Hurts and Crop Tops

You know how girls are wearing crop tops again? Well, they’re still as impractical as ever. It's not that the bastard child of a t-shirt and a sports bra has changed. We’re the ones who’ve changed. Ten years ago, our only logical explanations for wearing a crop top would be either a sudden growth spurt or the new professional name of ‘Krystal’. But now, we gaze upon crop tops as throwbacks to erstwhile glamour, the kind of trashy early 90’s look that we spent a whole decade running away from, just to return to its acrylic-taloned clutch.

In a similar way, I think we could all do with changing our attitudes to Freestyle. It’s just as trashy as crop tops are, but it’s been left behind in the cold. With only its crop top to keep it warm. I’m hoping that Hurts will bring it back. Most hype about the band Hurts discusses how they’re arty and aloof and European. But not many people have got to the heart (yes, there is one) of what makes them great.

The two tracks floating around the ether are both sombre pop-opera affairs laden with hyperbole over a synth backing. The differences are very telling. They’re either going to stick with the Disco Lento (literals, ‘slow disco’) of ‘Blood, Tears, Gold’ and be shuffled into the neverending pile of sing-a-long-a-synthpop, right next to OneRepublic and Timbaland. Or they’re going to aid a Freestyle resurgence with more songs like ‘Wonderful Life’.

This isn’t proper Freestyle, but it contains elements: syncopated beats, slap bass, subtle falsettos and a naughty touch of brass. This makes it pretty sassy, and something that people who aren’t white might enjoy.

Freestyle found its feet as part of Latin pop in the late 1970s. It soon developed as an alternative to Disco, bringing listeners back to dance music during a lull in the early 80s. Freestyle lyrics are all about people upset about a lost love, or striving for more. It’s all quite tragic. It’s called Freestyle not only because of the dancing, but because beats were so syncopated that DJs had to switch their mixing styles FREE-quently. Or something like that.

If crop-tops have made their way back into fashionistas’ hearts and onto cold-stomached shoulders, then why can’t Freestyle wriggle back towards our ears? People want to look like 1980s Miami Latinas, adorning themselves with pale denim shorts and trashy piercings, snarling around East London with curly tendrils… maybe they should have a worthy soundtrack. What do you think of Freestyle?

Hurts – Wonderful Life (Arthur Baker Remix)

Santa Esmerelda – Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

Nayobe- Please Don’t Go

Shannon – Let The Music Play

C Bank with Jenny Burton – One More Shot

Planet Patrol – Play at Your Own Risk

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This piece was originally written for the Chew The Fat! blog.

2009 in musics

I wanted to do a neat list compiling my favourite releases of this year. However, having bought one full album this year: Florence and the Machine's Lungs (twice), I am in no position to make a comprehensive list of anything apart from the ways in which I contribute to the demise of the record industry as we know it. But I'm going to give it a go, because this is my blog and I'm allowed to put whatever I want here. I could even write 'tinky' over and over again. Or start impersonating the writing style of one Charlie Brooker...hm. Anyway.

Best Album:

Florence and the Machine - Lungs

Best 'Grower':

Cheryl Cole - Fight for This Love

Best Music Video:

Lady Gaga - Bad Romance

(La Roux - I'm Not Your Toy gets an honourable mention)

Best Remix:

The Police - Message in a Bottle (Fresh Direct Remix)

Best Comeback:

Peaches - Talk To Me////Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll

Most overplayed remix*:

La Roux - In For the Kill (Skream's Let's Get Ravey Remix)

Most overplayed song*:

Major Lazer - Pon De Floor ft. Vybz Kartel

Cutest, purest song:

Mumford & Sons - White Blank Page

Best Live Act:

Have remembered now (12/01/10) and there are a few.

La Roux at Exeter Cavern

Fever Ray at Melt

Phoenix at Camp Bestival

Micachu and the Shapes at Field Day

Florence and the Machine at Bestival

putting paid to the fact I really love girls.

Best Change of musical direction:

Shakira - Shewolf

Most frequently seen act:

Erol Alkan

Best place I've played:

The Thatch Party (in-jokes all around)

Band I'd most like to see doing well in 2010:

Chew Lips

Band which will do well in 2010:

The xx

Best TV Talent competition contender:

Danyl Johnson/////RACHEL ADEDEJI

The song which most evokes memories of having no responsibilities:

Deadmau5 ft. Cascada - I Remember (Caspa Remix)

Best fad I've been turned around to liking after realising it is not directly linked to violence:

Dubstep.

*These songs are still bangers.

GAGA OH LA LAAAA

Every night before I sleep I try to watch the video to Lady GaGa's Bad Romance. It kind of shows how brilliant she is that even though I'm scraping by, she has no sympathy and has a stupidly expensive music video. It's also testament to her brilliance that I still like her, even though I am aware of an alarming disparity between our pay packages and our eerily close proximity in age.

Here are some nice remixes. Lady Gaga remixed by Starsmith and Grum.

I am waiting for someone to play with a sample of the second verse, but my favourite interpretation has to be my good friend Dolly's drunken rendition at 9.30am last Saturday morning. She wore a leotard and everything.

Let The Music Play

In the case of Jordin Sparks, I've always had a soft spot for 'Battlefield'. The lyrics are so emotional and hyperbole, in a way reminiscent of everything good Phil Spector did. And the mid-tempo, yet euphoric nature of the song is actually pretty similar to most of Florence and the Machine's album. By disguising good music as shitty R'n'B, Jordin's doing really well. I don't know where the hell she's come from, I'm guessing it's an American talent show competition...

There we go. I just wikipediad (sp?!) her, and she's the winner of the sixth American Idol and looks a fair bit like America Ferrera.

I've recently become partial to latin freestyle music, starting with Nayobe's 'Please Don't Go'. Not only do I like the idea of going to Mexico in the 1980's to score, I really like women with strong voices barking on about their weak souls and wildly romantic dispositions. When I discovered that Jordin's 'S.O.S. Let the Music Play' uses a sample of Shannon's 'Let the Music Play', I jumped up out of my seat. I've been a fan of Shannon's 'Give me Tonight' for a while, but apparently it was nowhere near as commercially successful as her debut single, 'Let the Music Play'. The latter pushed dance music to a new place, and is a credited as a revolutionary song, putting dance music back in the mainstream, when so many had shunned disco that it had spent the past couple of years hidden away in the exclusive gay clubs of the big cities (Paradise Garage, Chicago Warehouse etc).

Shannon - Let The Music Play

A little more exploration has informed me that there are loads of remixes of Shannon's 1983 hit, but they are all abominations to the ears, and are most probably heard in the less glamorous Mediterranean holiday resorts. Jordin's sampling is very splendid, though. Just like old-school Xenomania, the producers and writers have crammed in a brilliant middle 8, and as many melodies as they can get their grubby mitts on. Embedding is disabled by request, so there you go.

Cheryl Cole - Fight For This Love

Unfortunately I can't embed it, due to YouTube becoming increasingly restricted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMiy_UsrPDs

However, it is bloody worth a look. When I first heard the track, I was saddened by the use of vocoder, and the apparent quest to appeal to an American audience by replicating the Pussycat Dolls' sound. Then I watched this video and realised that Cheryl Cole is really good at selling the unsavoury. [See: making the world think that, to Mr. Cole, she is a genuine spouse and not just a beard.] Why? because she is ostensibly, ridiculously beautiful. Also, by nicking from La Roux, the producers have made a catchy chorus.

In terms of the actual look, I'm quite pleased that her stylist's letting her brave big shoulders and hair. She's looking reaaal Gloria Estefan in that part of the slightly tacky video. The naughty leopard pyjamas are a nice touch, but I'm not quite sure if the forehead shading make-up is meant to flatter Cheryl or indicate that she's got quite an unsightly fuzzy/wide forehead.

The sequins and ratty hair, both bereft of classy styling, could be percieved by Brits as the 're-chavinisation' of Cheryl Cole. Yet this will inevitably go down well with Americans, as they tend to lap up anything a bit glossy. The only setback is that there's only one incredibly attractive woman in this video, whereas PCD, Destiny's Child, Danity Kane and even TLC have always worked by having a variety of fit girls in the video, if not on the tracks themselves. She's trying to Scherzinger before she's ready.

Chew Lips Autumn residency at Catch

Chew Lips are a really great band. They perform really funky, syncopated, stripped down electropop soul. I got lucky enough to turn up late to my job working on the fancy dress tent at Bestival, and saw them up real close:

They've got a residency at Catch, a real intimate bar on Kingsland Road.

Dates are: Oct 6th / Nov 3rd / Dec 1st and it's FREE, so I strongly advise that anyone who reads this blog (...) should get down to it.

Disco makes your money go further.

These disco tracks really need to be played from start to finish, despite all being around 8 minutes long. The length of the songs is a brilliant thing, however. There are two reasons why these songs, and many others of the 1970's, were so long.

1. In the 1970's people did not have last.fm, itunes or spotify (in the case of the latter, still no-one uses it). This meant the only way people could arrange playlists would be to use a live DJ, and even Isaac Hayes, at the height of his resplendent decadence and overspending, probably wouldn't have employed someone to mix next to the bed as he got his jig on. In the 1970's, people would have to shag to an album, or an 8minute single. A pre-coital selection of a three-minute punk song could have serious consequences for a man attempting to ensure his partner could expect at least something half-decent in the sack.

2. In the 1970's, someone predicted that the quality of albums would deterioriate and that people would like to buy singles individually from online resources. This oracle of music realised that people would want to get their money's worth for 79p, so would prefer long songs than slow songs.

musics that i shouldn't like that i do like #1

I heard this for the first time coming back from Camp Bestival, two days after seeing Chase&Status for the second time this summer. I can't say they're my favourite act, but I really like what they've done here:



I honestly didn't think I liked dubstep until I went out to Digital in Brighton to the Stone Love night there. It was good fun, especially being that close to the beach at the end of a night out. However, I really could've done with some wobbly-kneed dubstep at the end of the night. The reggae they were blasting out of the suprisingly good soundsystem just wasn't doing the trick.

Another song which is benefitting from the genius juxtaposition of dance music and guitar-led verses is:



I'm not sure if I'm allowed to like it but I really do.

music #677

graduating

Instead of doing the whole normal graduation malarkey, I headed to Melt festival, leaving my return tickets in the hands of someone who turns out to be a compulsive liar. Who promises free plane tickets to people she barely knows?! The luck of the draw had it that I ended up returning from Melt to Manchester via Liverpool, then the next day I went down to Exeter via London. Two days later I found myself in Guildford, about to go to Dorset for Camp Bestival, the most hectic kids' event I've ever attended.

This could explain a hiatus in blogging.

Here are the bands I've seen, with a rating, and one anecdote attached to what happened whilst watching. Just keeping it nice and simple.

Phoenix ***** During Phoenix at Melt I tried to have a snooze on my knees. At Camp Bestival I jumped around and realised I recognised all of their songs. And the band has a million members.

Erol Alkan **** Better at Melt than at Camp Bestival due to seeming sound restrictions. He's also adored by many youths who keep on asking to drink your booze. As if 'just a sip' will get them laid.

Boys Noize ***** Superb, although, at Camp Bestival, was replaced halfway through by a large crowd of youths, including one girl who kept on staring me and the guyrls out as we flicked them the v-fingers..if anyone can tell me who the fuck they were I'd appreciate it.
(all at Camp Bestival and Melt)

Aphex Twin **** lots of flashy lights and bassline

Royksopp ***** Catchy songs, I spent a lot of this time swirling around in the crowd.

Fever Ray **** The light show was magnificent, the songs a bit Bjorky

Digitalism *** Missed them a bit, but sounded wicked.

Klaxons ** Missed them a bit, sounded fat.

Rex the Dog **** Amaaaazing sounds.

Diplo ***** Horrendously good, the best booty girl visuals I have ever seen. Sound quality was perfect.

Drop the Lime *** yeaaha. Can't remember.

La Roux ***** Her voice has improved and she dances around splendidly.

Oasis ** they could've made use of the epic arena a bit more, but apparently they don't want to be Simple Minds. Why the fuck not?!

Passion Pit **** yeaaaah

Boy 8-Bit **** so beardy

Simian Mobile Disco *** wonderful if i hadn't had needed to sleep on my friend Dom's shoulder during the set, only for all the Indian girls from Britain at Melt to have a go at him for humping them. By accident.

PJ Harvey ***** Beautiful. This is Love would've been amazing, but as far as solo sets go, brilliant.

Bon Iver *** really good but kind of depress sometimes.

Florence and the Machine ***** brrrrirrirlrrlrriant

Laura Marling *** lovely, but snorey.

Annie Mac ** yeaaaah. boresey, until we left the tent and from a great distance heard Caspa's remix of Deadmau5 I Remember. Urghg. I prefer her on Twitter. how weird.

Imelda May *** Didn't see much but looked great.

Skream and Benga - didn't actually see them, met them. They were off their chops and had clearly been fighting.

Mumford and Sons **** shoegazey and epic.

Chase and Status ** kept on being distracted from the pounding drum n bass by 15 year olds wanting me to pick their braces.

Golden Silvers **** very good, like a psychedelic Strokes.

I like music.

Sneaking into a Madonna gig.

After Michael Jackson died, and I finished studying at university, I decided I needed a new direction in my life. I realised that as upset as I was at Michael Jackson's passing, I'd be in floods of tears when Madonna goes. I decided that, whatever I do with my degree, or my life in general, I must always have the means to see a Madonna concert. I know that with her yoga and smoothie lifestyle she's going to last a while, so I thought it would be a long term project of mine to always have enough money in the bank to afford a Madonna ticket.



Until my lodger told me about being sent a few extra tickets. The whole thing is a little dodgy, but I ended up seeing Madonna. Just about. The o2 is the most hideously large venue with a soundsystem which leaves a lot to the imagination, unlike some of Madonna's dancemoves. However, she is a living legend. A lot of her old songs were spliced with new production, with nifty little touches here and there. Frozen was sung over the Deadmau5 remix of Calvin Harris' I'm Not Alone. Holiday had bits of Everybody playing in the mix. Paul Oakenfold was onstage throughout and the whole thing was live. Her voice has deepened a lot since the early years, therefore Papa Don't Preach was out of the question. Human Nature and He Must Love Me were amazing, as were all of the newer songs.


The Spanish interlude was a bit trashy, with all the intentions of being classy disrupted by the audience clapping fat-handedly and out of time. The montage of all the Romany children's suffering around the world was also a bit righteous. I'm not sure how far Madonna's charity work extends, but it was interesting to see an act who vibes off of general humanitarian crises to get an emotional response from the audience.

Michael Jackson was someone who did this exact same thing, and I don't think it's a massive problem, as it does draw attention to the issues, but gazing around the audience, I realised that a lot of Madonna fans are stupid twats. Showing starving children on a big screen won't line anyone but Madonna's pockets. Luckily, she does decide to donate a fraction of her millions to charity work.


The whole thing was a bit of a blur but I'm very pleased to have gone. Now I must make a new mission for life and achieve it within the next week.

moooosics

Florence and the Machine are just brills, hopefully seeing them at some festival this year somewhere:




Major Lazer was introduced to me by my friend Dom. I'd got us tickets to see Diplo and Switch at Notting Hill Carnival, where they would've premiered this shit, but Dom and I were both too hungover to go. We're idiots for that, but we're enjoying this stuff like heck and it was nice to hear it played just the right amount at Beach Break. Beach Break almost rinsed me of my appreciation of La Roux.






I've actually seen Yeah Yeah Yeahs and they are fantastic. I'm pleased to see the way they're going. It's a bit electroclashy.





Lysa Lynn's stuff is gayer than a row of freshly lubed and torn, rainbow tattooed anuses, but I like it. Perhaps for that very reason.

who wore it best?

When perusing hypemachine for a pleasant Roisin Murphy remix, I found this:



I then tried to find it again on Youtube so I could post it here and talk about the brilliant thudding disco-lite. Then I found THIS:




The chorus alone proves that Roisin's version is better than Sophie Ellis Bextor's cover. Calvin Harris is the ultimate winner here, though.

some more thoughts on Michael Jackson.

When I found out that MJ died upset me more than I thought it would. I realised how much he affected social consciousness all throughout my childhood, and even now, as I check this oft neglected blog, I see that I've written something about him recently. RIP.

It also makes me realise how horribly upset I'll be when Madonna dies. So this is me promising myself, now that I've graduated, to always have enough money in the bank to buy the exorbitantly priced tickets to whichever tour Madonna embarks on next.

get down to some vicious love

My dissertation is coming along beautifully. The structuring just fell into place today. I've put everything nicely into its context, I like to think. And instead of disagreeing or agreeing with one critic, I'm analysing the two texts (Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Apartment) and picking and choosing critics to agree with me. I feel confident and smarmy about it. Here's what's helped me along tonight to get to the 1100 mark:



and this is more of a surprise but again confirms my hopes/desires that rap has got a soul to it:



You see, last week at fuel4life, at 1.58am, I whacked on this:



After a good two hours of bassline, fidget and dubstep, the crowd didn't falter. I usually whack on a soul track so as to clear the dancefloor, but everyone stayed on, proving how fucking good soul can be.

ALSO. Bangers&Tash are playing Beach Break Live on the 16th-19th June. I don't really know who reads this, if anyone. But come along.

If there's a cure for this, I don't want it.

On the search for more Larry Levan, I got to this.

I sent it to a dear dear friend who's mostly into soul/motown and does have a certain affinity for cheese club nights. This is probably because she gets to convince the DJ that it's our friend's barmitzvah. And that our friend is called Barchard. And is a girl. Queue Barchard dancing to Kool + The Gang's 'Celebration' on a podium, with Devonshire deejay shouting 'HAPPY BARMITZVAH BARCHARD', unawares to all of the errors of his chant.

However, my friend really likes this song. It's sexy. Apologies for the lack of video content. Do something else when you're listening. Go for a pace around the room. Did your hair. Fix your nails. Sharpen your talons. Whatever, bitch.

Larry Levan and a whole host of other people

A couple of Popbitches ago this marvellous piece was featured:

>> Miami splice <<
Sam/LiLo: not the new Larry Levan

Honk writes:

"A friend was in a Miami club this week where

Sam Ronson and Lindsay Lohan were booked to DJ.

They shared a single laptop between them, indeed
Lohan seemed to be 'rocking' a room of 600

using nothing more sophisticated than iTunes.

And it showed, as her four-second attention

span meant guests were treated to something

akin to the 'intros' round of a pub quiz. Lohan

disappeared to a crouching position behind

the decks for a good 10 minutes whilst she er,

blew her nose and Ronson took over. She at least

tried. 15 minutes later, they'd packed up, the

club emptied immediately, and a real DJ took

over and played to a near-empty club."

I wrote an article about Lindsay Lohan and Sam Ronson. Why, despite not being amazing role models, are brilliant because their relationship can serve to teach some home truths. Like: not all girls need to be super-feminine to get laid, but that's cool. Or that really generically astoundingly hot girls do fancy other girls. Or that people don't have to define their sexuality anymore.

The shortened article is here. The full article is remarkably defunct now, as a whole load of shit happened. But I wouldn't want to write any further on that in case the whole thing changes again.

Changes is the name of a song by Larry Levan. He was a DJ and producer in the 70's- 80's.



He's credited as the founder of dub, and dubstep is meant to be a derivative of dub. But I think it's a bit like taking that little plastic thing on the tip of your shoelace of your Nike Air Force IIs and putting it in your nose. Dubstep takes a small, irrelevant element of dub and makes it really dangerous for no particular reason other than to look a bit hard.

Larry used to play at the Paradise Garage in New York. People used to have sex on the dancefloor. Men used to wear heels and big hair and women were mostly made of sequins. The Paradise Garage probably reeked of poppers. When I was 14, my mum found some poppers in my bag and made me pour them in the sink. She muttered "Smells like Studio 54".

Remember that scene in Forrest Gump when Jenn-nay is in a bar doing lines and KC and the Sunshine band is playing? Well, yeah, a bit like that. I think Jenn-nay had a cooler life than Forrest. Like when Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird is playing and she's about to jump out of a window a gajillion storeys high? That was cool. She was played by Robin Wright Penn who was married to Sean Penn who was married to Madonna and is also known to hang out with Lindsay Lohan. Who got compared to Larry Levan.

Madonna used to go the Paradise Garage. The promotional video to Madonna's first song, Everybody, was filmed there. Not that Youtube will let me find it. Wikipedia says: "The song introduced classic Madonna themes like individuality, dancing and singing as forms of self-expression, as well as the optimism that dominated the first five years of her career."

And now I kind of wish, oncemore, I could do my dissertation on Madonna. Enjoy:

When I Grow Up

I want to be the person who decides on the music that plays in the cars when you steal them in GTA. I used to be into Wave FM on Vice City but now I'm heavily into SF-UR

My favourite part of this type of music is that it's all about suffering and overcoming it. It's all pretty religious, as far as gay anthems go. There's a reason why under the arches at Villiers Street it's called 'Heaven'. Even before AIDS reared its ugly head, the gay community has been eerily aware of its own mortality and humanity.

sharing is caring

I've been sharing some italo disco with a friend.

He confirmed to me how utterly amazing Italo Disco is. He's my music soulmate right now.

He works for a merch company and turned me onto one of the clients:

CHEWLiPS

A bit of research shows that these guys are relatively old hat. Using myspace and the connections that come of forming in New Cross, this pop-synth trio have already been given the go ahead by Steve Lamacq a few months ago. There must be a reason why his ratty face is in their top 20 friends. The sound they're creating is remarkably similar to La Roux's stuff, in that it's light and reggae-tinged and led with a falsetto lady, but that's brilliant.

Toro is my favourite track at the moment, almost better for its terrible production. Each instrument jumps in one by one, until a nice syncopated poppy verse is built up. If the bridge is a bit too gay and synthy, the chorus kicks in sourly enough to make the song quite bitter and therefore cool. Bitter=aloof=cool. It works like that, really. I'm looking forward to some remixes and the feasibility of seeing these guys play at The Social next Monday.

www.myspace.com/chewlips

lay your problems on the floor

This stuff cheers me up. The video's prety cool, too. The kids are so bad at what they do that they give off this really cool, aloof image. It's just so terrible that it's amazing. You can also see how Baby's Gang have inspired Justice, what with the disco + kids formula they both bandy about.