The Singles Jukebox

Drum’n’bass? In MY reggae?…

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[5.78]

Patrick St. Michel: You got your easy-going reggae in my frantic drum ‘n’ bass! Meh, no big deal, they aren’t actually all that mixed together.
[5]

Alfred Soto: This curate’s egg combines the white of drums ‘n’ bass and a reggae yolk, pleasing no taste buds. I mean, it’s closer to this dancehall curio from my youth.
[5]

Juana Giaimo: Believe me: this song starts working with repeated listens. While at first it seems to lack articulation and coherence, its Jamaican vibes will soon seduce you to join them in their party. If you accept, a good time is guaranteed, even though it may not last long nor be very memorable. 
[6]

Anthony Easton: Digital squiggles leading to some serious brass, layered in between vocals that are on the wrong side of restraint — the first half minute of this is both terribly current and easily one of the more beautifully formal things I’ve heard in last few months. The sweet vocals and chopped up harshness of the production fatten that brass further, and it returns and repeats, layers and then refuses those layerings. The track is smart.
[8]

Brad Shoup: The lovers’ rock is at a too-literal tension with the drum’n’bass. I’m turning the electric piano into a liferaft. If the former is coming down, I’m all for it.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: The Owen Hargreaves of British pop music is back just in time for summer, if not the one in Britain. Still, she is here, and sounding reliably like, well, Ms Dynamite, if one playing comfortably within her range. The breaks and brass feel a bit imbalanced, quite like Shy FX’s similar, perfunctory touches to “Gold Dust” did (better at least than Dynamite’s own version), but they do both work on their own terms — if, again, those terms aren’t exactly stretched.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: If anybody has earned themselves a summer roots vacation, surely Ms. Dynamite has. Drawing an explicit connection between trad island music and modern urban UK dance is on the face of it a good thing, but trust a tourist to go for dreamy skank instead of the buzzy, grimy dancehall and ragga that would be the true Jamaican equivalent of the caffeinated drum n’ bass she uses to take flight.
[6]

Will Adams: Shy FX seems to have missed the memo about fusion requiring actual fusion instead of plopping genres side by side. Without any effort to merge the reggae and drum ‘n’ bass sections, “Cloud 9” can’t find its footing, leaving a fine performance from Ms. Dynamite and a lovely electric piano motif wasted.
[5]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Man… It’s October, nearly November. Where in the hell am I going to find a place where I can skank to this in shorts? SEASONAL DOWNVOTE
[6]