I'd always wanted Tulisa to get her solo career off to a bang with a big dancey single - but I wasn't expecting something quite so dipped in the aesthetics of clubland as this. Young blasts out like a little piece of Ibiza transposed onto the airwaves and while on first impressions it seems an odd - strangely icy - choice for a lead single, it's certainly not without its merits.
Chief among these is the sheer scale of the thing. It feels properly epic, and those trancey synth riffs at their best are divine. Proper turn of the Millenium pilled-up bliss. But as for Tulisa herself, Young feels less effective - she roughens up her voice from the smooth gloss of her N-Dubz days and goes in for a ad-lib heavy Jessie J style effort, with mixed results. I'm not quite sure if all the hooks are quite in place, and it certainly doesn't seem to have the uber-magnetic pull a lead single should.
But fair play to Tulisa - especially in the wake of this week's frenzy of events - for delivering something uncompromising and true to herself. Because the idea of the X Factor judge as an empowered club diva is quite an attractive one. Let's just hope there's some better choruses on the album.
The name Roger Sanchez comes as a symbol of quality, an assured safe bet when it comes to dance music. And in the year that his landmark No. 1 single Another Chance reaches its 10th birthday, it's as good as time as any to revisit the club supremo.
My interest in Sanchez had actually been piqued recently by rumours he was working on new material with Girls Aloud's Sarah Harding - for the time being though, let's focus on his new single, Worldwide.
Sanchez's recent mixes of the likes of Depeche Mode have been towering constructions; throbbing tribal anthems that throb with a dark primal alive-ness. And Worldwide follows along the same lines, also working in sweaty, energetic hip-hop influences.
It seems only right that a track entitled Worldwide would bear such an electric stamp of sonic influences, and it's a good fit - the track feels genuinely exciting; flipping between sounds and rhythms at the drop of a hat. The bass is real buzz-saw stuff, juddering right into your bones, propelling the track onwards in an almost machine-like fashion.
Definitely one for all those jetting off to Ibiza this summer to pop on their iPods before they go.
It is impossible to ignore the immense surge in popularity dub-step is experiencing at the moment. It's everywhere, pounding from car stereos every time you leave the house, and even sneaking its way into your favourite pop records.
And standing at the forefront of that movement are TMS, a trio of hip West Londoners that can boast Devlin, Professor Green and Tinchy Stryder among their collaboraters.
New track I Need You packs real-bite - anyone lured into the dub-steo genre by the epic 'for the masses' sound of acts like Nero will love this. With a massive vocal hook supplied by singer Jagga, there's simply a sense of scale here that propells this track up on a soaring wave of energy and dancefloor-rocking power.
Fresh from a support slot for Katy B, Jagga says of I Need You: 'I’ve been working with TMS for a while now on my own tracks but when I first heard the instrumental of ‘I Need You’ being played at Fabric and saw the reaction, I knew I had to get involved. They’ve got some HUGE collaborations planned for later this year, they are one of the hottest production teams in the UK and this track is a wicked introduction to what they’re capable of...FIRE!'
Currently compiling a hot summer party playlist? Well, you need to get the Wideboys remix of Parade's new single Perfume on there if you know what's good for you.
Wideboys have always been one of my favourite remixers and have worked with pretty much *everyone* in the pop game, and they've come up trumps again with this frisky re-work of the girls' track.
Even better, unless I'm very much mistaken, there's a whole host of new shots and angles in the tweaked video that accompanies the remix - so you're getting even more Parade. Which is a very good thing indeed.
For all of Kele Okereke's recent dabblings into the world of dance - both on his debut solo album and the more recent Bloc Party records - seeing him collaborate with Martin Solveig is not something I expected. The results are rather spectacular though.
Ready 2 Go is a fist-pumping bit of Daft Punk styled electro-house; a fizzy vocodered backbeat underpinning a classic Kele vocal. More poppy than we'd normally expect from the indie supremo, it's rather charming to see him deliver something that at times sounds like it's going to meld seamlessly into David Guetta and Kelly Rowland's When Love Takes Over.
You only need to look at the super-success of Solveig's previous single Hello to see how attuned the producer is to what works in a hit club track (as well as his skill at picking collaborators to vocal his tracks).
At this time of year, all the big dance hits of the summer are coming out in force and Ready 2 Go is easily up there with the best of them.
If The Saturdays new single Notorious wasn't already dancey enough for you, you may want to check out the donk-tastic mix by Jorg Schmid. You know the drill, this is the kind of mix that forms the centre-point to one of those epic Clubland compilations (yes, those ones with the cool graphics and hot babe on the CD cover).
Jorg Schmid has past form when it comes to mixing up the Saturdays, previously turning his hand to one of my personal favourites, Forever Is Over. With Notorious, some rather nice piano hooks are thrown in and those dreamy 'oooooohhh' bits are teased out to form the heart of this version. And yes, there's all kinds of immense, spacey synths firing off left, right and centre too.
Now you can be even more of a gangster on the dancefloor.
Welcome to the world of Jason Sieu Persad, AKA The Sanfernando Sound. The producer has been making waves recently with his slick re-works of tracks by Two Door Cinema Club, Starlings and Anoraak.
The charm of Jason's takes on the tracks is that they remain respectful of the originals - Take the What You Know mix, all the hooky guitar riffs that made the song such an immense radio hit remain, now added to surging waves of static and funky synth basslines.
The over-riding sound is telling of The Sanfernado Sound's chief influences - Jason cites Tears For Fears, Pet Shop Boys, Blancmange and New Order amongst his favourite bands, and we don't need to tell you how amazing they all are. That big, bold shine of the 80s is everywhere on these remixes; with a single click of a retro drum machine you're tipped back into a world of neon and day-glo bliss.
With support from International DJ magazine and BBC 6 Music, The Sanfernando Sound is on the rise, and just like the wave of eighties glamour it channels, it's sweeping up more and more fans wherever it goes. Time to grab your best dancing shoes and join in.
I'd like to say I could share with you this mix of the new The Saturdays' single (the first chance we've had to hear the whole track) but unfotunately it's already been taken down from YouTube! (It's now on Soundcloud - Amazing)
What the mix sounded like though was the opening thump-thump-thump beat of Pitbull's Hotel Room Service before everything descends into an all out Calvin Harris/Swedish House Mafia type floorfiller. The kind of thing you'd go absolutely crazy for 'in the club' basically.
Popjustice also have another clip of the standard version of the single, which obviously we also love.
Anyways, it looks like we'll be waiting a little bit longer to hear the full proper version - so in the mean time, we're going to keep ourselves occupied by looking at the absolutely stunning cover art for the single some more.
As the summer creeps in, you can always count on the dance world to begin hotting up, shuffling their deck of cards and dealing the first hand of records to soundtrack the summer nights. There are changing trends and shifting scenes to bear in mind, but there will always be reliable formulas to stick to when you want a hit record on your hands.
Enter Zoe Badwi. The Australian singer-songwriter started her career in modelling and TV adverts for things like Mars Bars (yum) as well as being part of a girl group. The usual sorts of things you can expect for a trendy popstar.
And so we come to her new single Freefallin', which is already a top 10 hit in her native Australia as well as being certified platinum. Impressive. Anyway, the track is your standard, anthemic, super-uplifting dance-pop fare and sounds a LOT like When Love Takes Over - meaning it sounds very good, if not the most original record on the block. What it does do is showcase Zoe's rather impressive vocals; she can certainly hit all the high notes a track like this demands as well as packing some real power and grit that helps set her up as a proper popstar in her own right rather than just a faceless dance diva.
'It's all good, I'm alright', she sings in the chorus - well, with that platinum accolade under her belt already, things definitely seem to be going more than 'alright' for Zoe at the moment, and if she can translate that success to over here, Freefallin' could very well be the soundtrack to your summer too - the UK single release featuring remixes by MotoBlanco and WAWA.
After those premature Stone Roses reunion rumours, this briliant new track from dance producers Alex Metric and Steve Angello spotlights Ian Brown for all the right reasons. It's a cracking good dance track, following in the spacey, empowering feel of his My Way album.
The Rocky-montage styled video is fascinating too. Playing out like a little movie, we see a boxer training up to challenge an all conquering boxing robot. Sounds bizarre, but it's a slice of wonderful surrealism. In a cruel/amusing final twist (depending on which way you look at it), the robot comes back to life after finally being defeated and punches the guy's head clean off in a dramatic and immensely gory spray of blood.
As one of rock music's great heroes, it's often easy to remember that Ian Brown, the solo artist, has come up with some stunning pop tracks over the past decade or so. My Star, F.E.A.R., Stellify - all have at their heart an incredible knowledge of a great pop melody and catchy hooks. And open your eyes stands as a firm reminder of this - dressed up in glossy electronic production, it shoots straight for the heart.
On A Mission is fundamentallya pop record at heart, but it's testament to Katy B's talent and ingenuity that her debut LP feels just at home on the dancefloor. It manages to span that treacherous borderline between the two, doing so in a manner that is bursting with inventive melody and songwriting verve.
The real wonder is that while this album already contains four hit singles, it feels like you could easily squeeze another three or four from it - the tracks are of such a good quality. Consistency is the name of the game here and katy knows it - there's an amazing confidence to her that buzzes around, transfusing through into you - you want to leap up and join her on the dancefloor too, 'sinking into the tune' as she sings on Katy On A Mission.
Meanwhile, Witches Brew sees the album at its most poppy with its refrain of 'come with me, I'll make you feel so good'. Empowered and forceful it blasts away any negativity and melancholy, replacing it with that singular bliss that falls over you when you're in that perfect moment of enjoying all the Good Times life has to offer. It is captured again in the relentless, pulsing buzz of Broken Record with its enchanting, hypnotic stream of layered vocals.
Easy Please Me is set to become the next single - and the track reminds me of Kylie Minogue's brief dabble into R&B; Red Blooded Woman. With an insanely catchy hook, it's this track perhaps that catches the power of Katy's vocals at their best; especially in the ad-libs in the last minute of the song.
We feel as if with each song we explore a different night out in Katy's company, a different aspect of her life. And with every chorus, every verse, we feel as if we're sharing in that story, adding it into our own lives and relating to what she tells us. For the duration of the album, she is our trusted confidant, our close friend.
You have to marvel at the sheer intricacy off the beats on offer - synths collide and fizz in the background - a hot bed of almost electric intensity that Katy wraps around her finger and directs at the listener. Her vocals are subtle, hushed, sultry - yet what really makes this album come into its own is the sheer force of personality that comes across, all wrapped up in her incredibly soulful voice.
The album comes to a chilled end with the jazzy keyboard riffs of Hard To Get, the song featuring a touching outro where Katy thanks all the people that helped contribute to the record. It could come across as cheesy, but here you feel Katy's earned the right to indulge - she has just treated us to one hell of an amazing album after all. This is summer music through and through; dripping with the radiance, jabs of brass injecting the track with a real vitality. So often albums fall flat by their end, the final track being a throwaway cut tacked on at the end - but Hard To Get ranks up there with the best of the album, a fitting finale to a stunning record.
Fresh from supporting American electro-poppers 3OH!3 on tour, Innerpartysystem have a headline show at XOYO on the 1st June in the works which will see them playing tracks from their new mini album Never Be Content. With the passion and raw energy of gritty, dirty rock at their heart, but twinned with a throbbing dance beat, Innerpartysystem come on like the love-child of Nine Inch Nails and Pendulum.
New single American Trash pulsates with a primal malevolence, the basslines threatening to explode from your speakers. Indeed, the band supported Pendulum on their US tour, delighting audiences across the pond.
For a band named after a term from George Orwell's iconic Nineteen Eighty-Four, they cloak themselves in suitably science-fiction-esque sounds. The bleeps and building waves of synths in the middle-eight carry you away on a sea of bliss as singer Patrick Nissley repeats 'wake up, the dream is over'. And then the thundering chorus collides in again, a mechanistic and unstoppable slab of brute force. It's the kind of track that shakes buildings to their very foundations, that blasts from car stereos on the hottest of summer days.
Innerpartysystem's 2008 self-titled debut was a powerful exercise in rock-dance mastery in its own right - but with American Trash, the band align themselves well and truly with the club, the dancefloors of a nation hanging in suspense, as this track hovers above, ready to beat them into submission. Immensely powerful stuff.
I Am The Resurrection. In my mind, this song will always stand as the pinacle of everything the Stone Roses were about. In its full eight minute long version, it represents a towering accomplishment of musicality and skill, blending influences and sounds to create a riotious stormer of a track that still sounds just as fresh and innovative now as it did twenty years ago.
On one hand you have the first part of the song, the part you still hear played now and again on the radio - this in its own right is a cracking bit of Brit-pop. The hooks are all there, added to a stomping beat - the very ultimate in toe-tapping bliss from the heart of Madchester.
And then there is the immense instrumental outro. As the first part ends, slamming into that infectious bassline, you're reminded that the Stone Roses were as much a band for the dancefloor as they were for the sweaty indie venues and crowded fields of stoned revelers. Which draws me on to the 'Extended 16:9 Ratio Club Mix' which originally appeared as the A-side of the single's 12" release.
You need only look at the current midweek Number One - Wretch 32's Unorthodox - to see the Stone Roses' dance heritage in full health, the tune sampling as it does the band's iconic Fools Gold riff. But listening to the 12" extended mix of I Am The Resurrection, the dance vibes are just as strong here too. The beat gets a few tweaks, the bass is brought forward in the mix. Whereas the original was certainly danceable, that side of affairs felt secondary to the big, beating rock heart of the track; the mix places that emphasis firmly back on the other foot. 1992 or 2011, this remains a bloody good track.
Here at TotallyVivid we loved Billie Ray Martin's last single Sweet Suburban Discoso when we heard she was putting some more new material out there, we had to take a listen. One of our favourites is this cover of Phuture Phantasy Club's Fantasy Girl, dripping in proper old-school house vibes. There's great piano hooks, hand-clap beats and some real moments of chilled-out dance bliss. Billie's vocals are exactly the kind of soulful, hushed essence that you want on a track like this too.
In age of massively technical and at times overpowering dance tracks, this is stripped back simplicity - a real harking back to the old days.
We've had Cheryl, Nadine and Kimberley releasing solo singles (albeit Kimba's being as a featured artist with Aggro Santos) and Nicola's album is due out shortly, but what is Sarah Harding up to these days? We've had a little taste of her music on the St. Trinian's soundtrack album and there have been rumours of her working with Roger Sanchez for a while now. But here's something else...
She's been working on a track with dance outfit Sympho Nympho. Comprised of producers Erick Morillo, Harry 'Choo Choo' Romero and Jose Nunez, the various members of the 'electro crossover band' have been tweeting about what they've been up to with the no-longer-blonde member of Girls Aloud. Exciting stuff!
Fans of the very best in synth-pop delight - The Sound of Arrows deliver skyrocketing synths on a suitably interstellar scale in brilliant new single Nova. Remixing the likes of Lady Gaga and Alphabeat, the Swedish duo have carved out quite a name for themselves and with tracks as commanding and attention-grabbing as Nova, it's hard not to stop and take heed.
If the likes of Delphic whetted your appetite for immaculately produced slipstreams of electronic magic, then The Sound of Arrows provide the perfect fix. Combining anthemic keyboard hooks that synth-pop legends Erasure and Pet Shop Boys would be proud of with thundering club basslines, Nova is that moment of pure bliss and unadultered joy in the heart of a crowded dancefloor. Achingly beautiful yet enfused with what sounds like the power of a hundred nuclear reactors, the chorus is a tale of longing; a yearning for 'something better'. And have I mentioned that two-some's singer is called Stefan Storm? Quite possibly one of the coolest names in pop, and also somehow brilliantly fitting to the images of lightning-split skies Nova's towering crescendo of synths conjures up.
Breathtaking, exhilarating; if ever a song could capture pure electricity, then Nova would be it.
I've lost count of the number of artists who've gone for a hip new dance 'angle' with their new single and thrown in a guest rapper for good measure too. It's easy to be cynical, but you know what, they do it because it works. And J Lo's new single On The Floor is the prime example.
With its staccato beats and rhythmic euro-trance synths, On The Floor is an anthem to the coming summer - the sound of a thousand dancefloors the world over beating as one. And that's the joy of tracks like these, they're just big dollops of ready-for-the-club anthem, precision tweaked to hit all the right buttons. So when you hear Pitbull's guest slot and think 'Isn't this a bit like what he did with Enrique, Alexandra Burke and Nicole Scherzinger', it's because it is like that.
This is the natural successor to all those songs; building on them, growing, snowballing... keeping the endless dance rolling on for another year. J Lo's last album Brave only managed to reach No. 24 in the UK charts, but propelled by On The Floor, her new LP Love? could very easily see itself shooting into the upper echelons of top 10.
I'm properly loving the whole Love? thing too, as if the album is questioning its own existence. It needn't though, as On The Floor is exactly the kind of life-affirming tune we want to hear from J Lo. It's hot, dance-able and without a doubt the future-soundtrack to many a night of shots at the bar. Bring it on.
When it comes to dance music, Billie Ray Martin really is one of the reigning queens. With a list of hit club tracks as long as your arm to her name as well as DJ slots around the world, she's certainly not lacking in the experience department. What we get with her brilliant new track Sweet Suburban Disco though is the spotlight shining firmly on her voice... and what a voice she has!
As a big Erasure fan, I had to take a listen to Vince Clark's version of the track and the mix represents something far darker than anything Erasure have put out in years - a relentless, threatening bassline throbs away; the perfect counterpoint to Billie's soulful vocals. Her voice is pure class, harking back to the days of the disco greats of the 70s - this track remains utterly modern in its chic-ness however; a stabbing synth break-down four minutes in a technical example in how to engineer a perfect club climax.
That's Sweet Suburban Disco's greatest strength, it's knowing. When it wants to be gentle, subtle and caressing, it can be. But when it wants to turn on the passion and energy, it goes for it full-tilt. This is a club track with real intelligence to it, something befitting individuals who've been in the game as long as Billie and Vince. Moody, sultry and with a brilliant sheen of dancefloor glamour, Sweet Suburban Disco is a definite delight.
This promotional video advertising the new Dance Central game on Xbox is genius. How many of us have watched Kylie Minogue's iconic Can't Get You Out Of My Head video and had its racey white dress and robotic dance moves imprinted on our minds? Now, massive Kylie fan I might be, but I don't think I'd ever go as far as the guy here, who takes it on himself to make his own home-made Kylie outfit and sneak into her dressing room. Cue quite a few chuckles, especially when he takes those gold hot-pants into a launderette.
But it gets even better when Kylie herself appears and is promptly locked up back-stage. I love this whole little send up and it's a great collaboration between the forces of video-gaming and pop music. Now, it's very nearly time for Kylie's UK tour dates and I can't flippin' wait!
When I first heard Hold It Against Me my first thought was 'Wow, with a track like this, Britney's new album is going to be amazing'. And now, having heard another track from the album, I know it's not just going to be an amazing album, but that it is going to take amazing to a whole new level.
Till The World Ends follows in the same dancey, dirty electro vibe as its predecessor, but is quite possible even better. Soaring epic synths lead into a chorus that is ready-made to be shouted across crowded, heaving dancefloors. And that's what this song is all about, dancing. It's the very epitome of a club banger. All the right ingredients are there - classic, sexy Britney vocals... a hyper-catchy chorus... handclaps... DJ references... a sick bassline...
It really is as if all our Christmasses came at once - the perfect present for Britney fans eager for more. My favourite bit comes three minutes into the track when everything goes all crazy and the synths sound like they've been put through an atomic reactor. SO epic. SO awesome. SO amazingly cool.
This is Britney for a new generation, a new era. She's well and truly back, and if the rest of the album is even half as good as TillThe World Ends, it could easily be the best pop album of the year.
