The Singles Jukebox

Congrats to Vampire Weekend – there’s at least one person in the world who looks like more of a fanny than you…

[Video][Myspace]
[6.40]

Anthony Easton: Paperadical!
[6]

Hillary Brown: Call this the musical equivalent of Paper Rad: a deep commitment to a kind of brightly colored ugliness that ends up surpassing its pieces to become not only entertaining but aesthetically pleasing. Can we get him to work with Amerie?
[7]

Erick Bieritz: If most of the dubstep producers who aren’t obviously brilliant (i.e. Guido) need to make their first impressions on whatever clever little bit of vox they can offer, Rusko has made an excellent choice. “Woo” is inspirational thing to say in any situation, and a “Woo Boost” is a doubly great idea. Job interview pump-up music for robots on the skids.
[8]

Chuck Eddy: Undeniably has plenty of “woo!” in it; probably lotsa boost, too. Not to mention fire sirens and subliminal dub reggae whatchamacallits, generally not bad things. All in all, as instrumentals go, nicely zany — as easy to hear as a fun “novelty hit” as an experimental “electronic dance” track. Assuming people actually do dance to music like this; if so, I bet they’d look really silly. (Okay, just looked Rusko up — he’s a “dubstep” guy, duh. Which may well explain the dub parts.)
[7]

Martin Skidmore: He could be on the way to becoming the first world-famous dubstep producer, since he is apparently now working with TI, Rihanna and Britney. This is a surprisingly awkward number, the harsh electro sounds and the strange squeaks never quite melding into anything coherent, often sounding as if they are working to different beats. It stays interesting, but it doesn’t click for me.
[5]

Alex Macpherson: Rusko’s lairy, macho branch of dubstep is so repulsive, like beery vomit in your face, and it will just never, ever change.
[2]

Michaelangelo Matos: Oh yeah, my kind of record, all right: like a simple level of a videogame that stomps and chomps anyway, with a huge, playfully distorted, constantly moving bass line playing tag with a tweedling G-funk synth, like Sonic and Tails on the job.
[8]

John Seroff: Given the constant flood of the pure autotune/electronic/protooled sound in pop, it is counter-intuitively rare to find songs that genuinely read as machine-to-machine; that is to say, music for and seemingly by robots. “Woo Boost” is one of these, a little gem of silicon peopled with distinctively inhuman voices and punctuated only infrequently by more organic signifiers: a cough, breaking glass, a shout of joy. Lifeless doesn’t have to sound dead though; this is a grungy late-night videogame soundtrack for Pole Position nights and Street Fighter weekends. It’s artful, artificial and shockingly addictive.
[9]

Kat Stevens: Great squelching there dude, but “Woo Boost” is a textbook example of The Problem With Dubstep. How the hell are you meant to dance to something that’s only 70bpm? Pretending you’ve landed on the moon is fine if you’re ketamined up to the eyeballs, but I’ve got bad knees and I need an extra kick drum in there, otherwise I’m going to fall over.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: Amber Coffman aside, most of the vocalists on OMG simply get in the way of what Rusko does best — squeaky, bassy, grinding-into-the-ground, wobbly beats. And “Woo Boost” is exactly that. Treble-y arpeggios of electronics complement the buzz of the bass well, and the drums periodically kick up a notch, driving our ears appealingly forward. Would that there was a follow-through. As it is, “Woo Boost” is a marvelous four minutes that continually promises to lead us into an explosion of wonder – unfortunately, that explosion is “Hold On”. It’s a great intro, but as a single, it’s a bit of a tease.
[7]