°Fck Descartes, let’s dance
Sometimes I come across a track that says it all - or what seems like all for me in that moment, reminds me of something very particular, about music, memory, remixing, repetition and riffing, of the indistinction between mind and body, of the proprioceptic and the temporal.
I do listen to a lot of music, much of it with a dancebeat in some form. I detest - though why this has surprised anyone, which it often has, I have no idea - what’s usually called overtly political music; or, to be more precise, I hate music that assumes a conventional political approach. I could say there are exceptions to this hatred, but the songs I can think of here tend also toward the evocative rather than the megaphone. So, Pilooski’s edit of The Pointer Sisters’ “Send him back”. The first time I listened to it I thought it was quite good. Searched around for some more tracks of his. Liked the remix of Nina Simone’s “Take care of business”. Also that of Frankie Valli /The Four Seasons’ “Beggin’” - which has a very Ozon-esque clip. All b-sides transformed, all exuberantly yearning songs. All nice.
Went back and listened to “Send him back” a second time and, wow - those footsteps up the stairs, getting closer to the music, throwing the door open and being blasted by sound. Insistent, repetitive, very 1970s disco and not at all. Not a crisp sound, but shifting in and out, as it does when one walks around the floor, club, space. Wobbly sounds rising up now and then toward the end as something kicks in; then cinematic fade because it is, after all, a recollection or, more closely, the night fades. Dancetrack, remix - but more so, and which is much the same thing, though explicit, a soundtrack of desire and its recollection.
Pointer Sisters - Send him back (Pilooski Edit)
[The Nina Simone edit is here]
