The Singles Jukebox

Featured credits or Bob Lefsetz’s darkest dream?

[Video][Website]
[4.78]

Michaela Drapes: I am trapped in the tackiest, flashiest nightclub in the universe with the worst PA ever, and this watery vodka tonic is not helping. Please get me out of here. Now.
[1]

Brad Shoup: Maybe I miss trance? One good idea dragged across seven minutes seems like a textbook tiny request. This, however, feels like an Escherian edit, a decent raver dismembered. I could swear they’re saying “antidub.” I could buy that title, such is the non-aerodynamic construction of this momentum-slaughtering piece of bosh.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Nitsuh Abebe has upped the dubstep description bar three times now, to my count: “being inside the gleaming metal torso of a planet-sized robot while it punches an even bigger robot,” “Cookie Monster barfing up that liquid-metal Terminator from the sequel,” “a modem with indigestion.” So here’s my stab at “Antidote,” where the dubstep comes from inside the house: a Missile Command machine, sensing its mall arcade’s imminent demise at the ripped-lace-gloved hands of Forever 21, went rogue, spat out a retro-tourist will.i.am, then pelted him and planet Earth with smart bombs (the hardest ever) until he rapped like Robyn’s fembot. I think my liking this means they’ve reprogrammed my brain.
[7]

Alex Ostroff: Starts off a bit UK funky, takes a quick detour through a Space Battle Homo Mix and ends up with what sounds like will.i.am rapping through a vocoder overtop a gigantic sonically muddled rave. I approve of two of these three things, but both of them have come and gone by the end of the first two minutes.
[4]

John Seroff: The best thing about the Mortal Kombat soundtrack outtake “Antidote” is that it keeps its mouth shut for a full three minutes before it feels compelled to launch into a bad rendition of “Technologic” that includes the line “mix it up and mass appeal it.” The worst thing is that it goes on for another three minutes after that.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: The video at least has the virtue of not wearing out its welcome. It’s just as dumb and flashy and unconvincing in its depiction of cool as the six-minute song, but it gets it over with in half the time.
[4]

Pete Baran: Cor, it’s like Bonkers without any of that annoying rapping on it… oh, it’s got an annoying vocal instead. Still Knife Party appear to have teased some life into the normally fantastically literal Swedish House Mafia. And it appears to have inspired office chair dancing from an underling, so — as David Jacobs used to say — HIT!
[8]

Iain Mew: I like SHM’s big, obvious trance when tied to pop songs, but in the absence of any such thing (and sitting in my flat with my headphones) “Antidote” does not very much for me for a very long time.
[4]

Doug Robertson: If this is the poison, who needs the remedy? Sure, it’s pretty much a clichéd checklist of every dance trick in the book, but clichés become clichés for a reason, and the church of house has never been shy to acknowledge the fact that it’s built upon the solid foundations of repetition. The twist of electro in the mix holds everything together in a sticky bundle of joy that buzzes like a toffee apple covered in bees. Savour the delicious sting.
[8]