I <3 synths! Like for real- I just fucking love them. (Is that like saying you love drums?)

Having spent countless hours soldering little bits of plastic and metal on bread boards and taking apart toys and keyboards.(and plugging away at a Serge like the one to the left).. I’m still amazed by how emotive a little bit of electricity can be.  Eternal love to Mr Gray for getting the whole thing started- but there are some new comers who are pushing the envelope and combining serious dance floor sensibility (or maybe sensitivity) with enough experimental flare to keep things interesting.

In Vienna last Saturday I stopped in at the nearly impossible to find Club U (as cute as it might seem- maybe dont name your venue the same thing as the five thousand signs for the subway that surround it) to hear from Glasgow’s Hudson Mohawke. Running a combo serato and ableton set up with some akai mpd controller action- dude properly destroyed the room with a much too short set. I’ve been checking Hudmo ever since his “Ooops” release of absolutely face melting hip-hop/rnb refixes. Seeing him live made me wonder if the term braindance might make a resurgance…but the music gods want something NEW to talk about….

If you squint a little music criticism starts to embody all the reasons that I hate (and find myself returning to) academic art history. Inbred pedanctic circle jerks aside- there’s something to be said for trying to come up with a critical apparatus for new works that have, in their unwieldy descent through the market, yet to find their historical/critical resting place. While creating/defending/destroying genre designations certainly is not the most important work of a critic- no one can avoid recycling and regurgitating the genre question when it comes to (cue Marsalis trumpets) the new era in BASS music that we may, are, ought to, have, havnt, possibly, can, enter did enter or passed through.

Saving my own didactic desires/nonsene- I’ll just share what to me are prime examples of……(wait for it)….. music that makes people dance in the club and makes me smile – even while enjoying my Hungarian subway stations multi-use  communal restroom, bakery and public transportation smell.  Both tracks have great synth work and even though they are bass heavy bangers- they both sound solid on laptop speakers.

Rod Lee – Let Me See What U Workin With (Rustie Remix)

Cop from Dress 2 $weat

Hud Mo- Ooops

Also- buyable

p.s. Can we talk about Tweet’s “Oops” as presaging the Recession Rap movement with her own libidinal credit crunch tale?