Okay, child number two has arrived so it’s time for a retrospective – some stuff you might have missed from last year that I am just catching up on.
One for you lovers of esoteric high energy dance music a la KLF – South Central.
They have capes and cowls but lack names and have collected all their recent singles onto one crunchy little albumette for your delectation and it’s a pretty joyful collection, if outshone for me by one track that is a cover for that.
Adopting a very late eighties early nineties rave style, ‘Owl’ is full of high energy retro electronica that crunches synthy sine waves and piles on the beats. It’s like listening to a CD of remixes of olds tunes you know given a shoulder-padded cyber punk spin especially on ‘Golden Dawn’ which sounds like a Justice chop job.
There’s definitely a love of that era though – it’s not just some pre-emptive 80′s/90′s revival. Art of Noise rubs up to 808 State in ‘Castle of Heroes’, The Egg gets scrambled in Aeon, ‘Doll’ lifts a riff from Phil Collins (of all people) and sodomises it into acceptability. You’ve heard bits of these things, but not so crispy, not so digitally – it’s like hearing your childhood quantified. Which can be very scary.
But there is something that is most definitely old school and wonderful. Josh Wink’s ‘Higher State of Consciousness’ took off in 1995 with its spiralling synths that made ears bleed and beats that jacked into your very soul and I am pleased to say that it sounds just as good today… done by South Central. The drop in is massively beligerent, the noise tops out at the point of climax… sure, it’s a cover, sure, it’s Watchman faithful and sure ti doesn’t really do them any good, but… you gotta just listen to it and think glow sticks, Global Hyper Colour, Vicks Vapour Rub… we all pretend to be a bit more sophisticated now.
Essentially its good, but as I said it gets overshadowed. Maybe they should have lifted sections from ‘Higher State’ rather than doing it straight, but I think their respect and treatemtn of the ahem source material will make them an interesting prospect as remixers if nothing else.
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