On the whole, I left 2007 a little bored with the Junior Boys. Mining the depths of blue-eyed, minimalistic electro-soul had lost its luster in my ears, and so I abandoned the ship helmed by the duo. As such, I’ve never seen their highly-regarded live show, and I pretty much avoided all the requisite So This Is Goodbye remixes.
When I heard Junior Boys were compiling and mixing an entry in the Body Language series, on the seminal minimal-tech Get Physical label (which, truth be told, I don’t drool over the way many do), I was mildly interested. Less compelling to me than the track list was the question of “can the Boys actually serve as proper DJs, or will the whole damn thing be stop/start like a car with a bad transmission, or tap shoes in a dryer?”
At the end, after spending a few listens with the entire set, I can say for certain it’s divided into two parts. The first 3/4 of the mix is filled with the sort of neutered funk-tech that you’d expect Brandon Flowers to play during a DJ set at Beauty Bar-all childish slap-bass and sexless vocals that’d make Prince compulsively vomit out of sheer embarrassment. Unfortunately, it seems that sort of white boy fawnk is what’s becoming en vogue for 2008, with Kip Dynamite-wannabes Hot Chip pooling all their resources to milk it on their new record. Here’s hoping that, before this shit gets totally out of hand, someone, somewhere, rediscovers Young Americans.
The last quarter of the Junior Boys entry into Body Language, though, is absolutely fucking stunning, and it starts with this:
It’s fitting that the Junior Boys use their Body Language mix to highlight what they do best, it’s just a shame it takes so long to get here. This stunning jewel is a new Boys moment, exclusive to this mix, and it shines, stammers and pulses with the best of them. Gorgeous, plaintive and totally unexpected, it’s a slice of nu-soul, droning washes of feedback like a river of heartbreak.
And then, from there, the Junior Boys begin plumbing the darkest recesses of heartbreak and loss, losing themselves but finding the mix’s mood for about another 18 minutes in track after track of Progressive Tech mood music, before finally finding a way out and into the light.
It’s so, so fucking good, and such a departure from the loss that is everything up to “No Kinda Man”, that I’ve zipped the last few tracks.
Junior Boys: the body language good, dark bits .zip
Download the file, unzip, and cue ‘em up one after another. Lose yourself.
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