So what is the relevance of The Police’s “Voices Inside My Head”/”When The World Is Running Down You Make The Best of What’s Still Around?” Though many of you probably hate Sting —and remember that his “If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free” is a Larry Levan classic — these two tracks from the Police’s 1980 LP, Zenyatta Mondatta, pressed on a gourgeliciious twelve inchy single, are certified Paradise Garage nuggets and still get a fair bit of play to this day. Voices works ‘cos it’s so damned funky, chanty, wicked and otherworldly. When The World is Running Down etc. rocks ‘cos its world weary lyrics and unstoppable groove speak as much about the crap that’s going on today as they did in 1980. Hopefully Justice will do a tearingly banging remix which will utilize cold, austere synth tones that you’ve only heard five trillion times, and there’ll be a Digitalism mix on the flip, both will sound incredible after 247 lines of low grade charlie. Then the downer message of the song will be buried in a euphoric, but knowingly ironic, blizzard of software abandon.
But I’m missing the point here, all this crunchy electro is really modern punk rock and is descended from the ground breaking Daft Punk. Of course, that’s why Thomas Bangalter lives in Beverly Hills, he’s being ironically punk rock. The thing about punk rock is that it started off wickedly and ended up being preachy shite, just like the way electro started off wickedly and is now glitchy shite. An era is coming to an end (thank Christ), an era of conservative politics, war, poverty, fixation on cookie cutter celebrities, endless ironic nostalgia and nerdy white guys claiming that gangster rap is truly authentic because it isn’t as earnest as more conscious hip-hop. Please move to the places where this rap is being produced so you can be shot at because the only thing that view does is bolster your ignorance of black music in general. As Public Enemy once said, “Who stole the soul?” It’s not in dance music anymore and it sure ain’t in Usher’s daft (unpunky) dances.
Are the voices inside your head telling you that when the world is running down you should make the best of what’s still around too? The ones in my head are. Give these two tracks a spin today and pray for more top notch new music, that grooves most of the night instead of banging all night. Hey a few bangers are necessary to wake people up, we don’t want to fall into that dreaded jazzy house trap that killed the ‘90s, — in cahoots with wanky intellectualizing about Jeff Mills and Robert Hood, by nerdy white guys no less — the dreaded jazzy house that electro dj/promoters will always remind us about. Sorry guys, this era’s nearly over too, cue flutes and saxophone samples. The beast goes on, and you make the best of what’s still around. Zzzzzzzzz.
Orr
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