So This is Goodbye
From the Junior Boys site:
In the period since the first LP, both hip hop and British garage have taken a turn for the brutalist and Pop has consequently been deprived of any modernizing force. Timbaland's beat surrealism became water-treading repetition years ago, displaced by the ultra-realist thuggish plod of corporate hip hop and the ugly carnality of Crunk; 2-Step's 'feminine pressure' has long since been crushed by the testosterone-saturated bluntness of Grime. That skunk- fugged heaviness remains the antipodes of the Junior Boys' cyberian, etherealized, plaintive physicality; listening to the Junior Boys after hearing Grime or dubstep is like walking out of a locker room thick with dope smoke out onto a Caspar David Friedrich mountain: a lung-cleansing experience.
It is significant that those other ultra-heterosexual post-Garage musics should have bred out the influence of House whereas Junior Boys return to it so emphatically. House references are everywhere on So This is Goodbye: the title track is gorgeously, oneirically poised on a honeyed Mr. Fingers' plateau, and it is not only the arpeggiated synth which drives many of the tracks that is reminiscent of Jamie Principle. Yet, the album does not sound either like House or like most previous attempts to synthesize Pop with House. So This is Goodbye is like House if it had started in the wilds of Canada rather the clubs of Chicago.
Mmm... the album is mine in L.A.!
In the period since the first LP, both hip hop and British garage have taken a turn for the brutalist and Pop has consequently been deprived of any modernizing force. Timbaland's beat surrealism became water-treading repetition years ago, displaced by the ultra-realist thuggish plod of corporate hip hop and the ugly carnality of Crunk; 2-Step's 'feminine pressure' has long since been crushed by the testosterone-saturated bluntness of Grime. That skunk- fugged heaviness remains the antipodes of the Junior Boys' cyberian, etherealized, plaintive physicality; listening to the Junior Boys after hearing Grime or dubstep is like walking out of a locker room thick with dope smoke out onto a Caspar David Friedrich mountain: a lung-cleansing experience.
It is significant that those other ultra-heterosexual post-Garage musics should have bred out the influence of House whereas Junior Boys return to it so emphatically. House references are everywhere on So This is Goodbye: the title track is gorgeously, oneirically poised on a honeyed Mr. Fingers' plateau, and it is not only the arpeggiated synth which drives many of the tracks that is reminiscent of Jamie Principle. Yet, the album does not sound either like House or like most previous attempts to synthesize Pop with House. So This is Goodbye is like House if it had started in the wilds of Canada rather the clubs of Chicago.
Mmm... the album is mine in L.A.!