Does this count as J.Lo’s highest-scoring Jukebox appearance to date?
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Brad Shoup: This Rinsed-Out, Practically K-Pop Take On Jennifer Lopez Is Exactly What You Didn’t Know You Needed (To Level A Club With Your Gaze)
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Thomas Inskeep: This is a fucking marvel, a chopped-up J.Lo sample from “Waiting for Tonight” (almost unrecognizable) woven into some heavy bass and synth madness. And then, around the 3:10 mark, it briefly takes an excursion into dreamy R&B production, all Casio chords — think SWV at their prettiest. “Midnight” sounds fresh and — dare I say — new.
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Jonathan Bradley: The pairing of crystal keys with J.Lo julienne reminds me of that marvellous Seiho song we did during Readers’ Week last year. The Truckasaurus synths remind me of how fresh such a stomp sounded five years ago.
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Will Adams: Come on, man. There are a hundred better ways to treat “Waiting For Tonight.” One of them involves staying away from it.
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Madeleine Lee: What I like about this is feeling like I’m in on the joke, like Joker is my friend telling me, “I got like obsessed with that old J.Lo song and made something really crazy, wanna hear it?” It’s not really crazy; Joker (alternate-universe Joker who is my friend) only said that to me to cover up how much effort he put into it, as if that wasn’t the whole reason why this works.
[7]
Alfred Soto: This grime producer includes a couple of startling passages; whenever I think it’s gonna turn Guetta it turns up the synth ripples and sampled vocals. Not “midnight” so much as “2:30 p.m.”
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Katherine St Asaph: Like a movie scene, in nondescript dreams.
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Danilo Bortoli: Back in 2011, Joker’s music was dismissed as too self-congratulatory for being exactly what a great chunk of this decade’s electronic music would turn out to be: effervescent, explosive, maximalist — but who’s to blame when that year was fated to be dominated by intellectualized minimalism? “Midnight” begs to be seen as a revenge, borrowing from Rustie, Joker’s own earlier material, and S-Type. But “Midnight” deviates from his other stuff because, for the first time, Joker is concerned with emulating instropection. Not everything has to be self-celebration, I think, and he’s starting to acknowledge this.
[7]
Edward Okulicz: Parts of “Midnight” sound like a slow jam on a late ’80s sound chip, making a very modern sound out of some old components. One of those components, “Waiting For Tonight” is such an effortless and blissful record, and one that can’t really be improved. Chopping it up so it sounds like a cry for help recorded on a busted cassette tape isn’t a change for the better but it sure is a change for the interesting. Who knew there’d be so many hidden depths in a frothy, surface-perfect J.Lo dance-pop track just in one snatch of vocal?
[7]
David Sheffieck: I’m not sure whether it’s more Joker’s production or my previously-unacknowledged love of “Waiting For Tonight,” but this hits me hard. It’s got an epic sort of scope, balanced by a sense of propulsion that’d be irresistible in a club. That the outro takes a turn for the poignant seems both unexpected and utterly fitting.
[8]
Patrick St. Michel: Busy in a really good way, as it zooms between 8-bit gurgles and blown-out drama. Joker isn’t winning originality points with the obvious-samples-made-stuttering approach, though that’s OK because he does work a lot of drama out of the “Waiting For Tonight” vocal. That, and I don’t think J. Lo will be losing much sleep over it.
[7]
Micha Cavaseno: One of the greatest grime producers, whose patronage by the dubstep scene magically changed his public perception, has returned after his long delayed album’s taste has been rinsed out of our mouth. Is it amazing? No. BUT IT BANGS.
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