Tag: Basic Element

Basic Element – Someone Out There

“That qualifies as a CHOON.”

Tim: Here’s one for a Friday, to get you READY FOR THE WEEKEND. (And before you ask, no idea about the car.)

Tom: Well, that qualifies as a CHOON.

Tim: I’m writing this on Thursday evening; when it goes up I’ll be desperately trying to manage hordes of people all desperate to get their hands on shiny new phones. And you know what? This is a perfect track to accompany that. It’s loud, it’s a bit messy with the rapping on top, it’s reminiscent of dance tracks of old (fairly sure there’s a Faithless track lying around in there somewhere), but more importantly it’s LOUD.

Tom: Agreed. It’s a fairly 90s track, all things being equal, and someone how that’s not a bad thing.

Tim: BANGING, in fact, if that word hasn’t lost all meaning yet. This is a middle of the set track, to be played when people are jumping around and happy to keep on do so, and ideally as far away from God Is A DJ as possible so people don’t notice.

Basic Element feat. Max C – Shades

“I like this. Quite a lot. Sort of.”

Tim: I don’t really have anything to say to introduce this, so let’s just have a listen.

Tim: I like this. Quite a lot. Sort of.

Tom: “Check out my swag / yo, peep my style”. I should despise this, but the instrumentation is so good I can’t bring myself to it.

Tim: It is so good, isn’t it? The judgement does, as it does so often, come down to the rap bit, which for me is bordering on the edge of being too long. I was really enjoying it at the start and through the first heavy dance bit, but then had to calm down, and towards the end of it, I was on the verge of getting bored and giving up on it, to be honest.

Tom: It almost borders into “generic floor-filler attempt” at the end, but it’s saved at the end.

Tim: Well quite – just before I did turn it off, it stopped, the dance came back and I was all, “Oh, yes, this is why I’m listening to it.” The second interlude seems to pass a bit more quickly, and so overall: a great dance track, but one that’s almost ruined by the rapping.

Tom: For once, the rapping doesn’t bother me too much – there’s plenty of things going on in the background to distract.

Basic Element – Turn Me On

Not one of those tracks that takes a while to get going.

Tim: Basic Element, a Swedish dance group. This, a tune I present to you with one instruction: PUT YOUR HANDS UP.

Not in a bank robber way, mind. Like, in a dancey way. You know.

Tom: Blimey, that kicks off fast and strong, doesn’t it?

Tim: Yes – it really isn’t one of those tracks that takes a while to get going, which partly seems to be out of necessity. We all know I’m not one for a long track, but here, there’s just not enough time for everything to happen without getting crowded. It seems like a TV show where the producers want to make a episode that’s absolutely insane, with the viewers going OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD THAT’S HUGE, but they forget that they’ve only got so much time to do it in and it all comes out all a bit confused and there’s no time for anything to have any impact.*

* Steven Moffat, I’m glaring at you.

Tom: My Eurobeat-loving roots mean that I should be absolutely OK with a dodgy Euro-rap bit in the middle of the track, but it just seems out of place here. You’re right about the track insanity, though: it’s not really genre-shifting at all, it’s just rather quick. That’s perhaps for the best – if they’d made it longer, I think it’d have gotten dull rather fast.

Tim: Here, obviously there shouldn’t be any time constraints, but it seems like a similar problem – they’ve tried to squeeze a five-minute track into 170 seconds, and it’s really just a mess.

Tom: An energetic mess, though.