I have to admit that much of the electronic, dance orientated, synth driven music I have been receiving of late has left me somewhat underwhelmed. I think what happens is that music genres go through cycles, peaks and troughs of creativity and excitement where the high-points on the graph provide something genuinely innovative, fresh and forward-thinking and between that it just feels as if we are treading water. Those peaks are not reached that often and even if I’m not quite saying that Colorado provides one of those historical break-through moments, it’s certainly pretty near the pinnacle of one of those cyclical high points. And that’s not a bad place to be by anyone’s standards.
It’s an album of instrumental dance of course but thankfully within that broad field, it covers a lot of new ground, it mixes familiarity with future potential, it understands how musical dynamics work but more than that, it is as groovesome and fun as anything that you would find driving the cool, discerning, underground dance floors of the modern era.
The Great Dunes is a bottom-end beat driven future classic, minimal, spacious and confident, The Milky Way is gentle and cinematic and songs like the title track manage to combine both the restraint and beauty of an early hours chill-out with enough energy to keep the party moving.
What we used to happily call the EDM scene has, in recent years at least, made some fairly unhelpful choices; pose over poise, commerce over cool, to be seen rather than to be a scene. Thankfully artists such as Infectious Rhythm are offering wonderful alternatives to that now all too predictable end of the dance world. It is an alternative that is deftly constructed, driven by its musical creativity rather its self-image and it represents a return to the heart of what the dance music scene was always all about for most people. Infectious Rhythm? I couldn’t think of a better name to chose.
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