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That's enough yammering about indie and so on for a bit I think. Today I want to talk about sort-of-but-not-really dance music that doesn't really do very much in real terms but still feels a bit like it's going somewhere because it's kind of atmospheric and sweeping, which I know isn't the most elegant classification but I've not had very much sleep so there we go.
Apparently "everyone" is going crazy over this record by the brilliantly-named Joy Orbison (Hyph Mngo):
(By the way I think it really needs to be listened to on headphones, so you get the full effect of the boomy bass stuff when it gets going)
When I heard it I immediately thought of MJ Cole's Sincere (which I've mentioned here before but can't be bothered to link back to - VALUE AND SERVICE!)
There are definitely superficial similarities; the twitchy garage/dubstep beat, the swelling augmented chords that feel like cool air rushing past your face, the moany-souly vocal.. But I think Hyph Mngo is more spacious, more lonely. It's Sincere's bleaked-out abstract cousin (or something). I guess it illustrates the difference between dubstep and garage in a way, the former being euphoric (at its best) in its desolation, the latter more about up-close twitchiness and immediacy. Anyway I love Hyph Mngo, it's sad and urgent but also really clear and breezy, and also a bit like Radiohead's Idioteque with its squeezeboxy chords, though interestingly where those chords are used to thrillingly claustrophobic effect in the Radiohead record they sound huge and open in the Joy Orbison one. The rattly, scratchy percussive parts - and the fact that it kind of sidles into the room and builds and ends up commanding all your attention - remind me of the utterly gorgeous (and also very lonely) Someone Great by LCD Soundsystem.
But it also reminds me of this (Metroland by Misc.):
Which is such a beautiful record - such a restrained record - and even more spaced out and smooth and kind of quietly epic, but with this incredibly pretty reveal when the sample comes in, a kind of headspace Dancefloor Moment, or something. All those augmented chords again, they're really evocative and trigger loads of memories for me of being in national parks in America, really early in the morning, or on a plane maybe just before it goes above the clouds (apart from the hideous dread I feel on planes but never mind) a sense of scale and brightness, cleanness.
At the darker end of things is Layo & Bushwacka!'s (such a lame name such a lame name such a lame name) Shining Through, which I couldn't find a video of so have an mp3. This one is similarly pulsing and swoopy but feels like it's in a huge cave for half of it, after which there's a similarly glorious stepping-into-the-moonlight reveal with a guitar riff of all things. It's like the nocturnal, more dangerous version of Metroland. All that boomy bass and breakbeat. Grrrr.
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