Calling all semiotics majors…
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[4.89]
Iain Mew: There’s been a lot of music recently making use of video game sounds, or at least sounds that started off from the same places as video game sounds a bit like video games. “Language” is in no way a chiptune thing but still gives me stronger video game vibes than almost anything. Specifically, it makes me think of playing trippy synaesthetic shoot-em-up Child of Eden, which made its average trance-pop music into a huge asset by tying it in so closely to its visuals and journey. “Language” doesn’t have interactivity on its side, but it is close to being as immersive and sketches out a journey very much like one of Child of Eden‘s levels, starting off calming but with flickers of anticipation that eventually turn into wondrous discovery and then sour to mechanical alarm signals and pulsing adrenaline. It also presents the human voice as final salvation in a way that makes it surprisingly powerful. Though its design falls apart when it goes on for minutes afterwards unnecessarily and kills the mood.
[6]
Pete Baran: What is most surprising is how long it has taken for this to happen. From the Pet Shop Boys to Saint Etienne, there is a great tradition of pop journalists giving making music a go, and it’s great to see the Popjustice head honcho giving it a go. It’s just so surprising that rather than going for a traditional vocal led pop song so loved by his site, he has gone for a hippy melodic house track. I don’t remember him ever loving Robert Miles that much. (What’s that? PORTER Robinson? Oh, then it’s fit for the Dumper.)
[4]
Anthony Easton: Fascinating that a song called “Language” says nothing, even if we accept that Language can be used to express abstract, non-verbal, signification. Pretty enough in places, though.
[3]
Brad Shoup: Galaga breaks aside, this is the language of synthetic bliss. Progressive house with plangent Coldplay plinks. Super-functional, right down to the superfluous vocal bridge.
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: Far prettier and dreamier than most of the stuff I understand to be contemporary EDM…though Porter Robinson definitely takes time to indulge in some uglier sounds here too. Still, this song doesn’t really go anywhere, unless a brief vocal hug counts as a climax. Completely inoffensive but, I’ve got to ask…where’s the drop???
[5]
Jonathan Bogart: Ecstatic rushes to fall asleep to.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Too closely wedded to arena ideas of “dreamy.”
[4]
Will Adams: Porter’s grinding pyrotechnics, which first drew me to him through his dizzying remix of “The Edge of Glory,” only make a cameo appearance on the comparatively softer “Language.” This is trance, a genre whose tendency towards the recursive (compare 2:11 to an earlier trance hit) should be a point against it, but the whole thing is so damn glorious – the ringing piano octaves and the unexpected vocals are unabashedly cheesy, the breakdowns obvious, and the thump punishingly loud, and I love it all. When Porter played this during his Lollapalooza set, my heart swelled as the two thousand people around me jumped as high as possible, as if trying to use the music as a springboard to the heavens.
[8]
Michaela Drapes: Unfortunately, I think this — videogame themes grafted on to clunky, unsophisticated Eurodance — is the sound of the future. Remember when we complained when kids were being boring and derivative with guitars and all that throwback garbage? I’m already complaining about kids being boring and derivative with synth emulator software packages.
[3]