Dux Content: Lifestyle Album Assessment

Before they formed the way forward for music, and earlier than they led the indispensable label that housed this sea-changing output, PC Music’s A. G. Cook and Danny L Harle had been simply two British youngsters—“Dux Kidz,” as they known as themselves—who needed to have enjoyable. Their 2012 output beneath the “Dux” identify ranged from happy-go-lucky pop to artfully disfigured hip-hop and even impressionistic classical music. All of those tracks featured business instrumentation pulled from romplers, MIDI banks, and pattern CDs—an unabashed embrace of sounds as soon as thought-about cheesy and undesirable. Why make an sincere try at distinguished music with such cheeky elements? Because that type of factor seemed like a rattling enjoyable time.

When Dux Kidz changed into Dux Content for the duo’s debut full-length album, Lifestyle, Cook was about to stray away from his “Gamsonite” weblog imprint to start out PC Music. Lifestyle was the final album from Gamsonite and, when it was re-released a 12 months later in 2013, the primary from PC correct. A document that couldn’t have been made with out an ear-to-ear grin, Cook and Harle’s lone album as a duo is a maximalist romp via all issues ravey, funky, and merry—bringing pleasure to the banal in a showcase of creativity and compositional guile. A brand new reissue reintroduces the duo’s early brilliance to a recent music panorama that wouldn’t be the identical in the event that they hadn’t confirmed that being cheugy may very well be charming.

All the roots of PC Music’s digestible maximalism seem in Lifestyle. Hints of what finally grew to become often known as bubblegum bass shine via in “Voice of an Angel”—a Reese bass, reverbed vocal chops, and the Korg M1’s iconic “Piano 16” harmoniously bubble up on the fittingly angelic and rave-ready opener. The title observe is full of noticed synths, flutes, and squeaking leads—all inside an association that’s an early image of the duo’s affinity for baroque compositions and aesthetics. But the album’s crowded mixes are the furthest factor from overwhelming. They’re as a lot of an emotional spectacle because the raves they rating in some parts and the on a regular basis life they hyper-emphasize in others.

Lifestyle grooves simply as a lot because it bangs. “City Break” is a mangled combination of latest jack swing and hardcore, the seamless musical picture of two guys who’ve used the aliases “Nu New Edition” and “MC Boing,” respectively. Gated snares and elastic toms lash round like innocent thunder and lightning earlier than being interrupted by a passage of stinging kicks and supersaws, the true ache inflictors right here, but it surely all hurts so good. “Hero Next Door” is Sega Genesis-esque 16-bit funk on steroids—an ostensible ode to Harle’s love for online game music—whose plunky bassline finds a technique to be simply as funky it doesn’t matter what time signature and tempo it finds itself in.

Cook and Harle’s imaginative and prescient of significantly unserious enjoyable was indicted as low cost irony for years. Though unfaithful, it’s straightforward to see the place that accusation would possibly come from upon reaching “Higher Love”—their ultra-processed model of Steve Winwood’s 1986 hit, whose plastic brass stabs and rubber FM bassline soundtracked the aisles of Kmarts for years. The duo reassembles the artificial elements of this corny however lovable traditional into one thing magnificent, evoking the type of anachronistic majesty you would possibly really feel from seeing a product from many years in the past freshly refurbished. Shrouded in a reverbed mist, a forged of bell synths and 8-bit waves glisten all throughout the combo; a Muzak-y sax sings over them, changing Winwood’s voice in some passages and sprawling into wild solos elsewhere. Somewhere on the market, there’s a polo-shirted chief of a Fortune 500 firm who claims the unique “Higher Love” as his favourite tune, and in his head, that is what it truly appears like.