In an alternate 80s pop landscape, where simple synth chords co-exist with the sinister ambient rumblings from the sensory periphery of Italian horror composers.  In an alternate 80s where less was really more, where Chicago’s minimalism travelled back in time and co-opted the top of the charts.  Here we find The One, slicing through the wine bars at the end of the universe.  Prescient as ever they bricked themselves up behind that old Tron cabinet and lay in wait until we needed them to bring the croon back to the glacial synth slow-jam.

The One bring their love of (80s) Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis productions to glorious effect here.  With vocals by Emeson and music by Fair Ohs drummer Joe (with that unexpected and deliriously subdued guitar solo by Serious Lover) The One are a super-group for 20JFG’s world.  Striding across continents bringing a soft kiss back to methadrone’d dancefloors.  Thank god.

This will feature on a 12″ out in April on a new label by the guys that run the Road to Rimini night in Newcastle.

correction: the 12″ will feature ‘Let’s Get it Straight’ and ‘Change My Name Change My Number’ but sadly not ‘Double Life’.

The One – Double Life

Pictureplane created one of 20JFG’s favourite moments in last years vast sea of excellent music.  Managing to marry the big room crushed synths of Euro-disco with something cold, damp and personal with Dark Rift.  We’re back to this side of the Atlantic again.  Back at the source in a strange way.  while Dark Rift excelled at draining the blood from the bloated corpse of European super-club excess and leaving us with the exquisite, crystalline beauty here we have something more direct, more…reanimated.

Like some club-music golem Let Me Be Your Fantasy continues to lumber through the collective unconscious of generations of tortured souls.  A lethargic Amen break and a disinterested bit of piano house barely competed with Dee Galdes-Fearon’s vocal back in the heady days of 1992.  Pictureplane redresses the balance.  Crushing everything upfront, giant punches of drums and those half-there snatches of synths as they smash into the red.  Like a circle of tape recorders arranged around an FM radio trying to work out what they’re meant to be hearing, giving up and creating what they think rave should sound like.

Pitchfork beat us to this but it’s too interesting to not be included on these dark pages.

Pictureplane – Beyond Fantasy

image from petespix75

DJ Murlo graces these pages having lapped the internet since Hungry For Power included his Cold Pumas remix on their first release.  Cropping up on various mixtapes and providing succour to us Brighton types with his Angry Dance Party.  Here he takes the latest almost great Rhianna single and turns it into an infectiously low key exercise in dancehall minimalism.  Polite, quiet, chamber music for crystalline Jamaican cathedrals.  The effect, to foreground the rolling repetition in the vocal track, leaving a reverent space for Rhianna’s slyly insincere, phoned-in flirting.  Take it, take it, baby, baby…

Rihanna – Rude Boy (Murlo Remix)

Epilogue -
This post is tagged with Hungry For Power rave