Wait a minute, this sounds like drum and/or bass…
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[4.38]
Patrick St. Michel: This just ups and zips right by me every time I play it, I’m always surprised when it reaches the end like “whoa, already done? Nothing cool happened!”
[3]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: I FEEL LIKE I’VE HEARD THIS SONG A FEW HUNDRED TIMES BEFORE. Is that unintentional familiarity with “Control” or is it that just too much of this dryly-sang melancholy pop ‘n’ bass is in vogue currently? Either way, we’re not too far off from breeding contempt — I call the backlash to start when Rudimental win 25 Brit Awards. I am taking bets starting 8/1.
[4]
Tara Hillegeist: I’ll always be a loud partisan for old-school drum ‘n’ bass, the kind of glittering synth pulse and stick-rattle that’s to music what hovercraft searchlights stabbing through dust-caked abandoned rooms is to films — it’s not an aesthetic much of contemporary EDM feels beholden to referencing, so far as I’ve heard, and perhaps “Control” gives a good reason for that. A lot of straightforward, dunderhead-simple melody happening here, and not much else beyond some software-assisted melisma. I’m partial to the old school and I couldn’t say if this is where the rest of the scene’s gone in my inattention or not, but as a drum ‘n’ bass song, its attempt to play into possible nostalgia for that era of electrocool only provides a slightly chillier glance at Zedd’s “Clarity” — without any of the charm of “Clarity”‘s startlingly glossy crescendos. So I may as well blame my uninformed and creaky expectations, but whatever it’s trying to be, I’m afraid it doesn’t interest me very much. Perhaps if I were in a club, and drinking my way through a good hit I’d bummed off a friend — but I never had that problem listening soberly to Goldie.
[2]
Iain Mew: I’ll still gladly take “Clarity” as the new template for new dance pop songs, and in theory drum ‘n’ bass as distinguishing point ought to be a further improvement. It isn’t really for “Control,” because the thump gets turned down to the same easy glide as the vocals and as pleasant as the result is it’s a wasted opportunity to add any kind of impact to the song.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: The rejoinder to “Disclosure is overrated”: compare.
[5]
Alfred Soto: The small arias into which the vocalist launches evoke Elizabeth Fraser, but dance tracks live and die by beats as much as by arias.
[5]
Brad Shoup: Whenever I hear the strident paddling of d’n’b’s prominent drum hits, I’m ready for the scrambled patter. If it’s here, I couldn’t pick up on it; I thought I heard it around the three-minute mark, when the singer sings about her fear of losing control, but it seems M&F really do share that fear. Squandering that beacon of a synthline is a shame, too, but I figure it’ll be fixed in the mix.
[4]
Scott Mildenhall: Derek Matrix and Malcolm Futurebound have had three hits together now (this the biggest), each one sounding marginally different from the last — and it is marginal. What causes that to become a problem is that their sound isn’t even that exciting or identifiable — “Control” feels like a run-through, an old Sub Focus offcut or a shinier take on J Majik & Wickaman. It’ll do, but not for much longer.
[6]