On the spectrum of house and disco, The Soft Pink Truth can be found somewhere on the fringes of the left. The solo project of experimentalist duo Matmos’s Drew Daniel, what began as a dare has morphed into one of the most intriguing dance music acts (and arguably, cover artists) around. Best known for his audacious house music reworkings of death metal songs, a commentary on white heterosexual rage, August’s Was It Ever Real? began a new phase of inquisition for Daniel. Rooted in the energy of disco, Was It Ever Real? found The Soft Pink Truth exploring the truths of queer desire by way of the libidinal gay discotheque. But this discotheque was different, slightly uncanny. Weaving in motifs from jazz, funk, and lashings of acid, Was It Ever Real? served as a meditation on the dancefloor from a distance, in our words: “disco on phentermine.”
Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? is by all accounts an extension to the argument set up by Was It Ever Real?, a sort of post-dream realisation, a cycle of existential musings on the sidewalk at 8AM as you stumble home from the club, eyeliner where your lipstick should be. The album’s title is shared with a song from Was It Ever Real?, and according to Daniel, comes from a curious anecdote. “Years ago a friend was DJing in a club and a woman came into the DJ booth and asked ‘is it going to get any deeper than this?’ and the phrase became a kind of mantra for us. What did she really want? This album was created as an attempt to imagine possible musical responses to her question.” Daniel tackles the thesis straight away. Deeper is an eleven minute opus which transitions from looped funk keys into disco, eventually funnelling its way down to bare, minimal drone ambience. Its counterpart, Sunwash, explores the idea of going deeper by way of psychedelia. It embellishes its looped pads with sunny keys, snatches of off-kilter sax, and sweeping acid squabbles over its twelve, trippy minutes.
Download and stream Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? here
But while the question at the centre of Is It Going To Get Any Deeper? is fairly straightforward, Daniel’s responses aren’t always. Between moments like Deeper, Sunwash, and the somewhat didactic and drunk Moodswing, are sleazier ideas. Wanna Know finds itself in woozy funk house, the album’s title becoming a refrain mumbled like champagne poured over ice. Then, a harpsichord. It’s clever in its campiness, playing on the notion of ‘deeper’ as synonymous with ‘more meaning’. Surging straight into the moans of baile sleaze number Trocadera, ‘deeper’ becomes a bit of an erotic double entendre. Daniels approaches the erotic from a slightly different perspective than Was It Ever Real?, finding in it an absurd sort of joy. The work of French erotica author Georges Bataille becomes a prominent feature, cooed breathlessly by techno artist Rose E Kross on Joybreath amidst wisps of moans and vaporised synths, then chanted on the louche post-punk disco of La Joie Devant La Mort (Joy Before Death). In fact, Is It Going To Get Any Deeper? is a far looser body of work than its predecessor. Daniel is less weary of creating dance music for dance music’s sake, and when he allows himself to untether from the academia, he lands in some wonderfully oddball places. Deeper Than This again revisits the title as refrain, but here as a conversation between three distinct voices calling and responding over dubby, jazz laced deep house.
Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? may not be as immediately arresting as Was It Ever Real?, which found intrigue in its minimalist approach to non-minimalist concepts. Still, it’s wildly successful. Considering Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? is a product of lockdown, created with full bands of musicians from a distance, it’s remarkably astute in its meditations on community and the site of the discotheque as one of both belonging and alienation. As a project born from a single, bewildering moment, it’s a testament to Daniel’s mind and thought process, which is very much in a league of its own.
Listen to Wanna Know from Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? below.
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