No Way Back

I've been busy on the music front, with a cover of the classic old house classic No Way Back:


The footage was shot with a 5D MkII, mostly using a Tomioka Chinon 55mm f/1.4; the music was performed with Ableton Live, mostly using a mixture of VST Korg Polysix and real physical MicroKorg and my actual larynx. What I really need is a soul diva to do the vocals. Vince Clarke needed Alison Moyet.

Here's the original, which was by Adonis, with Mr Gary B on vocals:


The song dates from the time when jacking off didn't mean what it does today, although it did mean what it does today, but... actually I'm not entirely sure what the whole jack thing was about. Like most British kids my age I was first exposed to dance music by Now That's What I Call Music Volume 11, which ended with a string of contemporary hits from Bomb the Bass, Coldcut, Jack N'Chill, and the Beatmasters. My favourite was House Arrest by Krush, and one of my fondest musical memories of the late 1980s is the bee-bee-bee-bee noise from Bomb the Bass' Beat Dis.

Sample-based house music taught kids to hum noises and random phrases and beats and wikky-wikky vinyl sounds rather than melodies. It took musique concrète forty years to cross from the edge of the avant-garde to the pop charts; what revolutions are lurking under the surface right now? Hmm?

I like No Way Back because it's just simple enough to be minimalist, but not so simple that it's impossible to sit through. Unlike for example Phuture's Acid Trax, which was hugely influential but isn't much fun as a listening experience. Of course, it was designed so that you could dance to it whilst off your head on fantastic happy drugs, but I can't dance at the moment. I'm sitting in front of a computer, typing, and clicking on things.

I can't take fantastic happy drugs because then I'd just start typing nonsense like atatogaojhta and tyoijathjaptrajpg, but it wouldn't matter because my mind would be glowing and all would be love.