I can’t get enough of those cheesy, soulful vocal samples right now: whether it’s the sunny crooning of Kidda, Curses’ chipmunk diva-house, Voodoo Chilli’s ‘Look What You’ve Done To Me’, Surkin’s uber-retro sampling or, of course, Armand Van Helden’s tasty 80′s throwback ‘I Want Your Soul’.
Back in the day (i.e. not very long ago really: I’m only a wee tike), I regarded this kind of vocal masturbation as pure tasteless tatt. Naff, cheesy and everything abhorrent about commercial dance music, or more specifically – vocal house. Either I’ve matured and come to enjoy the sweet melody, or I’m just a typical scenester jumping on the bandwagon, and following the crowd. After all there’s a real revival in this stuff among alot of underground dance names right now. That outdated commercial sound is now being turned on it’s head by cool hipsters, who glitch it up, add a little electro beef…and hey presto…we have something cool, with a little 70′s/80′s nostalgia to boot.
And Sidechains top tune ‘Waiting So Long’ does just that. I’ve been meaning to post Sidechains for a couple of months now. Sidechains is Alex Ferrer’s newly formed project, heavy on the 80′s styled synths, funky beats, retro-house vibe and delicious vocal samples. Less than a year ago Ferrer decided to give up his commercial musical career in Barcelona – copyrighting and producing advert jingles – to pursue his own music career (and it’s probably this previous professional musical experience in ads that brings such a polished and smooth feel to his productions).
‘Waiting So Long’ is a noxious tune – dangerously addictive. It has similar stylings to Daft Punk’s vocal-based tunes featuring Romanthany’s vocal expertise – such as ‘Around The World’ and ‘Too Long’. In fact, as the excellent Lemur blog points out, this is almost an emulation of ‘Too Long’. This is pumping vocal house at it’s best, with added electro twist. As the song progresses, those coooler-than-cool vocals are chopped, snipped, tweaked and distorted over and over. This is a summery sanguin song. Strangely delicious. Get on it:
Sidechains – Waiting So Long [pelski highly recommends]
More electro house beats in the form in this heavy banger, filled with grinding distortion. ‘Monster House’ still retains Sidechains’ Daft Punk-esque stylings. Punchy and pumping:
‘Turn Your Body On’ utilizes more of the old school housey sound. Sidechains somehow turns a sample from (shock, horror!) Pink’s ‘Get The Party Started’ into something rather tasty. He vocodes the pop-diva’s voice into something, once again, reminiscent of Daft Punk. Stuttery vocals and thumping beats:
Sidechains – Turn Your Body On
Dr Funk takes us even further back in time: to a time of unpretentious, spicy disco funk. A time of people dancing in formation. A time epitomized by John Travolta’s ludicrous haircut. And a time of enchanting vintage synthesizers.
Whirring synths, a round-and-round beat, and some vocal snippets thrown in for good measure on ‘Rea’l. ‘Dance While You Can’ is much of the same, with a punchy vocal hook to accompany an even punchier beat. His remix of Madonna has caused a stir on the blogs of late. It’s kinda fun:
Sidechains – Real
Sidechains – Dance While You Can
Madonna – Into The Groove (Sidechains Remix)
I look forward to hearing more tight productions from this refreshing Spanish artist.
