Uitgebracht
December 2008
- The debut from Lithuania's Downtown Party Network has "loft classic" written all over it, both in terms of what it's aiming for and what it's indebted to. Its A-side "Days Like These" is lush feel-good disco that seems to crib its charm from Mancuso-style party jams, intending to please the crowd without pandering, instead staying true to the heart worn on its sleeve.
Stretched out to eight minutes, "Days" takes its sweet time getting to the mountain top. Instead of waiting until it had exhausted its possibilities to start stripping back down again, the tune grants you one full round of the chorus before a synth pulse takes things into expanded interlude territory. The reward for this pre-emptive breakdown, however, is the introduction of a perfectly gorgeous piano riff, which halfway through the track finally gives it the wings it's been waiting for. Once the piano crests and the shiny, reverbed group vocals return, you get your dose of deep disco gold. DJs would do well to bypass the first third and let the needle drop at the foot of this grand ascent, as it's long enough on its own to serve as an intro instead of a breakdown.
The sonic shibboleth that lets you know you're not in fact dealing with a Levan-era nugget lies in the digital production: Some of the sampled instrument flourishes feel a bit perfunctory, like the muted guitar harmonics and the touches of spritely strings, which have a slightly preset-y vibe to them. But in this case dwelling too long in a critique of production would be to miss the forest for the trees: DPN could have recorded this track on an answering machine and its flushed emotions and good vibes would still come through.
On the flip, "Into Your Face" takes a number of similar-sounding ingredientsïthey could very well be the same presetstand conjures up a much deeper, later-night cosmic disco banger. Every kind of electronic music has its own way of bridging the man-machine divide: The cosmic disco solution, for the most part, is to put the robot bits above the belt and stay human from the waist down, piling layers of synths on top of a boogie groove. That's why on "Into Your Face," like lots of other Eskimo releases, you'll hear a very particular kind of synthetic clap, one with just enough roll on the attack to give a loose handslap feel rather than a dry Detroit smack. It's not a human sound per se but a loose replication of one, perhaps fitting for a track that is very well done yet still feels like studied replication. That, of course, isn't exactly a huge surprise for a debut release, and the fact that these guys can pull it off so well is a strong sign of promise.
Tracklist A Days Like These (Vocal)
B Into Your Face