The rise in popularity of rock and punk-influenced dance music (often but not always disco based) always seemed a bit too safe for me. I guess dance music is inherently safe: instantly accessible; light on concepts or tonal challenges; and fun. But it sometimes seems to me as if there is this veneer of coolness that has to be maintained. !!! are a great band, but they also position themselves in a really clever way. They manufactured a mystique around themselves. They became known for playing parties in NYC and chose a band name that requires some explanation before it can even be pronounced. !!! draw quite heavily on disco (I do not know the genre that well, but I would bet it is late period disco), but they sound very current, clearly a product of modern musical currents. Hence the coolness. They took what a lot of people were playing around with and produced their own tweaked, and arguably better, version. I can't really argue that !!! plays it safe because I think they produce some really interesting and occasionally inaccessible material, but I can say that it is very clear that they are a product of their time and don't fully plunge into their dance influences.

What I like about Chromeo is that they fully commit themselves to replicating that sparkly 80s sound. Aside from the quality of the production, there is not much to indicate that Chromeo are a contemporary band. This is, at least on a conceptual level, unsafe. It should be inherently risky to fully align yourself with a style that has already had its day and, arguably, run its course. Maybe this risk is lessened in the face of a notable 80s resurgence in popular culture. I doubt it though. That resurgence was largely relegated to things like fashion and, where it did pop up in music, it was never a controlling or dominant influence.

"Fancy Footwork" (posted below) has been my jam of late. The synth work is masterful and that isn't a sampled bass or a synth, that is one of the dudes in the band wailing on that thing. That is fucking sick. Everything has its own space in the mix and the group is just absolutely masterful in creating musical accents to their groove. They bring in synth runs (where the synth goes through part or all of a scale) to flesh out certain parts of the song. It is clear that Chromeo is a studio band - a cerebral project that I think displays very thoughtful song construction. Anyway, I am nerding out on this. Hard.


Fancy Footwork - Chromeo