Evenings are drawing in then...
H
Joy To The World - all I can say is 'Thank You' - genuinely 'Thank you' - not so much for the introduction but for the very, very timely reminder - what a dribblingly gorgeous thing...
Broken - you're right, it sounds absolutely immaculate - was initially torn on whether I'd ever play it but I've picked the EP up and am 87/13 on the yes side so stand by your pause buttons...
Okinawa - can't fault it in any way other than that tiny 'spark' that just somehow isn't there for me
Rift Valley - (think D conflated his description of this and your description 'The End' in his last posting - maybe not - whatever...) - the fact that I pretty much built a mix around this a while back (as H alluded to) tells you what I think of this - it's beautiful. It's wonderfully, wonderfully, uplifting. It's simple as all hell but it's so, so good. What a fantastic remix. (To suggest that it takes slightly too long to get the 'money shot' and then it's over too quickly, would be churlish...)
The End - big fan of Joe T Vanelli since 20 years ago - big fan of HS82 since 3 years ago - two of them together was never going to go wrong was it... Just about as good as 'bog-standard' house music gets in 2014 - and I mean that to sound better than it comes across when you read it...
D
C&C - always uses to get this lot muddled up with Snap! - having explored both again before writing this I think Snap! just edge it for me although 'Sweat' is better than 'Ooops Up' and 'Cult Of Snap' but behind 'The Power' and 'Rhythm Is A Dancer'. There is no need at all to bring Technotronic into it at this stage...
Bee Gees - you'll never find me saying anything bad about this lot or this tune...
Sister Sledge - or this lot and this tune - although a separate exploration of the various edits/remixes of it might be interesting to pin down a collective favourite - I think this original has been bettered...
Daft Punk - I think your description was bob-on D, 'filtered summer beach fun'...
Metallica - I'm all for the crowd involvement and atmosphere but there's only room in my ears for one Metallica tune - sorry, I know that's pathetic but that's the way it is... (it's 'Nothing Else Matters' performed with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra)
S
Domain - so, we've had Pachelbel's 'Cannon' when H posted the 'original' - then I slung it up in the guise of a 90's indie band sing-a-long and now it's here again - or is it, drifting in and out between crashing wave sounds and metallic wind-charmer chimes, it's kind of there but it isn't really and yet it absolutely is - a retrospective glance back at the Future Sound of London.
Love Beat - this is the musical equivalent of meeting someone you've known for years and kind of fancied from afar but kept your 'cool' distance from because you're 'cool' right? But then suddenly you're confronted up close and personal and all pretence has gone straight out the window and you're just a gibbering wreck unable to control syllables let alone sentences as the beauty that you always knew was there is suddenly made manifest x1000 and your eyes glaze over and you don't even want to breathe anymore and then the piano kicks in and you dissolve into pointless gloop...
You Are My Sister - Boy George guests on a duet from 2005's Mercury Prize winning album - suggest you put aside the gender-bending logistics of the lyric and just wallow in the emotion of the delivery...
Reverie - every now and then a dance track leaps unheralded from the miasma surrounding it and grabs my attention. For every ten that do so there's maybe two or three that get more than one or two subsequent plays. Relatively rarely then does a track leap unheralded from the surrounding miasma, grab my attention, get played several times and then go on to be microscopically lasered into the very fabric of my musical clothing. This one did. Immense.
Hold Your Breath - piano, emotive vocal, gigantically swelling strings, thundering breakbeat, incredibly laid-back bass - repeat in various combinations - fade - genuine musical perfection
xx
