The Singles Jukebox

You might want to stop reading after the second blurb here, Ewan.

[Video]
[3.75]

Nortey Dowuona: This is the correct way to sample a well known classic. Rip it to shreds and build a new world with each ripped shard. Do better with the synths next time, Ewan.
[6]

Mark Sinker: The gap between King Oliver’s “Dippermouth Blues” (1923) and Ken Colyer’s remake is 33 years, and Colyer was just 28 in 1956. The gap between C-Bank’s (which is to say John Robie’s) “Get Wet” (1983) and “Tell Me Something Good” is 38 years. McVicar is 27. Trad is when you freeze the revolution at its most heightened moment and just have to circling back to that. “Wet” isn’t quite the same song as “Good”, I guess, but there’s a lot of Colyer’s fascinated steely rigour here, and that same identical refusal to let a wild and mind-blowing instant go.
[8]

Will Adams: “Ewan said last week it was ‘mad’ to see the tune picking up so much traction.” Same here, dude.
[3]

Leah Isobel: The orchestra hits are so plasticky they’re divine, like Stock Aitken Waterman levels of postmodern unreality. They do not feel in conversation with the sample at all.
[3]

Ian Mathers: If we’re going to have these kinds of staggeringly inessential dance mixes of amazing old songs, I guess at least they might sound vaguely like the Art of Noise, sure. The definition of “could be worse, I guess”, but maybe we should all go listen to Rufus instead?
[2]

Thomas Inskeep: Scottish DJ takes classic sample, doesn’t credit it (this time from the Rufus classic), cuts it up ever so slightly, puts an obnoxious, unimaginative cod-house beat behind it, tosses in a load of percussive hits, and gets his own hit out of it. Heaven knows why, because this is the musical epitome of empty, tasteless calories.
[1]

Edward Okulicz: The orchestra hits sound like they’re sampled from a particular Super NES game I remember from my youth. If you recognise it, please let me know, it’s driving me nuts not being able to place it. Everything else sounds like an attempt to squeeze Rufus into a line dance at double the speed. As I’m writing this, I realise that this sounds like quite a lot of fun, but these things turn out to be not very fun together.
[4]

Tim de Reuse: From every angle, it screams “dance remix of something that never asked to be remixed,” perhaps most egregiously by the way the bass line and the vocal snippets clash melodically in that subtle way that suggests an awkward mashup rather than a practiced coordination. What really irritates me about it, though, is the tinny little orchestra stab sound effects, because it’s just a whirlwind of a reference: a 2020s remix of a tune from the 70s that tries to get by on nostalgia for the clunkiest techno of the 90s. The message is muddled.
[3]