Not an En Vogue cover…
[Video]
[5.50]
[7]
Will Adams: A half-decade of working in sample clearances has primed me to double-check modern UK house hits. Confirmed that this is indeed an update of a lesser-known track from yesteryear, in this case Sybil’s “Oh, How I Love You.” Like most modern UK house hits, it’s bouncy and likeable enough.
[6]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The UK loves taking a completely generic house thumper and making it into a top 10 hit every summer. This is, in fact, one of the more endearing things about the UK charts (it’s certainly more charming than the American tendency towards mid-tempo country authoritarianism, of course!), and this is a perfectly adequate bid for that position. If I were Prospa and or Cloonee (two extremely pharmaceutical names, for what it’s worth), I’d just be mad that their countrymen have instead opted to make a hit out of a Chemical Brothers song we gave a [4.90] to more than a decade ago. Tough break!
[6]
Nortey Dowuona: Dave Bissett, Guiorgi Smith and Harvey Blumier all love Detroit and Chicago house, with the four-note basslines, the bright church pianos, heavy bass drums and fearless and lush vocalists, which in this case would be this forgotten gem from Sybil, produced by Sam Mack and Victor Simonelli, a much more shambolic and clumsy production job than the harsh, sharp edged rhythms the three assemble, and sounds a great deal better for Sybil’s voice. One wonders if these cats even love the artform or the form at all, or misunderstand what exactly it is meant to be and simply earnestly recreate the tropes, schticks and gimmicks but forget how it all starts. A shame.
[2]
Andrew Karpan: What I love about British people is how much they earnestly love this kind of music, an ambivalent hauntology for a lost future they both don’t remember and have no connection to at all, but reminds them distantly, perhaps, of the Pet Shop Boys.
[6]
Julian Axelrod: A brisk and buoyant slice of Crossfit pop that I will happily hear a thousand times and never remember the names “Prospa & Cloonee.”
[6]