original, while the Boys Noize remix is stellar. The Don Diablo remix is a little more akin to the original than the others - in fact, it sounds very much like a broken version of the original. Each one has its pros and cons and each and every single one is a good song. As I said before, they're hybrids of the creative geniuses of the Chemical Brothers and the songs' respective remixers. Note that I'm admittedly biased towards Boys Noize (because Boys Noize kick arse).

I'll start with the Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas remix. Compared to the others (and the original), it has more of a Flight Facilities-esque chilled electro house beat to it. One could be forgiven initially for thinking that the original was an acoustic track and that Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas just chucked an electro beat behind it, stirred it up, and let it loose. Clearly that's not the case. It's much like chilled - almost deep - house of yesteryear than the electric guitar hit that the original is. Mind, that's like comparing apples (the original) to orange juice with ice and a fancy glass and those cute little umbrellas you get in cocktails, served freshly squeezed on a beach in Hawaii during a cloudless 28°C (~82°F) sunset (the remix). I love orange juice. Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas have taken the song down a couple of notches, but since "down" is "downtempo" rather than "negative" I'd say they did a pretty good job, but overall I rate the song NSFP (not suitable for parties).

And now I get to rip the Boys Noize remix to shreds. The problem is... I can't actually sink my claws into it. The song is an amazing standalone song, and if I didn't know it was a remix I wouldn't believe it if you told me, even if you were strapped to a lie detector. The only real complaint I've heard comes from a friend, who reckons the buildup at the start is a little more, erm, unimpressive. That said, it redeems itself (he continued) by building it up to something a little more epic. Boys Noize didn't wreck the song (he continued further) - they built their own magic on to an already amazing song. To that statement (my turn, finally), I completely agree. Having heard the remix before the original, however, as I said I'm somewhat biased towards the Boys Noize remix. Having said that, it's very hard for me to imagine anything better than the end of this song to end an album. Bliss.

Finally, the Don Diablo remix. I confess I know very little about Don Diablo and I knew even less about the remix before I wrote this post (I've actually written this over a span of six days, thanks largely to lack of sleep and fucking uni schedules) but I found it when I was searching YouTube for the other three videos. Originally it sounds like a damaged version of the original, but oh my various gods¹ does it redeem itself beautifully. It seems to have been created as less of a party song and more of an energiser (a pre-song to go with the pre-drinks, if you will) but, again, I'd personally use it as a night-ender rather than a night-starter. Either way, I can't pick a style of house for this song. It seems to be a mishmash of three or four different styles - it starts out as almost grungy house (think LMFAO) but it develops into... what? Something. Something that pleases my aural canal. (If that's even a technical phrase.) I would play this over and over if I was a DJ. But I'm not, so I'll settle for casual listening, because unfortunately I can't see this remix becoming a sound of Melbourne any time soon.

Sing with me! Just remember to fall in love, there's nothing else...

#9: Remember Me?

Time for three in a row again. This time, it's the history of a song I've been liking for a while.

I'm sure you recognise this one for two or three reasons if you're an Australian with decent music tastes. More than likely you've somehow heard the original, or you've heard the sampling done by Ghostface Killah. Jazz to rap. Erk. But the main one I'm talking about is the sampling done for a 1997 acid jazz one-hit-wonder that turned into an Australian megahit ten years afterwards. Remember this? It's the one who had your babies. (And I want its babies.)

This is my favourite out of all three. Though I don't completely agree with sampling, on the basis that it's not originality, this could almost be considered a remix. It's fun. And it's another Melbourne night song. I was first introduced to this by an acid jazz fan and I haven't looked back. In fact, I put this in my Melbourne mix.

Acid jazz. It's a genre not too many people have heard of, and those who have are more obscure than Amy Winehouse Insane Clown Posse. Basically, acid jazz is NOT a fusion of acid and jazz. That would be silly. Acid jazz is probably more akin to jazz fusion than acid, because acid is just... mindblowing. And not in a good way. It's like receiving a blowjob when you don't want one. I only say that because the word "blow" has been put into my head. But there is a reason for it: it's good, but you don't want it to last too long, otherwise your head will explode from the paradox. Acid is something I'll save for another day, with an artist like A*S*Y*S who probably deserves some kind of entry here. But acid jazz is beautiful. It's stuff that should be listened to after 10:30pm, and perhaps even after a night out. If you're the kind of person who doesn't go straight to bed after a night out on the town, but prefers instead to listen to some kind of music (yes, I am one of those people. Yes, I have a playlist of such music. Yes, I listen to it. No, I'm not a freak. I know others who do that) then acid jazz is a really good option.

Enough about acid jazz and more about Remember Me. I like it for its simplicity and possibly its similarity to classic house (when HOUSE was HOUSE and all that crap that some day you'll hate me for saying). Not necessarily for its samplee, because I never liked soul/rhythm and blues. Respected, but not liked. Still, I suppose I should respect Woman Of The Ghetto for giving us a song by Blueboy. On the other hand, this was released in response:

Tame Impala shoulda quit while they were ahead with Sundown Syndrome and Solitude Is Bliss (yes, I know Solitude Is Bliss came after this. No, I'm not going to change that sentence). Those were good songs. This isn't. Apart from being a cover of a sample, they sped up the original so that they could fit in a dozen more iterations of "Remember me? I'm the one who had your babies" and five dozen more scats. And scat is about right for this song. Making a song more repetitive is not cool. You're already showing a lack of creativity by making a cover, now you're doing it even more by adding the same shit over and over? That makes the song, as a whole, about as interesting as a hole. Saying something five times is enough. Taking the extra thirty seconds to add another seventeen repetitions is boring and you're probably already sick of it. Not only that, but you're focussing on the instrument with possibly the most dischord in your entire arsenal: your voice. At least you're keeping on key, but my gods, you're making a pretty cool song sound bland. Seriously, if you're going to cover a song, do it well. There's only a small handful of covers I can genuinely say I like. One of them cuts out lyrics entirely. Seriously, Tame Impala, stick to songs like Sundown Syndrome, because that song makes you sound like the Beatles. I didn't like the Beatles' music but I respected it, and I will give you good points for sounding like them.

#8: CJ's Addictions 2

Your face when you realised this was in my collection:

For some reason when it came on the airwaves it resonated through my body, despite the fact that it's rap/hiphop. I'm told that the main reason is because it's an electronic song if you strip away the rap in the foreground. Yes, true, but the same can be said about the most disgusting RnB/hiphop songs that are hitting mainstream radio stations even as I write this post. Just because it's got a few bells and whistles doesn't mean it's a good song (yes, David Guetta, that means you too). In fact, I'm even less likely to like the mass-produced garbage that it is, so that makes this song almost literally a diamond in the rough.

I suppose what I like about it is that it's not a stereotypical song that either trash-talks someone (or a group of people), doesn't have the words "fuck" or "nigga" or "bitch" or "DAYYYYYYYUM" in it (though it does make copious references to fairy tales), and actually evolves. It's also damn catchy, has a little more substance than just beep and bass, and sounds like a Melbourne night. Alright, maybe not a typical Melbourne night, but my Melbourne night. Idealism FTW!

Speaking of Melbourne nights, that's the theme as I carry on to Crave You.

Dayyyyyyyum, unfortunately this version isn't the full version (only the radio edit) but all you really miss is a bit of fluff that DJs use to mix songs into and out of this song. Every other element is there - the minimalistic synths that manage to avoid being beep and bass, evolution of the music over time to a resounding climax, and the lyrics - oh, the lyrics! - that resonate with me so much, especially during my high school years. The only difference was that everyone didn't stare at me. I stared at her and I simply wanted her more because she looked the other way. The song is a very charming observation about humanity, if purely because of that one line. Perhaps that's why I love it. It's so easy to grab some delicious "Gem Lines" out of it. In fact, the line "I simply want him more because he looks the other way" is deserving of one of my Gem Line awards - the first for this blog. Another one (which I can't award here as I haven't reviewed its parent song) is the rather accidental "everybody wants somebody everybody wants" from a Kid Sister song. I might chuck it up here at some stage, who knows. But at the moment, I'm sticking with Crave You - a song that's a year old but still reminds me of the room in which I first heard it, at night time. Love it. Seriously, love it. And love Giselle Rosselli's voice.

Finally, here's one without a voice.

I discovered Dewdrops when I was listening to an album full of morning psy, at some stage in 2009/10 (can't remember now). Perhaps it's not morning psy, or even psy (I'd go so far as to lump it in under house or dream trance, perhaps). Either way, it's delicious. And it's Vibrasphere. Ooh boy, do I love Vibrasphere. Not just because of the really funky name ("VIBRASPHERE"! Who comes up with this gold nuggets?) but because of the really kickass songs, most (if not all) of which have absolutely no vocals to get in the road of a really class-act... erm, act. I'd also hugely recommend Follow Me, Erosion, Autumn Lights (ooh baby! I wet myself with delight when my iPod shuffles onto that song), Morning Breeze, Forever Imaginary (Owl City should put some lyrics to that song...), and Seven Days To Daylight. Vibrasphere know how to tickle my fancy, by a long way. Light, fluffy soundscapes that, while they're not necessarily going to make it huge (even on Triple J or even Rage), still take me away to my private little fantasy world and love me in almost every way possible. They don't over-emphasise bass, percussion or... anything, really. The music is subtle. Dewdrops (a collaboration with Ticon) is sublime in that sense - a shining example of why I love morning psy. Too bad Vibrasphere have split up. Oh well. Legacy time!