Do these people think of the poor people who have to back-announce their songs?
[Video][Website]
[4.10]
Anthony Easton: Dominique Young Unique has a great voice. The production is not aggressive enough to sustain her.
[4]
Iain Mew: Chiptune’s been making pop progress for ages, but the instrumental interlude in the middle of “Earthquake” may mark a new frontier. The UK top 5 has surely never previously had anything that sounded so straight out of Super Metroid‘s darkest atmosphere. It’s a startling moment, but mostly for being so out of nowhere. The blorps and lasers elsewhere come from an adjacent universe, but they’re working to a different set of rules, plug-in abrasion effects rather than an essential part. The rest of the track isn’t as imposing as it needs to be to get away with being so slow, and Dominique Young Unique doesn’t get the time or context to make much of her performance.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: Bargain-bin TNGHT featuring forgettable rap verses plus laser sounds Flying Lotus doesn’t even mess with anymore.
[1]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: An opening rattle from Diplo holds a riff akin to a 16-bit end-of-level celebration in active decay; Dominique Young Unique barrels through a verse and Master of Ceremony duties and DJ Fresh places tables and Cabaret Voltaire-esque experiments side-by-side. For the detractors, Diplo lords over the track, the choppy buzzing bearing little resemblance to Fresh’s work. Meanwhile, Dominique functions as little more than an aesthetic foothold to the Floridian music scene Diplo represents. That’s the tricky thing about Diplo – just when you think you love him, you don’t, and vice versa. Expect this to continue, “Earthquake” or no.
[5]
Alfred Soto: It’s amazing how little you can do with a noisemaker and Atari synths.
[1]
Crystal Leww: The parts of this song are really just some well known dance music elements at this point from the windup noise that was used in Major Lazer songs to the bleets when the vocal drops out to the still bangin’ “Teach Me How to Dougie” drums. It’s all sort of thrown-together hodge-podge and Dominique Young Unique is thrown on top of that. It shouldn’t really work, but it would absolutely work in a DJ set. Every time one of those elements comes in or drops out, I can just imagine a bunch of people going nuts. Still, it makes Dominique Young Unique less charming than any of her solo work. Banner producers should highlight, not stifle, personality.
[5]
Jonathan Bogart: DJ Fresh and Diplo drive their vapid air-raid riffs into the ground, but not even their aging simulacrum of badass can slow down Dominique Young Unique’s real thing.
[6]
Brad Shoup: “I want to hear that mixtape, I really do. But like, for now, could you just give me the gist of it?”
[4]
Scott Mildenhall: DJ Fresh seemed to be working on diminishing returns last year when he followed the uninspired “The Power” with the none-more-anonymous “The Feeling,” but now he’s found something that’s anything but wallpaper, something a little more… unstale. Unstable, too (now that is apt), less a song than a series of ideas scattered around a fact, and an entertaining one at that. Everything — even Young Unique — is placed secondary to the drop. It’s disparate, maybe even a mess, but it works, just about.
[6]
Will Adams: The mixing is just terrible; an overdriven low end crowds out what little high frequency the hi-hats give, and the hard compression makes the song sound like it’s driving over a bumpy road. Dominique Young Unique does her best to push through and ends up showing some promise, but even she has to play second fiddle to the overbearing instrumental.
[5]