drinking perfume

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Song Information

Album: released as single only
Length: 3:40
Posted: Feb 24, 2007
Overall Rating:
Statistics: 161 people listened to this song.
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Song Style

Genres:
Dance

This track by Toronto's Coco a lot of charm to it. Starting off with a wafer-thin edit of the drum groove and expanding with vocals barely afloat above dirty synth riffs, the track works.

"We're drinking perfume"--one of the few lyrics I picked up on first listen--evokes the murky headspace suited for this mysterious dance fuzz track.

One tiny bit of kick drum programming brought me out of the groove-a-long though. Just one of the bass drum hits in the loop that plays throughout the verse or "A" section of the track is the culprit. The chorus or "B" is free of this little skip, and grooves a lot harder because of it.

READ ON ONLY IF YOU ARE PREPARED FOR SOME HARD CORE DRUM PROGRAMMING GEEKERY.

To be HYPERSPECIFIC: What bugs me is the bass drum sound that plays immediately following beat 2 in bar 2 of the two-bar loop. It sounds like a little ill placed rhythmcally- (just slightly late) but that subtle problem is made worse by it's velocity (or volume) which is too high--like equal to Seems like the kick velocity level is for the note in question as for the hits on 1 and 3 that make this a dance-worthy groove. In my drum programming experience the feel of a drum loop is a surprisingly intertwined relationship between a hits position in time and its velocity. This loop needs some experimenting done with both to get it JUST RIGHT, but I can tell from this distance that easing up on the level on the offending bass drum note would help a lot. For a case in point check out the opening two bars, where the same drum loop has been put through a filter which has removed the low end (and hence most of the ooomph of the bass drum). With less juice on the low end, the same feel works nicely enough.

Yes, by the way, I know I am making a big deal out of what most listeners and certainly review readers might consider the most minute detail imaginable. But I love this shit. And this is Dance music right? So the feel is where it's at.

Finally, as mentioned above I can understand the lyrics only partially and only when I'm working my ass off to do so... Now while I consider it part of the the lo-fi aesthetic that the vocals are nearly drowned out by synth lines and are mixed kind of fuzzy, I am not sure if so much lyrical obscurity was desired. If so, all power to Coco--call it a tip of the hat to Sigur Ros, who sing not in their native Icelandic as one might suspect, but in absolute jibberish of their own invention.

keep it up Coco, I look forward to hearing more from you.