Concentric Pleasures: Summer Anthems

by Philip Sherburne

Concentric Pleasures is a blog column dedicated to the best in electronic singles: house, techno, their cousins and offspring. Named in honor of vinyl's grooves, it's a weekly roundup of new releases and back-catalog finds.

Last month, New Yorker pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones lamented that there's not yet a notable "song of the summer" (or as NY Mag explained it, a new "Umbrella"). Back in May, I had suggested a few tracks to him that I suspected would be big on dance floors this summer. The sad truth of the matter is that I've barely been clubbing in the past few months. But the positions of these tracks on DJ charts and in sales rankings suggest that all of these tunes are getting big play—as though you couldn't figure that out from their sonics alone.

Audion, "Billy Says Go" (Spectral)

Matthew Dear might have been understandably nervous about his Audion project after the enormous success of "Mouth to Mouth." If he was, though, he barreled right through to come up with "Billy Says Go." It doesn't immediately resemble a champion as it comes out of the gate. The swingy, off-kilter beat seems at first like a throwback to the cleverly clunky rhythms of early tracks like "Dog Days," recorded under his Matthew Dear alias before reserving it for his pop productions. (Audion is Dear's channel for harder, heavier club productions.) But only a minute and a half in, a fizzy, reed-like synthesizer enters with a minor-key riff, vaguely Eastern in feel, maybe a touch Armenian. The first time I heard it, I was skeptical: it all goes on a little too easy, a little too pat, like an aerosol spray. Anthem in a can! But it works. That vaporous melody turns to glue, sticking the track's parts together. It lodges in your brain in the best way. ("Against All Odds," on the same EP, is even more epic in scope, using nothing but a two-note bassline and a periodic siren blast, and seeming to crescendo endlessly, while it really cycles like an Escher staircase.)

Radio Slave, "Grindhouse Tool" (REKIDS)

Radio Slave, aka Londoner-in-Berlin Matt Edwards, is no stranger to the epic; his long, linear tracks seem best suited for galloping on horseback across a Lord of the Rings landscape, under steely skies torn by crows. "Grindhouse Tool," from his recent No Sleep (Part Four) EP, feels almost like the logical conclusion of this style (which might be the reason that his forthcoming single on the resurrected R&S label moves to a beefier sound more influenced by disco and Wildpitch). That "Grindhouse" sounds almost like a self-parody of Edwards' style doesn't lessen its impact. His drums are as dry as sheets of shale; billowing clouds of grainy delay suggest a cavernous machine shop filling with noxious gas. The only nod to melody is an occasional foghorn blast—as though that were enough to keep the waves from dashing us all against the rocks. (On No Sleep (Part Five), the dubiously titled "K Maze" serves as the antidote for all that angry bombast, offering as pillowy a landing as you could imagine.) Keep your eyes peeled for forthcoming "Grindhouse" remixes by Type-A personalities Dubfire, Danton Eeprom and Terrence Fixmer.

Tobias, "I Can't Fight the Feeling" (Wagon Repair)

Tobias Freund remains unfamiliar to many even within underground dance music circles, but that's gradually changing, thanks to a spate of singles, remixes and appearances on labels like Wagon Repair, Buzzin' Fly and Ostgut Tonträger, the label run by Berlin's Berghain and Panorama Bar clubs. (He also records alongside Sun Electric's Max Loderbauer in the duo nsi., or Non Standard Institute.) "I Can't Fight the Feeling" is as good an argument as any for his rapid canonization: atop chords that flutter like a very nervous accordion, he layers muted martial snares, a liquid ripple of hi-hats and pumping keyboards. A syncopated, one-note bassline bumps away with determination, and every now and then, a female voice singing the title phrase comes soaring through the stereo field like a message from a higher plane. Much of Freund's recent work involves playing with the placement of the kick drum, pulling the rug out from under four-to-the-floor convention. But "I Can't Fight the Feeling" shows how Freund can turn even the most pedestrian tropes into a magic carpet ride.