Tag: Avicii

Avicii – Hey Brother

“It’s been quite the successful change.”

Tim: This is pretty much the least Avicii-sounding song he’s ever put out since he adopted that mantle. And it’s brilliant for it.

Tom: You say that, but this now sounds rather like what an Aviici track should be to me — or at least, what I’ve now come to associate with him. It’s been quite the successful change.

Tim: Right – Wake Me Up went someway to ditching the piano dance that he’d become almost synonymous with, and here it’s completely out of the window with not a keyboard in sight. It’s not entirely unrecognisable – the brass has filled in the gap, but otherwise a similar formula – but this will certainly go a long way to quietening the crowd that unimaginatively describe him as a one-trick pony. And that’s a very good thing.

Tom: Agreed. This is just a brilliant track, and while it’ll probably need a remix before it hits the Clubland ‘best of’, that’s not a complaint: I like this new Avicii.

Avicii feat. Aloe Blacc – Wake Me Up

“Country music?”

Tim: Last time we reviewed an Avicii track you said his style was starting to sound a bit stale. I don’t think you’ll say that this time.

Tom: “Save tonight, and fight the break of dawn” … just me?

Tim: Couldn’t find a ridiculous cover version for that one, I presume?

Tom: No, but I did find a useless cover version.

Tim: Blimey, Danny Saucedo’s come a long way since then. But I think we’ve got a bit distracted. What was I going to say? Ah, yes. You’ll need a fairly substantial remix before this’ll get played out in any big clubs, I’d imagine, because for the most part this is, well, country music?

Tom: The presence of an acoustic guitar doesn’t make it country music.

Tim: True, but merge that with the vocal stylings and you’re not far off.

Tom: And admittedly I did expect a much bigger bass drop after that build* — this isn’t a club floorfiller, but it is something I very much want to add to my playlist. This is music for radio play, for listening to, for putting on the inevitable ‘chilled dance’ compilation at the end of the year — and there’ll be a big banging remix for the clubs.

* Have you ever seen how those are made? 5m36 into this video explains it all.

Tim: The chorus is fine, and the vocal could work well on top of a dance beat, but let be honest you’d have a difficult time dancing feet off the ground, hands in the air to that guitar business.

Tom: Speak for yourself: this gets filed under ‘euphoric’ for me, and it’ll work very nicely indeed with a remix.

Tim: Oh, a remix, absolutely. Guitar on its own, as it is – not so much.

Tom: I very, very much like this.

Tim: Oh, it’s certainly not a bad track – it just doesn’t really blend at all so I’m not sure what to make of it. Could be a huge hit, but then it could also flop disastrously. Hope it’s not the latter.

Avicii – Silhouettes

“This is brilliant, this is.”

Tim: This is brilliant, this is.

Tim: By quite some way his best work since Bromance.

Tom: Really? I have to disagree: that synth melody seems to be the opposite of catchy. It seems almost like a kid playing random notes on a keyboard. I can still hum “Bromance”. This one? Not so much.

Tim: Well, I think you’re wrong. It’s not as good as Bromance, sure, but it’s still good, dancey, and it’s got a good vocal, which some of his have missed.

I do have one issue, though: that break in the middle. Yes, it stops people ripping it off YouTube, but bloody hell, is that really the best way they could fit something like that in?

Tom: The more disturbing it is, the better, as far as the labels are concerned. Admittedly it just means people will search for “aviicy siluetts mp3” and find it anyway, but still.

Tim: True. The only benefit is that if this gets into the top 10, it’ll sound lovely coming out of Radio 1 who, since they’ve started playing the videos on the website during the chart show, have to broadcast the video edits over the radio so it all syncs up properly. Somehow, every single person involved forgot about videos like this. Numpties.

Tom: First of all – that’s a silly idea. And second of all – surely they’ll have an edited version just for that?

Tim: No, or at least they didn’t when they did it with the whole top 100 singles since 2000 or whatever it was a few weeks back – I remember quite vividly Scott Mills deciding to talk over bits like that and inform the listener what was going on, so they wouldn’t miss out. But anyway, bloody good track.

Tom: Maybe I’m not hearing the same one you are.

Avicii – Levels

“To be honest I feel somewhat short-changed.”

Tim: You’ll probably have heard this – it’s been around for ages (clubs all summer, used by Flo Rida in a track back in August), but we’ve not discussed it until now, because it’s only recently been properly released.

Tom: That’s weird. I know it incredibly well, but if you’d have asked me before I hit ‘play’ I’d have denied it.

Tim: The vocals apparently come from some song off the 1960’s, which as far as I’m concerned is too far back to worry about, but good hunting none the less. As a tune it’s energetic and all that, but I can’t get away from the fact that, sampled vocal aside, it’s just two bars looped for two and a half minutes, and to be honest I feel somewhat short-changed.

Tom: Agreed – which is strange, because the same’s been true of other tracks that we’ve loved.

Tim: Indeed – in the past, great success has been achieved with half as much, but there, at least there was a lot of variation in the backing – this, not so much.

Tom: Ah! Well then, I can help you. May I present Mashup-Germany’s “Believe In Your Best Levels“, which fills in those gaps with a half-dozen other tracks that merge perfectly.

Tim: Ooh, fun. Anyway, to sum this up on its own – it’s good, but it’s ten seconds of good, not three and a half minutes.

Avicii – Fade Into Darkness

It’s a hell of a lot better than Leona’s

Tim: The story so far, for those that don’t know: Scott Mills unveiled Leona Lewis’s new track a couple of weeks ago on Radio 1, everybody realised that the backing was roughly identical to Avicii’s Penguin even though he got no credit or anything, Ministry of Sound (his label) got all shouty, and so did he, and made it all public, and Leona’s people tried to deny it all but no-one really believed them.

Tom: Now, to be fair, I can see this being a genuine cock-up: as Avicii says in his posts, the background is all properly licensed, and the idea of using a modern-classical track as the backing for something else isn’t really a new or original thought.

Tim: So what happens now? The vocal version of Penguin gets decided on and given a speedy release.

Tim: You said it needed a bit more – how was that?

Tom: It’s a hell of a lot better than Leona’s, that’s for sure

Tim: Well, duh…

Tom: I was worried about how long it took to kick in, but then I realised I said the same thing about the original mix: with that in mind, I don’t really have a bad work to say about it.

Tim: I reckon it works well – vocal sounds appropriate, and while it’s unlike to stop Leona Lewis’s being successful, hopefully it’ll do more than well enough, especially given this extra publicity that it’s got. Though of course there is the possibility of total morons getting all over YouTube and going “OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU STOLE LEONAS TRACK U R SO GAY!!!!”

Tom: Point ’em towards the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

Avicii – Penguin

This sort of stuff has been gone for too long. (With bonus classical diversion!)

Tim: I am glad that dance season is fast approaching, because this sort of stuff has been gone for too long.

Tim: This bloke ditched the ‘Avicii’ name briefly when he put out Bromance last year, but right now Tim Berg’s back as he was.

Tom: Speaking of which: do you have any idea how popular that track became? 38 million views for the official video, and I still hear it being played. Absolutely astounding track.

Tim: Well, now he’s dance-ing up a vaguely well known classical tune, the sort that gets requested daily on the Classic FM Drivetime show.

Tom: Now I do love tracks like this, if only because of my younger years when I spent far too long playing Dance Dance Revolution. I still know the step-rhythms for parts of “V (for EXTREME)” and the gorgeous “Kakumei” off by heart.

But if you really want to go back into history: then you have to start in the 1970s, with Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven” – which is, bizarrely, improved by the addition of Kanye West.

Tim: Why ‘Penguin’? Not a clue, but it does make for a nice picture.

Tom: Now that I can explain: the original piece is the modern classical “Perpetuum Mobile” by Penguin Cafe Orchestra, who also made the lovely “Music for a Found Harmonium” – which got turned into the execrable “Paddy’s Revenge” a few years back.

Tim: Ah – I knew the title of the track, just not the orchestra. And is it particularly execrable? I thought it was alright.

Anyway, I don’t really care what it’s called, because the tune is great. Good source material, excellent treatment of it, properly BANGING.

Tom: I was about to disagree with you, and then the track finally kicked in – at 2:20 – and I completely agree with you. After the beat drops, then yes; I like it. Like Bromance, though, I feel it does need a bit more.

Tim: Though having said I don’t care about the name, I am now tempted to mess around with it in GarageBand and stick some of this on top.

Tom: Get out.

Tim: I see. You probably wouldn’t have a problem with this, though.

Tom: …I’ll allow it.

Tim: You’re insane.

Tim Berg – Seek Bromance

Here’s a nice Swedish dance choon for you.

Tim: Here’s a nice Swedish dance tune for you, by a new bloke called Tim Berg. Well, mostly. He did the backing music, which – as an instrumental track called Bromance – has been all over Scandinavian clubs and dance radio the past few months. It is rather good indeed on its own.

It’s also been up on YouTube for people to play around with. One such person is Axwell (off Swedish House Mafia and Axwell & Bob Sinclar’s What a Wonderful World), who took it and bunged the vocals of the otherwise largely unremarkable Love U Seek on top of it. That bootleg got very popular, and so, with a bit of rights fiddling and re-recording, has been chosen as the proper UK release, now called Seek Bromance (clever, isn’t it?).

Tom: Bromance is a lovely track, but I can’t help but feel it’s rather close to plagiarising the lead melody from the absolutely gorgeous Still Alive, from Mirror’s Edge – the second best piece of video game music ever (after the coincidentally-named Still Alive from Portal). Hell, even the synth patch used in Bromance sounds similar.

It’s still a great bit of music though. I think it’s better without the vocals, but I understand that you pretty much need them for a commercial UK release. I can see myself listening to the original of Bromance quite a lot.

Tim: Do you know, I agree with absolutely everything you just wrote, and I enjoyed the slight campness of the music descriptions. I hadn’t heard Still Alive, so thank you for introducing me to it. I’ve a feeling most people will think the same about the vocal (especially DJs), so what’ll likely happen is that Seek Bromance will only really be heard on the radio and before old-school CD-buying people skip to track 2, while the original will keep being played in the clubs. A good thing, I believe.