Neat!

[Video][Website]
[6.00]

Hazel Robinson: I love High Contrast, purveyors of high-speed, smiley drum and bass that makes even a great big old goth like me jump around grinning. I like Tiesto and Underworld. This was bound to be immense. What I wasn’t prepared for was how irrepressibly, bouncily gleeful it would be — a high-propellent joy, hurtling forwards with streams of bass and keyboards like go faster stripes. Listening to it sneakily at work, my colleagues have just asked me what I’m smiling about, to which the answer is “you must hear this now.”
[10]

Kat Stevens: Christ what a load of bobbins.
[2]

Iain Mew: Warmth and drum and bass and euphoria, which is a good combination but only takes off once the underwhelming vocals get out of the way. Even then, it’s slightly more timid than it needs to be.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: This doesn’t just let its seams show; it’s all seams, less a deconstruction than a splaying-out of guts. The vocals both sound like and sound like they’re saying “Mellotron,” the piano progression doesn’t dither a second before becoming the first one you’ll guess, and the drums could quiver beneath anything but seem gratuitous here. This track has one purpose; for me, it failed it.
[5]

Brad Shoup: With a roster like this, and the current reality of long-distance collaboration, a mess could be expected: an over-upholstered piece crammed with each artist’s strengths to the detriment of the song. It’s a minor miracle, then, to receive this: a weighty alloy of trance and drum’n’bass, topped with an euphoric Karl Hyde vocal. Though he’s got a catalog of sights and sensations to share, Hyde’s not quite transmitting, more like processing in real time — his half-time, lagging vocal is partly responsible. Everyone puts across a rave-induced giddiness while staying far away from the unbearable lightness of beaming. The best moment is the buzzing synth figure that brings to mind a stray melody from Groove Armada’s “At the River.”
[9]

Alex Ostroff: The way the chopped-up vocals are distributed throughout and between the cascade of drums is really quite effective, and the whining organ-grinder synth noises provide a nice contrast with the crispness of the drum patterns. Unfortunately, the bland melody and sleepy delivery of the song itself are difficult to overcome. It’s as if someone put together an incredible remix of Keane or Coldplay — no matter how many BPM you add to it, you’re still trying to revive a song that never had a pulse.
[4]

Ian Mathers: Underworld are one of my favourite bands of all time, and their last collaboration with High Contrast resulted in “Scribble,” which I adore here. There are moments here, in Karl Hyde’s vocals, the production, even the video, that I respond to extremely positively. But I’m not sure these four minutes work as a song, just like I’m not sure the video, “directed, photographed, and edited” by High Contrast, works as anything more than a mishmash of (often striking) images. There’s a warmth to “The First Note Is Silent,” even at its most frenetic, that I gravitate to. And I guess the structural mess is appropriate for a song that’s trying to take on so much. But I’m not sure how I’m going to feel about this song tomorrow.
[7]