In a blind taste test with follow-up UK hit "Acceptable in the 80s", four out of five of coke heads would make the choice of a new generation- though there isn't much difference between the two tracks other than the words in Harris' apathetic vocals.īetween the singles, I Created Disco is padded with repetitive, frequently instrumental tracks. I know this because Harris sings, "I've got my drugs, and my stuff, and my pills (when I go to Vegas)/ I've got my girls and my boys and my girls". I'm usually just outside of Barstow in the album's neon desert when the first single, "Vegas", kicks in. "I like them Asian girls/ I like them mixed-race girls," Harris explains. Smith-uh, instead of American attempts to sing like Marc Bolan. On previous single "The Girls", Harris follows the Rolling Stones' "Some Girls" template about as regrettably as Louis XIV did on 2005's "Finding Out True Love Is Blind", except with Scottish attempts to sing like Murphy singing-uh like Mark E. Nearly as often, there are equally perfunctory references to the opposite sex. Boringly often, there are boilerplate references to drugs: "Drug-taking at my place," Harris boasts matter-of-factly on latest single "Merrymaking at My Place", which repeats "my house" enough times for LCD Soundsystem's Murphy. There's very little variation between (or even within) tracks: a vapid vocal hook usually repeats over a simple bass groove and drum programming, with kitschy falsetto and synths, either zapping or distorted. I Created Disco mistakes superficiality for greatness.
Oh, sure, plenty of great music can be superficial. But it's all in good fun, supporters protest- sorry, not enough fun, and stop bogarting that stash. Trouble is, Harris has only one move, and it's not even convincing. So do the Daft-punk'd electro-house of fellow Scottish producer Mylo and the same "borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered 80s" that inspires Montreal/New York electrofunk duo Chromeo.
DFA's dance-punk figures prominently in Harris' cheeky full-length debut, I Created Disco, which peaked at #8 in the UK this summer and recently arrived in America.
James Murphy shouldn't worry about losing his edge just yet.
Harris has since scored two top 10 UK singles and recorded with Kylie Minogue.
At only 23, Harris enjoys the kind of Cinderella success story that recently drew British reality TV audiences to singing cell-phone salesman Paul Potts: After a move to London failed to provide a job, Harris went back to stacking supermarket shelves in his hometown of Dumfries until a MySpace page brought major-label executives a-calling.
He didn't create electro-house, either, but in a year full of cranked synths, proud hedonism, and Daft Punk, the UK music-buying public has decided to befriend the Scottish producer and singer-songwriter. Other innovators- Larry Levan, Tom Moulton, Walter Gibbons, Arthur Russell, and more- also helped define disco without limiting it to the most common definition.Īll that's not to point out that Calvin Harris didn't create disco, because, duh. Over at the Gallery, Nicky Siano might've been spinning the Bahaman rhythms of "Exuma, The Obeah Man" or the soulful storytelling of Bill Withers' "Harlem", alongside such Philadelphia Sound standards as MSFB's "Love Is the Message". In New York in the early 1970s, you could go to the Loft and hear David Mancuso play anything from the funky Spanish rock of Barrabas to the soon-to-be B-boy breaks of Babe Ruth's "The Mexican". The creation of disco was one of its most exciting phases.