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.
Release Date:
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.