ALBUM: DeadMau5 - ‘At Play’

Written by: Shokrates The Finger

December 15, 2008 · Filed Under Releases, Review · Comment 

Dance music hasn’t always agreed with everyone at Music Towers. To this day, I still believe that whenever I go clubbing it fucks with my bodyclock.

I wake up the next day with a hangover as fierce as a pride of pissed-off lions, even if all I drank was Red Bull and over=priced bottled water. I get constipated for days. There is a residual throb that’s in my sinuses that that feels like someone’s going at my nostrils with an industrial milking machine, set to “udder buster” level.

But At Play by DeadMau5 makes me want to feel like I’ve gone through my personal clubland assault course. Listening to it makes me long for a mouth that doesn’t stop feeling dry even after 3 litres of water, for eyes that feel like we’re rubbing them with sandpaper every time we blink. It makes me want to stay up for four days straight, so stuffed full of cheap pills that we make a noise like a pack of tic-tacs when we walk down the street.

Listening to ‘Hey Baby’ is like having your best mate’s boyfriend whisper dirty talk in your ear when she’s in the same room as you. It borders on the pornographic, and no matter how much it gets your juices flowing, there’s something wrong about it. Whether it’s a case of “so-wrong-it’s-right”, or “plain downright wrong”, is something I can’t make up my mind on.

Watch DeadMAu5 perform live at the O2 Wireless Festival from this summer:

Then there’s the flat-pack instructo-techno of ‘This Is The Hook’. Oddly charming, it manages to keep the right side of toe-tappingly addictive without being overpowered by its vocal schtick - a disembodied Stephen Hawking-voice dissecting the various parts of a dance track.

The rest of the the record is chewy with house basslines and nightclub sleaze. Normally we’d find the juvenile lines of a track like ‘Afterhours’ (sample line: “Throw me down on the bar / should we do it in the car?” Urgh) too laughable for us to really mesh with DeadMau5‘ album, but it’s party season and common sense has deserted us. We just want something vivid and full of vigour to distract us from the prospect of having to spend a few days in the company of our closest relatives, and At Play does that and more. Pass the disco biscuits and get over here.


At Play

Play 2008, Audio CD, £12.99

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TOTP is back….but just for Christmas

Written by: Shokrates The Finger

November 20, 2008 · Filed Under Allegedly, Blather · 1 Comment 

Silly old BBC. They really don’t “get” how to do music on television. Apart from Jools-bloody-Holland and that abominable Switch yoof-ting of theirs, their schedules are alwatys a bit barren. Okay, so there’s a documentary every now and again, but it’s all a bit tokenistic.

Which is why we’re heaving a big sigh of relief here at Music Towers now the Beeb has announced there will be a Top Of The Pops Xmas Special. The corporation had previously decided against giving the once-mighty pop show its traditional Christmas Special, a tradition that continued last year even though the weekly format of the show ended in 2006.

Simon Cowell, the power behind the X-Factor throne, had offered to buy he dormant brand off the BBC, which helped generate pressure from everyone from MPs to bands to the public for the show to get its Xmas Special banck. So that’s one good thing we can thank the high-waisted trouser’d one for.

TOTP will also get a New Year’s Eve show for the first time ever. DOUBLE-WHOOP.

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Tah Mac - ‘Time Of My Life’

Written by: Shokrates The Finger

November 12, 2008 · Filed Under Releases, Review · Comment 

3 Things We Like About This Single From Tah Mac

1. The excessive amount of woo, whuh, yeah, ha, hey, and other superfluous extra vocals callbacks that litter ‘The Time Of My Life’. Listening to a single by Tah Mac is like having a conversation with someone you don’t know very well who is so uncomfortable in your presence he has to keep saying anything that comes into his head to avoid uncomfortable silences.

2. The random bursts of lyrical genius. The use of rhetorical questions! “Feels good, don’t it?” You don’t get enough of that in hiphop. “Every day’s like a Friday?” Which means I can eat a Crunchy Bar every bloody day of the week without feeling guilty.

3. The fact that everyone in the video (check it below) couldn’t be any less enthusiastic, except Mr Tah Mac himself. I’m guessing they didn’t exactly have too many auditions for those dancing girls, eh? Anyway, it makes for a much more entertaining video than your usual generic hophop vid:

3 Things We Hate About This Single From Tah Mac

1. It is only ever acceptable to have a remix as your only b-side if a) it is by The Chemical Brothers or Soulwax or someone like that, or b) you’re a faceless dance act and no-one really cares. But in this reviewer’s opinion, hiphop b-sides should be bombastic party songs, or unfunny comedy skits. Not bloody remixes.

2. Something about it sounds like the music at the start of an episode of CSI: Miami. You know – the bit just before they discover the body, and we’re treated to some ridiculous party montage of bikini models lounging about and frolicking in a swimming pool while gangster-types cut shady deals in the background. At least Tah Mac didn’t draft David Caruso in for guest vocal duties.

3. His name – I know hip hop stars love homophonic names, but Tah Mac? Naming yourself after the stuff they put on roads? That’s just…well….silly?

‘Time Of My Life’ is out on November 17 on Tah MC Entertainment.

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