Coldplay are not your electronic saviours (although this week I thought they might be)
Plus Ciutat, Pangaea, Jockstrap and more
I’ve already given you a long essay this week - 1k words on James Blake versus Fred Again, which you can read here, should you wish - so, rather than something more formal, please excuse me a few thoughts on Coldplay and electronic music, plus the usual recommendations.
Coldplay are not your electronic saviours (although this week I thought they might be)
As someone who (largely) writes about electronic music there aren’t many weeks in which I have occasion to think about Coldplay. Not that I dislike Coldplay; the band’s first two albums are reliable pleasures, after which they went too self consciously “stadium” and I had to jump off the boat. But, ultimately, Coldplay don’t often impinge too often upon my thoughts.
Until this week. Firstly, there was yunè pinku’s cover of Dreams by The Cranberries, a band who occupied a similar space - namely cardigan indie swooners gone stadium rockers - to Coldplay in the public conscience. It’s a lovely, shimmering and over all gentle house number which reminded me acutely of Röyksopp Trembling Heart remix of Coldplay’s Clocks, a song I am almost incapable of listening to only once, both in idea and execution.
Then there came CamelPhat’s execrable “reimagining” of Kraftwerk’s It's More Fun To Compute, an utterly unnecessary work that is like going to the dentist, on flu, if your dentist happens to be in a particularly funky mood for going on about “making you dance” and “come on” as he pokes at your root canals. It is, genuinely, one of the worst examples of sampling / interpolation (not sure of the specifics) in recent year, in that it sounds like CamelPhat are diluting all Kraftwerk’s genius in a warm bath of “chunky” beats, “pumping” bass lines and utterly beyond the pale vocal drivel from Ali Love (who, it should be pointed out, has made some good music in the past), like the last, desperate cup of tea extracted from a week-old bag.
And this, in turn, reminded me of how Coldplay once interpolated Kraftwerk’s Computer Love on their song Talk and - frankly - didn’t make that bad a job of it. While CamelPhat’s Compute had the remarkable foresight to turn a banging and highly danceable electronic song into a pumping and slightly less danceable electronic song, Coldplay at least had the good grace to do something different with Computer Love, transporting its central synth melody into stadium indie guitar and singalong-a-vocal, in a borderline clever and not entirely offensive manner.
The stadium giant, in other words, showed considerably more invention in their employment of Kraftwerk than the buzzy electronic duo, which probably tells us a lot about how safe commercial house music is these days, in comparison to the often bonkers world of pop music. Over nine album Coldplay have worked with the likes of Jon Hopkins, Brian Eno, Rihanna, Timbaland, Beyoncé and Big Sean; they’ve sampled Jane Weaver and Alice Coltrane and dabbled in everything from afro pop to EDM. CamelPhat, meanwhile, have covered Tears For Fears. There’s a pretty serious lack of imagination going on here.
I don’t want to be unfair on CamelPhat, who only wandered into this debate when they sampled Kraftwerk. What I have said about them could apply to so many commercial dance music acts, which really is part of the problem. And, yes, Coldplay have also plumbed the depths of Chainsmokers, Madeon and Swedish House Mafia collaborations in their splattergun spaghetti fight of synergistic nonsense.
But my point is that if The Cranberries - who didn’t take anywhere near the amount of risks that Coldplay have taken in their career - are now at a point of critical and artistic re-evaluation, with their song being covered by one of the most exciting young producers in house, then Coldplay’s time must surely come. And we should welcome this: Röyksopp’s Clocks remix has shown us how well Chris Martin’s impassioned vocals and nifty piano riffs work with disco drums and ping pong synth lines, so let’s not leave the band’s fate to the thumping EDM merchants and commercial house mongers of this world.
Or maybe the relentless sun has just gone to my head and I need to go lie down a while.
Things to listen to
Hudson Mohawke and Nikki Nair - Generator
Hudson Mohawke and Nikki Nair’s Set The Roof was a standout 2-step anthem in a summer that was full of them. Just as we get back to work and were kind ready to forget all about it, though, they have released an extended version of their joint EP as if prolonging the party until September were possible. Well it isn’t. Or not for me, anyway. I have stuff to do. But I can definitely enjoy the Italo piano and racing breakbeat fusion of Generator, even if I have to do it on the school run, while thinking about taxes. Generator is sort of like Richard D James-era Aphex with the weirdness turned down 20% and the mischievous fun intact ie pretty damn excellent.
Ciutat - Que Salga El Sol (Alvva remix)
Visitors to Barcelona occasionally ask me what people in the city are listening to. “Reggaeton” is probably the honest answer but so too is “Ciutat”, a popular local duo making R&B-ish house pop with a lively sense of humour. Their debut album, Brandon, had some brilliant moments, like the none-more-90s El House de la Ciutat, and they have just released a remix album, of which Alvva’s New York-y take on Que Salga El Sol is the highlight for Junior Vasquez disciples like myself.
I don’t generally like songs inspired by happy hardcore for the simple fact that I don’t like happy hardcore, having been exposed to it at teeth-grinding length in the 90s. But Pangaea’s Bad Lines gets a pass for its euphoric melodies, brief run time, its overall sense of mischief and the fact that its parent album, Changing Channels, is so damn good.
Jockstrap’s debut album I Love You Jennifer B was one of the most satisfyingly all-over-the-place releases of recent years, where inspired (and yet strangely ordered) chaos lurked behind every wall. Now they’ve remixed it in its entirety for I<3UQTINVU with the first track, Red Eye, a sinister if alluring two minutes of digicore havoc that sounds like nothing else in the Jockstrap repertoire and yet - in doing so - fits entirely with the band’s raison d’etre.
Things I’ve done
In this case, more things I am going to do. On Tuesday, September 19, Radio Primavera Sound is launching a thrice weekly Twitch show, looking at all the musical, cultural, culinary and internet happenings of the week, with an emphasis on Barcelona. It goes out on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, from 11am to 1pm, CET, and I will be hosting it alongside Johann Wald and Sergi Cuxart, with input from the RPS team, especially Mar Vallverdú. It’s going to be largely in Spanish, although some interviews will be in English, and I do hope you can tune in. On Tuesday 19 we have a (relatively) big name musical guest to kick things off, although I won’t jinx it by saying who. You can watch here.
Things other people have done
How on earth do you write about the new Róisín Murphy album, now that the Daily Mail are in her corner? Like THIS, as Laura Snapes shows the way, in a review that also double as a reflection on writing about music in the age of long leads and social media.
Good news for anyone who likes greyscale rap nudging up against happy hardcore inspired beats: my playlist is here, with all the best new music. Give it a like. And if you don’t actually like it, feel free to curse my name.