It seems I missed Valentines` Day…

Drawn in by the promo of singer, Channy, dancing, in much the same way I was drawn into Steve Moore`s “Panther Moderns”, and moved to re-write my review of DJ Nature`s “Return Of The Savage” after seeing the visuals. Like Nature told me, dancing is a mating ritual, if you`d forgotten, but there`s more to it than a sad, dirty, old man repeatedly clicking on a Youtube clip of a young woman late at night. I`ve always loved to watch people dance, from the guys in spats upstairs at Leeds` Coconut Grove, to the girls high on Heaven`s promise who thought no-one could see. Voyeur? Specator? Be easy when you`re drinking with me. Those who can really dance are, in that moment, free. The best give themselves away. Totally.

A Helicon choir, Channy become Qawwali, Sufi, sings a folk round with herself. No campfire but cold, warming at a makeshift brazier, an upturned oil drum on the edge of a Mid-Western rave. Polica are the sound of suburban dead-end jobs, dodgy drug deals, buying and selling hand-guns. Questions like “Does it have any bodies on it?” The sound of escape at any cost.

The lyrics, simple, take the everyday, and cut it up, throw it around, like a thought, a worry, gets stuck inside a head. Language is only rhythm anyway. There`s a darkness here, like the shadow the heroine of Yolande Zauberman`s “Clubbed To Death” can`t shake. The other side of the pill, and the desperate situations we can get ourselves in. From empty beds to coercion and possession. The (self-destructive) demons we conjure from within.

Like Jessie Ware out of her mind on Class As, any Class As she can beg or steal, and despair, and Dave Okumu abandoning the polish of “Devotion” and holding the grief of “Rispah”. The drums are the thing. Impotent rage boiling over. The sound of someone beyond caring, jay-walking, jumping up and down on the bonnet of the first car that considers not stopping, trading blows with passersby who stop to stare. The howl of someone beating against the walls, fists bleeding, of the confines of a small town, its limits and gossip. Francis Farmer. 10, 000 maniacs. A life lived like a game of chicken. “The Maker” is a song of all wrongs. If dance is an escape, then when real life closes in, I guess we dance alone.

I`d fallen hard, but needed to know it wasn`t a joke, after Gayngs all at 69. Watching this I`m convinced. You can watch a hundred clips, a hundred performances, and all carry the same conviction. The modern condition found a new muse.