AEM056 Best Hits

It’s hard to tell when exactly this hap­pened, but at some point over the past ten years, elec­tronic music started sound­ing, I don’t know, more alive than rock or coun­try or folk or jazz or other kinds of real-life noise-making. Whereas plenty of revival­ists seemed per­fectly con­tent to dis­in­ter long-dead dinosaur jams and repack­age them in tight pants, man-machine hybrids every­where were evolv­ing, repro­duc­ing, absorb­ing influ­ences and cre­at­ing new ones out of sil­i­cone chips and syn­the­siz­ers. It wasn’t the end of music, but it was the end of a cer­tain idea of music, that it should be played on instru­ments that needed to be tuned, that the front­man needed pipes like a Basil­ica organ, that the drummer…hell, even that there be a drum­mer. Tex­ture was the new gui­tar solo, attack sus­tain decay release the new “Never Mind the Bol­locks.” It smelled like…nothing. And sweat and sex and liquor.

That’s why bands like Best Hits are so excit­ing. What­ever they’re indebted to styl­is­ti­cally they sound basi­cally influence-less. Even if that’s an impos­si­ble assump­tion, they at least are try­ing to sound like noth­ing ever heard before. Ambi­ent ona­mon­apoeiatic hip-hop? Electro-twee? What­ever, no. I wouldn’t call this music exper­i­men­tal, not because it’s not, but because lis­ten­ing to these tracks doesn’t entail a par­tic­u­larly severe learn­ing curve. They’re short and great. It’s like eat­ing some­thing that looks like a green cube that tastes exactly like bacon and candy. A two­some based out of Brook­lyn (Matt Weiner on dials and knobs and Claire Elise Tip­pins on more dials and knobs), these guys have a lot of projects going on: the Peace Age label, a whole host of awe­some art­work, and bands called Ger, Shrur and Twins. Apart from sound­ing like the pro­gram­ming lineup of a British children’s tele­vi­sion net­work, they all are awe­some and well worth check­ing out.

Onto the 7-inch, we start off with the alternate-dimension club anthem “Fan­tas­tic Lands,” which reminds me of some kind of elec­tri­fied world-music from a coun­try that doesn’t exist. It’s the kind of track that makes Diplo-style glo­be­trot­ting seem pos­i­tively bor­ing. While MIA is all about uni­ver­sal mash-up bassquak­ing, these guys pose a com­pelling coun­ter­point: like kids hid­ing under a blan­ket and call­ing it the home­world, Best Hits are imag­in­ing what it means to be indige­nous beat-makers from imag­i­nary places, coin­ing MC-ing lan­guages and extra-geographic rhythm fig­ures for a crossover mar­ket. If Mad Decent-style cool-onialism hap­pens to rub you the wrong way, Best Hits throws it down guilt free.

B-side “Heart­beats,” on the other hand, sounds slightly more local, almost per­versely so, like over­hear­ing a next door neigh­bor mas­tur­bat­ing to exer­cise videos and pre­tend­ing to talk to his dead mother on speak­er­phone. It’s an inter­est­ing chan­nel­ing of Mr. Roboto-esque autism into awk­ward dance­floor anthem, almost as if David Byrne’s onstage per­sona got pro­grammed into a revolt­ing late-80s era Mac­in­tosh, or 2001’s HAL ended up liv­ing inside your beer fridge. Imag­ine if Grease with a sound­track by Sui­cide and you’re half-way there.

I can’t really tell which of these tunes I like bet­ter, a feel­ing that I hope will be exac­er­bated by the Best Hits full-length, out some­time this Win­ter. Until then, I can just put the two songs on repeat, put on warpaint in my bed­room, and ter­rify my girl­friend every time she comes home from class. If your New Year’s res­o­lu­tion is lose your fuck­ing mind, I sug­gest you do the same.

But back, briefly, to the idea that I started with, that elec­tronic music breathes in a way almost no other genre can these days. If faced with a deci­sion between the Great­est Hits of Cream and the cream of the Best Hits crop, I urge you to relax and let Dar­win take con­trol. Put on your head­phones, and evolve.

Ben Las­man

[[[Down­load the 7-inch]]]