A UK Top Ten dance hit with an un– wait, an un-uncredited vocalist?
[Video]
[5.30]
Harlan Talib Ockey: Surging deep house bass, Ultra Naté’s fiery vocals warping into sharply-edited glossolalia in the chorus. This is great. I need to go to the club.
[8]
Oliver Maier: Having farted out of a mortifying remix of “Free” last year, Hugel recruits present-day Ultra Naté for more of the anonymous club music that DJs of his ilk produce when they’ve run out of classic tracks to disembowel. “Movin’ to the Sun” trundles through a perfunctory vocal-chop hook that you’re surely heard a million times before and clocks out after barely two minutes. I imagine that I listened to it more times start to finish (four or five) for this review than Ultra Naté has.
[2]
Ian Mathers: Ultra Naté! I haven’t heard that name in years. She sounds great here, and if the rest of the track feels more functional than impressive, that’s fine honestly.
[7]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: We’ve reviewed what feels like 100,000 European house singles with clumsy ’90s vocal samples over the past decade or so, and I have completely lost my ability to distinguish between good and bad within this category. As such, I was thrilled to find that Ultra Naté’s vocal here is (a) all new (b) quite good (c) used effectively. The rare case where I want this to be longer — two minutes is just not enough to let me fully appreciate the groove.
[6]
Claire Davidson: The opening verse suggests a more detached house hit, thanks to its sandy synths and vocal underplaying from Ultra Naté, but the song quickly surges in energy, its backing beat becoming more rubbery and kinetic as Naté commands the mix with full uproarious force. Her voice is so electrifyingly huge that it’s no wonder Hugel chose to premiere the song at Coachella; one could easily imagine her words filling a rapturous desert enclave. The song doesn’t lack for momentum, but for as decisively as “Movin’ to the Sun” asserts its blunt-force impact, its actual lyrics could stand to be a bit more dynamic, if only to give Ultra Naté more colors to fill this canvas. With what little is left on the page—a collage of repeated syllables and variations on the titular phrase—the final product is both hyperactive and strangely empty in all that noise.
[6]
Leah Isobel: That bass synth is a pleasantly nasty counterpoint to Ultra Naté’s gravitas. The song goes nowhere.
[5]
Nortey Dowuona: HUGEL, for supporting this, you will never see the light of heaven (placement in a Netflix action movie starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon).
[0]
Katherine St. Asaph: YouTube played a pre-roll ad for a fly trap before this song. The background music banged about as much.
[4]
Scott Mildenhall: Cowardly lyrics websites have dared not transcribe Ultra Naté’s desiccated consonants on this track, so she deserves double credit for filming her own video for it. She may not herself know which sounds she should mime, but she single-handedly elevates this past “Promptin’ to the Suno”. And that’s even with the murky effect applied to her voice. There’s texture, if not excitement.
[6]
Alfred Soto: “I’ve got the fire in the sky,” Naté sings, and every stutter, bass synth bar, and string flutter offers its own conflagration. Satisfying deep house. The easiest [9] of the year.
[9]