Wakeup Music

Last week was rough at work and I was in a rotten mood on the bus today at the thought of being back at Monday again. Then I listened to Princes (Gang Gang Dance ft. Tinchy Stryder) a first, second and third time in quick succession and everything changed. I realize the track’s hardly new to people who keep up with this shit but it’s new to me, and since it’s possible you readers have grown old and uncool too, I thought it was worth mentioning. Tinchy Stryder’s MCing is OK but the magic of this one is all in the background of the production – that diffident, hollowed out beat that enters around 0.48 while the ebullient, somewhat haphazard, piano line romps overhead, the 15 seconds starting around 2.04 which telescopes all of me into a single, reverberating molecule of joy, the febrile, insistent alarm sounds heralding the bridge around 3.05, the distorted riffing when the verse kicks back in around 3.30, and how the whole song is generally a rampaging, schizophrenic universe of stuff that doesn’t go until it does.