Dance music: it's all so wrong

I've recently come to the realisation of how wrong I am about everything. Literally everything. Even this paragraph. It's so wrong.

The wrongest I've ever been is about the 1989 house humpathon French Kiss by Lil Louis. I hated the track when it first came out. Why was that woman moaning all over the record? Was she hurt?

Of course, now I recognise its place in history. Dance music was exploring its sexuality alongside some innovative tempo changes. And actually, it's a cracking tune.

I also remember hating Snap's The Power on first listen. How could something so discordant get to number one? It's all wrong. I felt offended by it: triggered before 'being triggered' was even a thing.

Naturally, I fell in love with the track: a dominating dance music classic. I was simply puzzled by the clash between the robust bad-boy rap, the jingling electro beat sampled from Doug Lazy's Let It Roll, and a whole bunch of chords that came in at different angles.

I now realise that a lot of the best stuff is slightly off: clashy is good.

And now something at the other end of the tonal scale: Air's Sexy Boy. So much cheese. So much soft cheese. Why would anyone like this?!

I have since awoken to the sexy reality that Air's particular brand of spreadable sandwich filling was incredibly tasty, and I inserted, hur hur, the Moon Safari album into my CD player over and over again - until way past its use-by date.

Three different examples in the dance music world. My reaction to those tracks was so negative, viscerally so. And yet I came to love them, and each one helped define my musical world.

What are YOUR hate-then-love tracks? Tracks (or artists) which infuriated or baffled you, but then you somehow fell for their charms in a big way?







Further Fats: Chosen Words: R is for Rhythm (2010)

Further Fats: Sexy words - an infographic (2014)

Shut up, just shut up, shut up, shut up, just shup up, shut up

Will you please, please just shut up?

Some people need to learn less is more. One of those people is Tim Exile (photo: Stephen Pariah), whose new album Listening Tree is out in a week or two.

Exile, when he was just known as Exile, had a fearful reputation as a god of techno. Debut album Pro Agonist raged with killer snares and beat-pummelling Squarepusher-ness.

Fast forward to 2009, and Tim Exile's Listening Tree is crammed with bizarre rants about spiders webs (When Every Day's A Number) and one-way streets (Bad Dust). The "dreams of a lifetime wrapped in plastic" line on Carouselle is pure Mighty Boosh.

Squish the fussy vocals underfoot, and Listening Tree is beautiful, intricate, thrilling and theatrical. I just wish he would tone it down. The analogue ferocity is here, but it's on a leash and it's wearing those annoying white glasses worn by people like Sam Sparro.

Another album now. And just to show I'm over my grouchiness I displayed on Sunday, let me be sparkly and fairy-like for a moment.

Röyksopp's Junior is a magical world of glittering synthesisers and heavenly vocals. It chuckles where other albums growl, and soars o'er melody and harmony where other albums grate and scrape.

The album is as middle-of-the-road as you'd expect from the Bergen boys, and it is all yay-and-light where Exile is boo-and-dark. But the production is as pristine as Exile's in its own way: it sweeps you up on a giddy, unscary rollercoaster especially designed for princesses.

For example, the sawing synth line on third track Vision One is the most delightful thing I've heard for ages. I could just do without the Air-style cutesy vocals.  Which, of course, brings me back to the theme of this post...

Gardener's fingernails, tubed Somerville, and James at war

My recent post about unearthed goodies from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop brought to mind an album by Black Devil which was lost for over 25 years before having the dust blown off by Rephlex.

That album was Disco Club (in 2004 I think), and since then the duo have renamed themselves Black Devil Disco Club and released several more albums. The latest, Eight Oh Eight (pictured), has just come out so I thought I'd write up a little review, bury it, and have it dug up in two decades by a trenchcoated man with cruddy fingernails.

Eight Oh Eight is a touch disappointing. Opening track With Honey Cream sounds like Jimmy Somerville in a tube. But then it all begins to sound like Jimmy Somerville in a tube, with pure high energy disco funnelled through an increasingly wacky range of effects like flanged beats and robotic vocals.

I'm a sucker for the Air-esque cheesiness that Black Devil have plumped for, but I can see how the cheese could grate. The bongos and whistles on at least a couple of the tracks (Open The Night and Never No Dollars) are my least favourite sounds since the noise of cluster bombs missing army officer James Blunt.

Black Devil Disco Club's Eight Oh Eight is closer to 'oh' than 'eight', but only just. If you want forced disco glam, Mika's your man.