Uitgebracht
November 2010
- The belief that anything can happen in New York is hard-wired into its denizens. This belief is often the source of great courage, giving New Yorkers the strength to do things like sing in front of a crowd of strangers in a subway station. Hey, who knows, maybe some rich kind soul will drop fifty bucks into your hat—or maybe, as in the case of Damon C. Scott, you'll make a friend you'll never forget. You see it's on the subway platform that Scott crossed paths with Morgan Geist, a meeting that's yielded a new alias, Storm Queen, and a debut 12-inch, "Look Right Through."
With an infectious analog groove, fluttery vintage synth flutter and bold, emotive house vocals, "Look Right Through" is a killer mixture of grit and soul—a mixture not unlike the sound of someone belting out a tune in the concrete bowels of the city. It's also not hard to imagine the lyrics "they look right through me—just like you" as reflecting the experience of a busker who watches people passing by all day as he plies his trade. Scott comes off confrontational, confessional and unrestrained—all things in a good house vocal that can get the blood boiling.
As far as production is concerned, all the digital sheen from Geist's last solo outing, Double Night Time, has been shed here—in fact "Look Right Through" is easily the most bristling, retro-tinged production he's turned out in a while. I'd be willing to offer this track as an exemplary case of reckoning with your influences: while Geist knows and loves classic house as much as anybody out there, when he goes retro like this it never feels like a mannerist reenactment but rather the work of someone who's absorbed the past intuitively, sucked it right into his DNA. Geist stretches out on the dub, filling the space with fat wobbling riffs, extra bonk and clatter, and wordless vocal slivers. And that's all you get—vocal and dub, in a traditional bare-bones 12-inch style. With a tune this heavy, that's all you need.
Tracklist A Look Right Through
B Look Right Through (Dub)