The Singles Jukebox

Skinny in the arse but massive in Europe…

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[5.75]

Ian Mathers: Slow, sparse rave music plays. A slightly lugubrious Belgian stretches out all of his lines and thinks of every possible rhyme for “Alors on Danse” that my highschool French would have come up with. Somehow, it’s kind of awesome. That kind of weird alchemy is why we listen to pop music, right?
[7]

Matt Cibula: Il y a aucun là ici, mais je l’aime de toute façon. Oui, je réalise que c’est une manière très ennuyante au texte de présentation choisit, mais il est ce qu’il est. Ne détestez pas.
[6]

Frank Kogan: Chronic depressive inhabits distorted cartoon landscape, rolls eyes, creates gray on black prettiness.
[7]

Pete Baran: A bust hurdy gurdy, an old Erasure backing track and something or other in French. I tend to find the disaffected French delivery doesn’t really work with dance music, but this isn’t hip-hop and with the exception of the tortured Jack In The Box sounds of the chorus there isn’t much that’s interesting me. Number 1 for four years straight in Belgium, then.
[3]

Martin Skidmore: Probably the best Belgian-Rwandan rapper I know, which I’m sure impresses you. This has been number one in various European countries, but it’s oddly restrained. The electro sounds kind of basic (apart from some very odd off-key fake horn sounds) and medium-paced, and he sounds very relaxed and with an ironic distance in his tone, not at all like he is going to dance. It’s quite likeable, but wears out its welcome with me before the end.
[6]

Kat Stevens: When I was seven, I began recorder lessons like everyone else at school. We were told not tooblow too hard into the mouthpiece, and to ‘put our tongue in’ as we played the note. I can see why they did these lessons when we were seven — a year or two later and we would have been collapsing with giggles or turning red from embarrassment. Anyway, the last page of Easy Recorder Tunes For Innocent 7-Year-Olds was a Fun Section with instructions for making bird noises. By blowing softly (no tongueing required) on the unscrewed top section and repeatedly cupping the exposed wide end with the palm of your hand, you could make a passable seagull noise. This was much easier than ‘Three Blind Mice’ and our progress slowed considerably once we found said page. Skip forward 4 years to secondary school, where once again we were offered the opportunity to learn an instrument, this time the saxophone. I was enough of a spod already without being tarred with the Lisa Simpson brush so I declined to learn the saxophone, especially as my spoddishness meant I was still playing the recorder when everyone else had long given up (I could play bloody madrigals by that point). I imagine that on the last page of Increasingly Difficult Saxophone Melodies For Awkward Pre-Teens there were instructions for unscrewing the top piece and making the sad seagull noise that can now be heard throughout “Alors On Danse”.
[4]

Iain Mew: There’s a weird tension, to my ears, between the silly farty riff that pops up throughout, and the singer who sounds serious, cool and intent on maintaining both. Perhaps it’s something that might be resolved given a better knowledge of French, but as it is while I like the individual parts enough, it doesn’t gel at all.
[5]

Chuck Eddy: Oui Oui Oui, all the way home.
[8]