Dead On Arrival, The 90s Revival

Paris Angels “Perfume (All On You)” – No, sorry, that isn’t an error: there’s a song name there but no link. You see, the server we use at Freaky Trigger can’t sustain many MP3s, so we’re going to have to be selective. Or rather – you’re going to have to be selective.

When Matthew asked me to be part of the Fluxblog All-Stars I knew I had to do something themed. At the weekend, during a conversation with my brother, it came to me: the 90s Revival. There’s no point in denying it, we all know it’s on its way: the cycles of pop and memory demand no less. But what is going to be revived, and by who? It’s best to be prepared, after all. So from Monday to Saturday I’m going to be talking about six ripe-for-resurrection genres, with an example from each for the curious to try and track down. And on Sunday I’ll (finally!) post an MP3, from one of the six genres, as picked by you. Without further ado, we start with BAGGY.

Baggy was a parochial English pop moment that hit in ’89 and had vanished by the end of ’91. It was also known as ‘indie-dance’ which gives you a fair idea of its priorities: “indie” i.e. bad singing, meets “dance” i.e. the funky drummer sample. I was 16 in 1989 though and to me this stuff was a major breakthrough, a call to all the kids to drop their tribal loyalties and groove on together. I still love a lot of the music.

One of the strange things about revivals is how very hip people and very unhip people move in chronological step. The rise of punk-funk Gang Of Four knockoffs and the turn back of clubland to coke’n’dresscodes is roughly contemporary with the rise in ultra-naff ‘school disco’ club nites playing Duran Duran. When the 90s come to this parting of the ways most baggy records will be firmly on the school disco side (The Farm’s monster “Groovy Train” springs to mind). Paris Angels’ “Perfume (All On You)” though might make the jump to hip approval: it’s fairly obscure, it’s very good and its ideas weren’t strip-mined quite as ruthlessly as the more generic shufflers of the era.

The brackets are important – “Perfume” without them is an un-rocking 7″ plod; “(All On You)” is a 12″ remix and is also a wave machine in a pool of champagne. The Extreme Makeover remix treatment (then still a daring novelty) for once produced a real gem: jangling guitars mix with twinkling sequencers, a love-in between supposedly clashing sounds that suddenly twig that they’re beautiful together. And the stretch from four to six minutes gives the song room to uncurl and impress, the rough-cut vocals changing before your ears into something hopeful and tender. How could it come back? Well, if the dance-rock crew decide to go for ‘beautiful’ on those difficult third/fourth albums, they could do worse than start here.