Melting the shit glacier

By JACK OATMON

What happens when every pet owner in an entire neighbourhood freezes all of their doggy doo-doo for 100 days, and saves it until that shit stash is unleashed all at once in one single day? What happens is that you get a receding shit glacier, an abomination of poor planning, laziness and cumulative bad-decision-making that stinks up an entire area of a city.

I think you’ve probably already guessed what I’m getting at here. Yes, that’s right. During a regrettable moment of grim curiosity, I downloaded a copy of MSTRKRFT’s new album, Fist of God, and I have two words for you—shit glacier. This record is an unholy aggregate of all the dismal aesthetics and knee-jerk decision making that has gone on in dance music in the past two years. They’ve been hoarding all the tacky, unintelligent rap a capellas, awkward shout-outs, atrocious, grinding software synth presets and clumsily chopped samples. They’ve been taking all these unfunky, uninteresting scraps of crap and getting ready to stink up the whole neighbourhood.

Don’t get me wrong. I had my kicks. I loved the aggressive, glitchy, hammering sounds of 2006. I even got a kick out of the ADHD listening, the mash-ups and the blog experiments for awhile. I lauded the Justices and the Superdiscounts and the Soulwaxes. We all did. And rightly so, because they were doing something interesting at the time. But times have changed and the weather’s warming up, and now we need a shit-free park to picnic in. A place free of the MSTRKRFTs and the Girl Talks of the world.

And, on that note, here’s my advice on hunting down the real funk this week. Go and download yourself a copy of “Love Don’t Dance Here Anymore,” Tiga’s new single from the upcoming Ciao!. It’s a 10-minute (yes, that’s how long tracks should be) techno-Italo crossover produced by the Dewaele brothers, with a gradual, psychedelic development and a cinematographic quality evoking Moroder’s “Chase,” culminating in a trance-inducing funk-gasm.

Next, put on your boogaloo shoes and march on over to the former DiSalvio’s space (3519 St-Laurent) tonight, Thursday, March 19, for the first edition of Colours, featuring London, England’s groovy house handler Jesse Rose, brought to you in part by the wonderful folks responsible for that outrageous New Year’s party we all loved so much. Or, for the spooky, mysterious techno vibe, cruise up the street to new spot Karma for Radio Slave.

Then hit up Coda on Friday night for Trevor Walker, Ottawa’s stalwart, soulful house and tribal beats ambassador. Afterwards, keep your ears perked up for an afterparty across the street. And remember, there’s an infinity of amazing dance music out there. We just gotta go back to following our guts, not the “attending” count on Facefantasy.

In other club news, Radio Void on Saturday nights at Blizzarts is now over, ending a long, historic run of weekly techno nights there, and being replaced this week by the best rock dance night in the city, Mod Club.

CALL ’EM LIKE YOU SEE ’EM!
jack.oatmon@gmail.com