The Singles Jukebox

Clinic used to release stuff on a label called Aladdin’s Cave of Golf…

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[7.12]

Chuck Eddy: ImpressionableTeen (1 month ago) Eat a dick, you fucking mong. You are a fucking spaztard, you fucking travesty. Jump off a bridge, idiot.
[4]

Alex Macpherson: Immaculately produced deep house bliss — almost too immaculate, as its painstaking revivalism means that it never quite shakes off something of a period-piece feel. It’s telling that its pivotal hands-in-the-air moment comes when its central piano riff morphs into an interpolation of Larry Levan’s remix of “Stand on the Word”, ushering in Saheer Umar’s soulful roar. Obviously, it still slays in warehouse raves at 4am.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: The R&B vocal sounds not just autotuned but mechanical enough to be computer-generated. The tune is pleasant enough, and the bleepy backing is nice. I think I’d like this with a brighter, more human singer.
[5]

Rodney J. Greene: Divide this 13-minute Larry Levan homage in half. For the first subtle 6.5, it may seem as though nothing is happening except for some pensive ivory-tickling and a bit of Daft Punk-circa-Homework whump and slice, but this section is a reminder that house is better felt than heard. Praises be to the Lords of House how this thing builds, moves, and creates. Then, at the exact midpoint, any use for subtlety is thrown out the window, all stops are off, and it’s fireworks, fireworks, and more fireworks from here on out. House pianos, gospel pianos, disco claps, big filter sweeps, choirs on high from Kilimanjaro, baritone male diva vocals growling about the dangerous city life. I hear New York, Africa, the AIDS epidemic, the Middle Passage; journeys through time and space. If there’s such a thing as Saturday night religion, then this is a blessing.
[10]

Martin Kavka: This retro-1992 piano house track would work much better as an edit; on too many occasions, I find myself waiting for the chord to change. But when the male vocalist — half Keith Thompson on “Break 4 Love,” half Sedric Johnson on “Carry Me Home” — comes in, it proves to have been very much worth the wait.
[8]

Ian Mathers: Is this the longest track we’ve ever tackled on the Jukebox? God knows it takes what seems like forever for the vocals to come in, and once they do things pick up considerably. The seven and a half minute preamble before the vocals come in isn’t bad exactly (there’s a bit during the sixth minute where the piano and the beat finally start playing off of each other that’s quite nice, actually), but it’s not until those vocals do start that the formerly anodyne piano house picks up a little speed and grit and the song switches from wallpaper to something more engaging and emotive. If there’s a decent single edit out there, it would rate a couple more points.
[5]

Erick Bieritz: The unsuspecting listener can be leveled by the sheer scope of “Rushing to Paradise.” There are warnings, particularly the way the piano unwinds so gradually in the beginning, but it’s still difficult to imagine the sheer size of the thing from just looking at the pieces of the song as they appear one by one. All of those pieces are making way for the voice itself, which is used so sparingly and would be lost in something as relatively restrained as a six- or seven-minute track. But here, hurtling over a rush of tambourines and synths and samples, the voice finds a home in which it cannot ever sound cliched or insincere, and in that way takes its place in the tradition of house music.
[9]

Michaelangelo Matos: Thirteen minutes that (a) fly by and (b) never sit still. And no, those are not the same thing by a long shot. The male diva could come in earlier and I wouldn’t complain, but all that pseudo-Balearic swirl that precedes him has its own kind of charge: airy, yes, but suggestive enough that when he finally blows the roof off the joint you’re totally ready for it.
[8]