Hot City - Another Girl

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

2...according to our Business Lady on Thu 24 Jun, 2010.

This is my first exposure to Hot City so you'll have to refer to the press release if you want some solid background on these guys. I should imagine they've done a bunch of remix work that's done well in the clubs cause it's pretty rare for Moshi Moshi to put out dance 12"s which probably means there's some money in it somewhere. I'm guessing they'll be some powerful hype behind these guys but won't hear any of it from me. What we are dealing with here is a one-sided hot pink 12" that delves head first into the sound of early rave hits whilst also accounting for the tastes of the UK funky bunch. It's got chunky, danceable beats and glitchy keys along with the traditional cut-up vocal lines you'd expect from early rave/house hits. I'd dance if I was muntered off my face and it was Saturday night but it's not, it's Wednesday afternoon and I'm missing the game. That's enough...you get the idea.

Production unit Hot City have been busy - remixes for Hot Chip, The Count and Sinden…tracks on the new Herve ghetto bass compilation, and Fabric compilation.. a recent 12" on Highpoint Lowlife that was played by Annie Mac, Kissy Sellout, A Trak, Toddla T and Sinden. Their old skool garage mix for Fact magazine was stupidly popular. Their incendiary DJ sets around the country got the blogs in overdrive. Moshi Moshi (The Drums, Florence and the Machine, Kate Nash) will release the debut artist album which is due this September.

Today however, they deliver first single ‘Another Girl’ - a bass heavy dancefloor record, showcasing the signature Hot City sound that’s all messed up stabs and clipped vocals. File Hot City records wherever you like. Call them rave revivalists or put them next to the newest convergent sounds of post-dubstep and UK funky. They're just as happy playing next to garage legends Ramsay & Fen as next to the intricate dubstep scientists Spatial (who have released Hot City tunes on their much-respected Infrasonics label), and their tunes will mix into Todd Terry or Cooly G, Basement Jaxx or Brackles, 2 Bad Mice or – if you're that way inclined – 2 Unlimited. It all flows to and from the same place: the dancefloor. As the old voice echoing through the years says, “house is a feeling” - well Hot City is a feeling too, and when that feeling hits, you'll know it and you'll want to track down the source.

The production duo discard any conception of “cool”; whilst you can hear some of the most gloriously rarefied and rare music echoing through their tracks, you can also hear the most shamelessly, guilelessly fun and populist sounds too. Echoes of old Strictly Rhythm dubs (“deep down inside, deep-deep down inside”), of the alien rave of the first Movin' Shadow tunes, of the militant Detroit electro of Drexciya (HC's deliberate anonymity is partially inspired by the “perfect stripping down to bare essentials” of Drexciya's high-concept image and releases)... And then there are echoes of bangin' piano diva scream-ups and the most dressed-up champagne-swigging excesses of UK garage – this is the act, after all, who recently tracked down Unknown MC of Pied Piper 'Do You Really Like It' fame for one of their forthcoming tracks. Is that even a hint of – whisper it – happy hardcore and rampant northern-club-friendly dance that you can hear in the duo's relentless pursuit of, as they put it, “the cheer moment” in their tracks? Don't rule it out, that's all that’s being said.

However this is not just some retro thing. The production duo have indeed served their time on dancefloors and behind decks and mixing desks in dance scenes more diverse than you might believe possible, but the elements of the past they use are not there to invoke the past but to speak directly of 2010 music. The new ways of looking at musical influence, of the convergence of musical knowledge that comes from colliding scenes in a clubland that is throwing away the micro-genre anxieties of the 2000s like so many empty Wayfarer frames.

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