Bon Viveur by DJ Downfall, is brilliant. Encompassing a broad mix of styles it never misses the mark, straddling up-tempo disco beats, sweet (especially eighties) pop, noughties electronica and minimalist melancholia.
‘You Want Me’ is a fantastic introduction to the album, a song driven onward by a pervasive organic drumbeat and a sexy, taunting vocal from Gene Serene, who features on four of the ten tracks. Another of those is ‘Seven Dials’ which is a glorious fusion of past and present, the vocals recalling the power pop of eighties girl groups, sung over bright noughties electro. It is but one standout, on an album of standouts.
There is even thoughtfulness in the lyrics (an area which tends to be neglected by those who adopt the letters ‘DJ’ to prefix their soubriquet…) such as in the melancholy ‘Stronger On The Breaks’ in which the luckless, lovelorn protagonist opines to her friend, ‘yeah, I wish you were straight’. Also worthy of sustained examination is ‘The Hours’, its resigned lyrics in stark contrast to the jaunty rhythm and handclaps with which it is framed.
‘To Bring You Joy’ is a pretty instrumental which but for the pounding bass drum from which it initially builds into a collage of warm keyboards, could almost be Mogwai in a particularly good mood.
Final song ‘All Dressed Up In Dreams’ (originally by Stephin Merritt of Future
Bible Heroes and the Magnetic Fields) is a bittersweet but oh-so-pretty coda which comes on like the Postal Service crossed with nineties Britpop.
This is an excellent album which deserves the corporeal praise of many exhilarated clubbers shaking their arses, but doesn’t need the confines of a sweaty club to be worthy of extended play.
