Dance is a label meant to describe the effect music has on one's body - a visceral, ape-brain response to rhythm and tempo. Electronic simply describes the way a sound is made. Together they are a thing and its purpose - form and content. The question is this: if the form is properly described (electronic) but the content falls short of its intended effect (dance) can it still keep the label? Is it dance music if it merely sounds like dance music without making one dance? All the signifiers are there, the bmmp bmmp bmmp and the arpeggiated metallics, the sexy guest vocalists half-singing syllables meant to loose meaning the second they've been heard. Yet there is something that falls just short of ecstatic / tribal / sexy or whatever else it is that flips the switch every time. "I Got This Down," the stand out single "Hustler," and "Tits & Acid" are each great tracks but they come off sounding more hip than hip-shaking. It's truly fine electronic pop mined from the rich and often tapped Daft Punk vein, but hipness can turn on a dime and there is seldom room for imitators at the top. Dance music about dancing that somehow barely, though occasionally, manages to make me dance.
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