Thursday, April 15, 2010

Stealing From Our Favorite Thieves: Mario Kart Soca



Up until recently, the calculated upbeat dance-floor pop of Delorean didn't have a lot to recommend itself to me: 2006's Into The Plateau album presented the Spanish group as a tepid VHS or Beta (imagine that), diluting an already weak post-punk brew with an obnoxious singing style and unfocused guitar-playing, and so I was content to consign them to the dustbin of blogosphere history, over-stuffed as it is.

But when I heard Monsoon from last year's Ayrton Senna EP, I realized I might not have given them as much credit as I should have. Sampling Aretha Franklin's Jump To It* isn't anything new, (there were God knows how many house songs in the 90's that did the same thing), but the vocal slicing and dicing is subtle enough that, in this instance, they're swinging for the fences/trainspotting readers of Prefixmag. And while it seemed like Delorean was committed to aping Lo-Fi-FNK's mannerisms until such a time as that Swedish duo got its act together and released more than a single song every four years or pinching a bit from The Friendly Fires, last month they branched out on Subiza, which added El Guincho, Tanlines, Lemonade, Air France and 90's pop-techno to their creditors' list. It is, sadly, a capable and generally forgettable contribution to the yet-to-be-named genre of music inspired by the soundtrack to Mario Kart. (Mario Kart Soca, perhaps?) Witness Warmer Places.

I'm sure they have taste. I'm sure they're fun to hang out with. Enjoy the festival season this year, guys.

* Again, one of my favourite songs, and produced by Luther Vandross!

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