Mario Basanov & Vidis ft. Kathy Diamond – In My System
Lithuanian electro types team up with Sheffield blogosphere siren…
[Video][Myspace]
[5.00]
Doug Robertson: I always wondered if anyone would ever be so uninspired that even Morcheeba could be an influence on them. Now I know.
[4]
Hillary Brown: Thin and kind of snooze-inducing, I guess this is some sort of a cool-down song, but it’s not an interesting one.
[3]
Martin Kavka: The great thing about Hotel-Costes-style lounge music was that it felt luxurious. But luxury has now lost its luster; this track is simply five years too late. Even if it had been released then, it wouldn’t have been good enough to make one of those hotel-bar compilations.
[3]
Martin Skidmore: I try to do a bit of minimal research while writing these items, to try to avoid sounding too stupid, but I won’t pretend any familiarity with the Lithuanian electro scene, if there is one. I can say that Kathy Diamond sounds lively and soulful, in a wistful kind of way, over the possibly-too-unassuming electro backing. It’s sometimes too easy to ignore in its diffidence, but there are moments of real loveliness.
[7]
Ian Mathers: This feels very much like a radio edit of a much longer, slow-building track that actually amounts to something. As it is, Diamond and the music here are too restrained to grab you, and “In My System” feels like an interlude, not a single.
[4]
Anthony Easton: What is that insectoid, metallic spluttering over the bottom of this song, and does the percussion contain both maracas and steel drums? The instrumentation is mechanical and paranoid, her humanist voice provides a cybernetic hybrid that is more meth then coke, except meth moves faster then this, pounds more.
[7]
Chuck Eddy: Yeah, but which system? Circulatory, respiratory, reproductive, urinary (yuck), digestive, nervous? Regardless: full-bodied and spare at the same time, somehow, and Diamond is no wallflower, even if her belly-dancer floating down the Nile routine trip-hops a wee bit too much. Plenty of nifty hand claps, dub echoes, and clinkity clinkity clanks in the rhythm track, too. Still probably not as good as “You Are In My System” by The System. But close.
[8]
Michaelangelo Matos: Slowly, Martine turned his gaze from the $300 handcuff holding his shiny Cartier jacket tightly over his wrist as he lifted the appletini to his passionless lips, to the far part of the room, just off the umpteenth sleek mirror to something even sleeker: Simone. She’d just arrived in the country after a holiday on Daddy’s yacht and Daddy’s money, and now she was looking for something else, maybe with a whiff of danger but mostly something comfortable and maybe longer-term. They smiled reservedly but kept their eyes intent. He walked over. A saxophone crept up above, over some words no one but the bartender was paying attention to — it was his iPod — and the bartender wasn’t paying all that much attention. He was making two more appletinis.
[4]
CHUCK EDDY UNFAIR TO URINARY SYSTEM
Okay, relistening to this one, I clearly overrated it a little — Probably deserves a 6 more than an 8. Like a lot of these songs, I basically listened to it just once, blindfold-test style, before writing it up. Must have been in an espeically good mood when I wrote this one. But I do think the people above who have a cultural context to weigh it against are underrating it as much as I’m overrating it — I’ve never paid any attention to Morcheeba, have no concept of Hotel Costes lounge music, have always avoided bars specializing in appletinis, and have no idea what music gets played in them. So to me, it’s just a song, not part of a bigger picture.
What I don’t like about it, fwiw: Too slow, and Diamond sings trip-hoppier (= sleepier) than I let on. (Also, Matt is right — lyrics about taking a piss would have helped.)
I thought this was nothingy, but this is a must-hear from Diamond (on the overall excellent Permanent Vacation label comp):
Permanent Vacation ft. Kathy Diamond – Tic Toc
xp Of course, there’s also possibility that, if had had more of a historical context to place the song into, I would have found it more average than I did and rated it lower.