Lady Miss Kier SHOWREEL 2009 3 minutes from kirby on Vimeo.
Various icey trance temperatures sizzle and fizz out from speakers courtesty of Belgian-blaster Annemie Coenen and Nordic dance dealer Peter Luts who re-vitalise the Ian Van Dahl brand to unveil themselves as AnnaGrace with new album Ready To Dare. Not quite sharing a vein with Monrose, it's not a stretch to compare this album to Ladylike, but worth noting is that this is essentially sunset-lit trance tinged with dance-pop.
Fully committed to style, Ready To Fly is a 90 second intro and just so we know she is a glamorous robotic lady, her sleepish monologue eventually describes herself as wearing heels.
Losing efficiency, the economic Madonna-soundalike Celebration ought to have saved some time by simply being a straight cover. Attempting to inject the sentiment of its title might have proved more successful had the track not sounded like every other one here. Competent bleeps and smokey electronic triggers are unleashed if you are patient enough to wait for them.
Furtive vocals on Don't Let Go treacle actual feelings, trance temperatures promote a robust sense of unease and the slushy synths are stodgy enough to make it pass for more than just filler.
Adroit trance slither You Do Want Me shadows the hook of Let The Music Play, with the chorus 'you do want me' jabbing at your ears like bullets.
Should Have Known Better quite possibly pays tribute to Dannii's All I Wanna Do, boasting a majestic intro with the same swirling sense of masochistic emotions reflecting out from glistening eyes. Oh it just has to: all I can hear is the Minogue's plaintive trance sonics.
Getting engaged to some much needed euphoria, album standout Love Keeps Calling probably means it is time to admit you're a sex worker sweetheart - if I had a deeper voice I'd do it too so won't judge whilst I mime along. Singing at her going rate, the trance takes flight, flaring up to provide the album with its widest appeal, although it could only manage #23 in Flanders.
The moody guitar influenced To Be Loved is a ballad so beautiful you even forget she's even singing, it's moisture is reminiscent of Crowded House's Don't Dream It's Over's verses in places. The contemplative No More shakes things up with some trance spikes circulating around the dancefloor dread of the emotionally-damaged vocals.
Plodding cardio-bothered bopper Beat of My Heart ebbs and flows in the usual euro-trance midtempo manner - razor sharp rhymes at the expense of all credibility, and who cares when all you wanna do is dance to the beat of your own heart? Being in her 30s, any more than 70 steps per minute might be overdoing it.
Destination filler, Paradise at least employs some different shades in the name of Crystal Waters' Gypsy Woman (at a push). With surprising vocal gurning, it must be shag-tag night at the club as Anna yelps 'please don't worry, you know i'm in a hurry'. A decent if lagging trip.
On an album of dance-pop, You Make Me Feel is pop-dance and sticks out as being worthy of sitting on an Elize or Monrose setlist. Flanders top 5 smash Let The Feelings Go projects a similar climate of urgent refrains, cautionary verses that would make Tina Cousins grimace with fear and faintly-ambient pathos arrives in a storm of Cafe Del Mar sounds.
The AnnaGrace fetish for hard beats, trance tricks and trimmings might be too much for on the one sitting, but their unflinching dancefloor commitment cements the album as a glossy and slick accomplishment coated with enough flourishes to reward fans of the genre and those just curious to hear a surviving strand of the Ian Van Dahl aesthetic now immersed in a tidal wave of trance powder.
Verdict:
Alexia's inimitable brand of full-on, happy-slapping rampant Italo-house, piano-splattered Hi-NRG thumpers (and breathe) might have ran out of steam after too many formulaic anthems reduced the formula to levels of desperation Whigfield wouldn't even stoop to, but her bonafide summer splashes of dancefloor delirium such as Uh La La La and the moodier mememe-complex Number One (lucky for her it was just that in her homeland) both encapsulated the rare form of a dance-dwarf diva who sang like a trance-junkie Lady Miss Kier from Deee-Lite.
When I first heard Alexia sing her baps off - seemingly out of the blue whilst listening to the UK top 40 when her song Uh La La La entered at its #10 peak in 1998 - I thought she must have been a gigantic black woman 3 middle-8s away from a heart attack. That she was an Italian white woman with a bit of a 6-pack going on was a bit of a shock.
First causing waves with her Double You and Ice MC collaborations, the singles Me & U, Think About The Way (featured on Trainspotting OST) and It's A Rainy Day are still anthems to this day, promoting a harder subjection than her UK debut would have suggested.
Her British breakthrough was in fact originally a reggae-lite affair hastily tarted up by homosexual production team Almighty, who tranformed it into a pre-Spice Up Your Life rash of mardi gras sounds. 2nd top 20 in Ol' Blighty, Gimme Love was another pop-come-dance affair, with a lighter pace but was equally as glorious. Pre-empting a terminally tedious trend for the likes of Agnes 'wig on a turd' Carlsson and wouldn't-have-another-hit-in-a-month-o'-Sundays September, it was remixed for the UK release and this time I wasn't as blown away by what was this cotrived disco homage that seemed so needless when its chorus in its original incarnation was rapturous as it was.
Alexia's subsequent UK releases include the top 40 hit the Music I Like, which was whored up by then-relevant Xeonomania (who were once cutting edge enough to work wonders for Vanilla and Katrina of the waves) and then another was planned, which was of course cancelled, and the singer herself was not quite fluent enough in English to promote beyond flashing her belly button on Top of The Pops (wearing the same outfit - way to make it obvious she recorded two performances at once).
It was a not-so-strange to scrap Rn'B dud Keep On Movin' after the lacklustre performance of Music in this territory as she flew over to promote it albeit briefly. Her one UKPLay music channel interview with Josie 'quite frankly' D'arby ought to be on youtube for it was pins-in-the-eyes painful to watch. Sadly Alexia has since heartlessly ditched the euro-dance like a child with disabilities, but here are some of her other highlights if you rummage deep enough amongst the indispitable amount of crap she's managed to produce as well.
Album delight Make You Happy was one of the first songs i featured on this blog. Insistently addictive, it matched the thumping hysteria of Number One and Me & You. Alexia's even desperate enough to beg her lover to 'come on over me', whilst simultaneously giving us dance fans a full facial of amazingness.
The bubblegum brash of Ti Amo Ti Amo (Club Edit) is considerably perkier than the turgid momentum of the original edit. Let The Music Play is typical Alexia - slogging it during the verses and going full pelt on a kitchen sink eurodance chorus.
Goodbye is a tad familiar for me, but those verses are divine. Virtual Reality and Summer Is Crazy are the same song sold twice, but have all the right thuds and 'la's'. Beat of the night thrives on the same adrenaline as her Double You stuff.
Absolute gem Whenever You Want Me/Se Un Giorno was twice an album track, strumming once on her final English album Mad For Music in 2001, and then translated into gorgeous Italian sounds for her 2002 self-titled follow-up set - it sounds far superior in her native tongue, despite the production being exactly the same and that we no longer get to pretend she sings 'how many times do I have to burp to be yours again'. With a dreamy synth sound floating like bubbles, the harsher guitars yearn for the track to just go on and on. Lead single from the same album Money Honey stacks those bills high, a rare last flourish of Europap for the singer, jabbing the Italian chart at #34 and speared through to #4 in Israel, the nation of Dana International.
Again taken from Mad For Music, and again translated for the next LP, the Celine-ified The Real Thing was criminally overlooked as a single, probably due to her preference for singing in Italian perhaps, but it's got hit plastered all over it. Perhaps in the future I'll get around to reviewing her more recent Italian-language material with a bit more consideration, but taking into account that she no longer has remixes comissioned I just think abandoning dance completely has been a mistake even if her gift as a singer probably 'deserves' more credit than singing 'feel the vibe, whoah yeah'.
Hello fact fans: her orgy of 5 consequtive Italian number 1s came to an end with her massive number 2 Music I Like.
Alexia's 21st century albums can all be listened to HERE.
Throbbing hearts by the thousands, Adam Rickitt's middlefinger-to-Jesus anthem I Breathe Again is one of 1997's forgotten dance classics, a testosterone-seeping counterpart to Dannii Minogue's All I Wanna Do and Alexia's The Music I Like. His sole top 5 single unleashed a string of follow-up flops and an album Good Times of which teased the top 40 by peaking at #41 in the UK whilst the singer himself teased gullible gays with a lot of fake tan andhair products, not to mention teenage girls who were too daft to smell the KY.
Fever sweats on I Breathe Again, seeking love's ecstacy to hit his veins. Just like Dannii, he's a complicated malcontent whose narcissistic cynicism can't quash the plaintive capacity for pensive euphoria and pining rebellion. Diana Ross would have killed for this crap.
Rickett cuts out the middle man by sounding like 1999 Enrique without even needing a Metro remix to sound danceable. Opening through to which all that is vaguely solid melts into aether on Everything My Heart Desires, which manages that glistening Gina G/No Mercy/Enrique level of scintilating dance-pop authority.
Pedestrian disco diversion Good Times is splashed with piano keys and lisping good cheer. Synthesizing insecurity and hopelessness, the post-dance fatigue of I Can't Live Without Your Love is fluidly feel-worse affirmation. Later on, his vocal stealth on Give Me Your Heart is just as calm but not any better.
Euro-dance gloss gives good coverage on You Make Me Believe In Love, which has more rapidity to its grooves and returns the favour with a hook he's polite enough to gulp down several times until fade. Mild latin-spiced dance cut Time Is On Our Side believes in the future even if sales were harder to come by.
D:Rream-able The Best Thing sounds like Get Up & Dance era Gina G or even Lisa Scott-Lee's slew of floptastic top 20 singles. The muffled disco sounds of the bridges are stellar touches on top of an unsupressed vocal expidition. However, all these reassurances and I am starting to think that his apparantly joyless girlfriend is a needy cow in need of a few home truths - clearly the song should be called I Think The Gym Might Be A Good Idea (We Can Go Together If You Like).
Hold On Love doesn't quite deliver the full facial to make it worth it, even if it is solid but hardly pounding. With its contemplative sensibility, Heart And Soul samples the bombastic bass-whallop from the Jackson 5's Can You Feel It almost as vividly as The Tamperer (review coming soon) did the following year.
Quiet storm of disorentating late 90s trance temperatures, Touch Me evokes and encapsulates simultaneously, recruiting the best backing vocalists money can't buy. It's hard to tell if a woman is giving him goosebumps or he just needs a cardigan. Radiating hetrosexual masculinity, whispering 'touch me' encourages even other men to join in.
The comparatively stripped back dance number Take You High's unrelenting thump doesn't bruise anywhere but does have lots of beats. He's not a big guy so don't expect much damage if you're up for that sort of thing. Japanese bonus tracks include: the bubblegum Pet Shop Boys sounding Dreaming; twinkling Stars Are Falling, which taps into Peter Andre syrup; and You Got Me Good channels his inner Aaron Carter.
Verdict:
Despite her popularity diving even lower than her morals, Katie Price can find consolation in her stunning victory against prostitution with the new diva pride single Freemasons To Love Again wherein she activates her unstoppable understanding of the 21st century consumer fetish for trash. Her gritty ecumenical pledge to fuck for free has now leaked and has the aftertaste that may well be Durex, but being fast-paced and flavored with gospel piano, for me, this conjunction adds a perverse fillip to an already attractive setup and I am sure the rubbish gays from all over THE WORLD can use any kind of salvation that comes their way. Katie is the new Queen of Hearts and Diana would approve. I just wish Jodie Marsh would hurry the fuck up with her own dance single for a chart battle...
Is it the curse of being named Kelly that's stopped Ms. Rowland scoring her second UK number 1, or did Kylie brainwash mediocre gays with gangbang imagery, or was the ex-DC3 member's solo stab just underwhelming full stop? I can't quite decide, but it sure is a quick fix for giving one's self an extra push on the treadmill...
I am as surprised as the next Dannii Minogue fan, but the singer has actually managed to deliver something on time - congratulations to the Goddess of dance-pop and her baby-daddy Kris on the arrival of their new son Ethan. Yes, that's right - Ethan!
Above: Fresh-faced Ethan's pop career is expected any day now!
A survivor of the late 90s latin pop crossover invasion, heart throbber Enrique Iglesias is enjoying something of a revival with his 9th studio album Euphoria, and why not? Sadly missing are the slick Metro midtempo ballads, but I was never a metrosexual Hero-worshipper anyway, and so shimmery pop weighed down by a few Spanish dishes get the job done more than adequately.
The highly shaken fizz-plosion of the unhesitating I Like It's elevating synths usurp into exactly what I want from Enrique: something hard, fast and loud. RedOne shout his case just as loudly as Metro could. Listing Spanish words, I wonder if he's namedropping individual shout outs to No Mercy or the ketchup girls for all I know. Celebrating with irresponsible compassion, his childish yelps ought to be annoying but help bring the comedy along with his Whitney 'Oprah told me not to break' Houston style 'gurrl' pronounciation.
Over a jolly reggae synth-funk, One Day At A Time milks from the same teet as just about all of Akons pay-check snatching features, escapes the memory of Love To See You Cry's innocently sadistic grandeur, and based on Alejandro's US top 5 success this one might just manage top 20.
Getting serious(ly pseudo-tragic - two beautiful-losers, much?), downbeat gem Heartbeat could be his best ballad since Bassey-pining anthem Rhythm Divine. Understated and syncronised by Nicole's feminine treacle, both ugly and holding personal pain at bay with a gorgeously subtle tempo and piano layers that dissolve into moonlit melancholia. With breath-bottling vocals from both, they warble carefully with winning poise and balletic elegance (I wonder if the video will make use of Scherzinger's Dancing With The Stars success and Enrique's assumed groin authority - did I just say that?). The piano keys flow like a really heavy period, but without the cramp and water retention. Ladies, am I right?
Forging sexual chemistry with women is so hard for Enrique that he needs a really hot black guy to get Dirty Girl up and running. This exuberant anthem for 'greedy girls' melts into some lucky skanks cleavage, and who can blame her for letting them? If I were her I would already be pregnant and telling all to Wendy Williams, and sorting out an E! reality show. The big surprise is that it's not produced by DJ Encore.
Drippy drop ballad Why Not Me the sentimentality is thick with Enrique's trademark incipient sobs. Self-admitted Heartbreaker is cheerfully regular Rn'B-tinged man-pop. Stripped postcard Coming Home bleeds with torchy vibes and piano ripples.
Back on form, the great Everything's Gonna Be Alright is proof that he is at least willing to want to be authentic with autotuning managing to curdle infectiously unbashed emotion. 'Nobody can fuck with us', did I hear that right? 'Nobody can fuck with us', yes I did. 'Nobody can fuck with us', okay I get it. Track 7 on the UK issue of Euphoria, chances are this may well be a single if all goes well.
And onto the Spanish menu: No Me Digas is Escape style pomp; Ayer is as sensitively beautiful as you might fear; Cuando Me Enamoro is Travelodge reception Espanol; if Dile Que were on Kylie's Impossible Princess it would be heralded by fans as the next Imagine, but yes it's pretty unremarkable acoustic fodder; and the strumming Tú y Yo is at last worthy of his Enlgish-language singles.
Verdict:
Above: 'stop right now, thank you very much'.