May 26, 2014

Finding healthy pop wheat amid the pop forest fire of, um, doom


THE PLAN.

The plan: find something positive to say about the charts. Music that may be derivative but it's done in a nice way and doesn't carry the baggage of a mysogynistic or gun-addled video.

The result: quite difficult. I think Coldplay's new electronic direction is welcome, but I'm never going to post something by them because it's still like listening to a squeezed dishcloth. And the chart is full of older stuff, like Duke Dumont and Avicii in the mid-range and the likes of Busted and Shaggy near the bottom.

I found four. There's a decent Lana Del Ray remix knocking about somewhere, but I couldn't spot it on YouTube. So...

THE RESULT.

- Kiesza's Hideaway, a snappy 90s house track with some proper Strings of Life synth stabs bubbling under the surface;

- Route 94's My Love, a hypnotic house meditation with choppy pianos and a gorgeous arpeggio throughout, let down by a poor video;

- Klangkarussell's Sonnentanz, with its filtered synth motif, layered vocals and sax parps that are so crap they're probably good;

- Clean Bandit's Extraordinary, a band that used to me more interesting, but this fluff has some nicely executed production. Only just made the list.







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