Fluxblog 382: The Dare • Piri & Tommy • Daphni • Winter
Plus a LOT of blog house remixes
This week’s playlist is READY FOR THE FLOOR: INDIE REMIXES 2008-2011, a collection of high quality selections from the golden age of blog house. This one is a sorta-sequel to my original Blog House collection that overlaps with the first two years of this one, and is a younger sibling to the What Was Indie Sleaze playlist. [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Also, my playlist NARRATORS: POST-BREXIT POST-PUNK documenting the ongoing scene in the UK and Ireland has been updated and is now also available on Apple Music and YouTube. [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
That’s What’s Up
The Dare “Girls”
When “indie sleaze” took hold as a popular nostalgic obsession earlier this year at last one man called Harrison Smith took note and decided “well, fuck, I can do that.” “Girls” distills mid-00s party sleaze aesthetics into two minutes of twitchy electro-funk that basically sounds like if LCD Soundsystem had the coked-up abrasive lecherousness of Louis XIV. This is simply a song about being extremely horny for all kinds of girls, or at least all the girls who are likely to turn up at the indie sleaze club. Girls who do drugs, who hate cops and buy guns, girls with degrees, mean girls and kinky girls and trans girls and sex workers, and the list goes on. It’s a knowingly dumb and funny song, and he makes sure the joke’s on him: “they say I’m too fucking horny, wanna put me in a cage – I’d probably fuck the hole in the wall the guy before made.” The Dare could stop with just this one utterly shameless novelty single and it’d be a job well done, but I’m genuinely curious where they’d go from here. Is this the start of something bigger?
Buy it from Bandcamp.
I Feel This Energy Around Us
Piri and Tommy Villiers “On & On”
Piri and Tommy specialize in relaxed songs with tempos so fast the beats start to feel more soothing and meditative than jumpy and anxious. A lot of this comes down to the arrangements being quite minimal and the keyboard tones filling out the grooves having a chilled tonality, but the centered and friendly quality of Piri’s voice also goes a long way in making this all sound like casual low-key fun. “On and On” sounds like you’re just listening in on some friend’s interior monologue as they dance – they’re feeling the music, they’re feeling the room, they’re feeling some drugs kick in. There’s simply no dark energy to be found here.
Buy it via Piri and Tommy.
Daphi “Cloudy”
Dan Snaith’s style is distinct enough that most anyone would notice his authorship whether they’re listening to Caribou or Daphni, but articulating what makes something obviously his work feels roughly similar to describing the particular curvature of handwriting. “Cloudy” isn’t too far off from what his friend Four Tet would do, but there’s more calm to the beat and that central piano hook has a graceful melodic swoop to it that feels specific to Snaith. It’s the sort of clean and elegant motif he always places ahead of funkiness, though thankfully not too far ahead of funkiness.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Can You Wait Forever
Winter featuring Hatchie “Atonement”
Shoegaze is a genre where simply nailing the familiar post-My Bloody Valentine aesthetic is enough to make a song very appealing, and “Atonement” really hits that mark. The odd tones, the sensuality, the wooziness – check, check, check. But the combination of Samira Winter and members of Hatchie results in something a bit brighter, a little more bubblegum. There’s some darker tones in the mix – that central detuned guitar part sounds very grey to me – but all of that is in sharp contrast with a cooing vocal hook that seems to blast through the song like big beams of blinding light.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• It was just Elliott Smith’s birthday, that’s a good enough excuse to send you to Alan Hanson’s tour of Smith’s East Side of Los Angeles.
• So wait, did the Pharcyde reunite or not? Depends on who you ask, according to Rolling Stone.
• Here’s Kelsey McKinney at Defector on how even a seemingly successful actor like Sydney Sweeney has to do so much more work to keep afloat in Hollywood relative to her peers who come from money.