“We dig repetition”, sang Mark E Smith in The Fall’s Repetition. And then he sang it again, just to make a meta-point.
That point, of course, is that repetition is utterly essential in music, and it’s why the most basic of house music is also the most effective; the brain latching onto quickly looping snippets and wandering to the rhythmic hinterland.
White Collar Boy, like many music makers overwhelmed with the vast, unending choice of sounds and instruments laid out before them, have latched onto this repetitive simplicity as his musical lifeboat.
They have produced, in Long Walk Home, a song that grabs hold with dusty, squirming fingers, and won’t let go.
Deft production aside, Long Walk Home reeks of a songmaker who longs for a return to the heady cut and thrust of the late 80’s dance scene, where one sound or noise could be looped ad infinitum (or to the capacity of a 12″ single, whichever was shorter) and crowds would lap it up, deranged and happy.
Excellent, addictive, repetitive. And repetitive.