What does it sound like?:
Ah dance music. The heady days of Release The Pressure, Second Toughest or Surrender – when a dance music album was an event, seem a long way away. Watered down in some homeopathic dilution the innovations of the nineties still throb through the charts via Disclosure or Chainsmokers, but it’s a long time since I heard a dance music album – for dancing, for turning up loud, that feels as satifsfactory as Mirage. It’s DNA is Daft Punk, French filter house, and a touch of big beat but it escapes all these influences to deliver a long album that nevertheless is a richly rewarding listen all the way through – and turn it up and you’ll be tapping a foot at the very least. Go Time references Fine Time era New Order, Battlecry has the sort of drops and speaker-destroying bass lines the Chemicals used to deliver, Shangri La offers a mini-epic slower huge-chords experience, and final track Blink could be a long-lost Homework out-take. God knows who they are, but this is a shamefully overlooked classic of last year.
What does it all *mean*?
That someone, somewhere can still create the elusive Great Dance Album. Thank God.
Goes well with…
Bass. Bass. Bass.
Might suit people who like…
Daft Punk. Chemicals, French house
That track’s a “nearly but not quite” for me. Didn’t dislike it especially but something’s missing, for me, though I couldn’t say just what.
I gave another track from the album, that showed up in YouTube after that clip, a listen. “Indigo Skies”.
I didn’t like it at all. Dirgey and with offputtingly whiny vocals. I didn’t feel inclined to tap my foot or wiggle and turned it off after about a minute and a half.
Enjoyed the review, enjoyed the track, but can I just say: “Settle” by Disclosure is a far better record than “Surrender”, and certainly doesn’t belong in the same basket as the Chainsmokers.