October 10, 2016
Every Monday, noted song expert K. Ross Hoffman presents five fresh specimens for your consideration. My birthday is coming up this week, so let’s have a dance party!
After summer singles celebrating the all-important joys of taking breaks and skipping your graduation ceremony, this J-pop-inspired London trio springs back into action with an anthem dedicated to everyone’s favorite backyard play structure. “Keep an eye on gravity and don’t forget to bounce,” counsels singer/rapper Sarah Midori Perry — sage advice whether you’re on a trampoline, on a dance floor or just, you know, living life.
Kero Kero Bonito plays Coda on Friday, Nov. 4.
Alternately, here’s what happens if you just keep bouncing and forget about gravity. In the years since his moody, footwork-addled futurebass landmarks “Room(s)” and “Vapor City,” Travis Stewart has found his happy place: He’s gotten engaged, moved to California and, on the evidence of his irrepressibly fizzy new album, fully absorbed the gleaming, maximalist trap productions of Rustie and Hudson Mohawke and the bubblegum bass hyperpop of P.C. Music. (Speaking of which: new Hannah Diamond track!) This typically giddy sparkler enlists electro-R&B smoothie Ruckazoid for a fully lunatic fun-house rumpus, perhaps inspired by evolutionary developmental biology.
Digital dance hall, when it hits just right, can be a transcendent thing – see Ce’cile’s “Hot Like We,” an unimpeachable modern classic in my book. This bumper from Miami-born, Brooklyn-based DJ Jess Gentile may not quite hit those heights, but it definitely scratches the same itch — that intoxicating convergence of island rhythms, chintzy synths, no-frills booming bass and hard-spitting bad gyal toasting from Bronx MC HoodCelebrityy.
Jubilee spins at the Dolphin this Friday, Oct. 14.
This ain’t no “Sandcastle Disco” — nothing else is, really, and she’s playing a whole new game these days anyhow — but it is the danciest moment on the younger Knowles’ sprawling, magnificent new album, and one of the most immediate. While set up in context as an integral part of the whole, flowing smoothly out of and into the interludes that surround it, its casually old-school, impeccably detailed funk — those nimble, deep-pocket syncopations, tasty piano runs, Moog-y bass bursts and stealth Andre 3000 falsettos — is just crying out to be cherry-picked for your next block party.
These Calgarian mopesters — ex-Women, f.k.a. Viet Cong, back again with their best and least objectionable band name — may not be the most obvious party-starters, but they’ve always been a rhythmically oriented lot, for post-post-punks at least. This brooding (yet kind of bouncy) rocker, an excellent showcase for Matthew Flagels’ rich and craggy baritone, could totally do some damage on an indie-night dance floor. Or, for sure, when they play it live.
Preoccupations will be at First Unitarian Church this Saturday, Oct. 15.
