After spending several days confined to a squalid motel off a disused highway, waiting for the phone call that was supposed to end this nightmare, you’ve ignored his advice and left your room in search of cheap cigarettes and something to drink. Exiting the corner store, you notice a man emerge from the shadows of the parking lot, too thin and well-dressed to be so unafraid in such a dangerous neighborhood.
You race to your car, your shaking hands struggling to unlock the door. A shot rings out, and your windshield explodes with a hailstorm of cubed glass. You reach under your seat- in place of your father’s pistol you find a note from her, which contains the word “sorry”, but couldn’t be less of an apology. Another shot rings out.
Finding ourselves in the last days of a decade that made its entrance with an exhilarating, if not somewhat misguided, electro resurgence, it can be disheartening to realize that much of the music has aged as unmercifully as the haircuts. Among the precious few that still hold their own is this standout single from Swayzak’s 2002 LP, Dirty Dancing.
This remix of their original collaboration by production duo Headgear (currently working separately as Circlesquare and Konrad Black captures the unselfconscious fun of the heyday of the electro years, while avoiding the excessive irony that permeated the scene by employing the same depth and restraint that propels each of the artists’ current work.
The song’s long running time is used effectively- an affected vocal set against a synth that would make Annie Lennox blush, sectioned off by a series deep and swaggering breakdowns. I once played this in a friend’s car, and the airbags deployed.
