Dirty Vegas - 'Dirty Vegas' (Parlophone)
3/5
By: Toby L
With dance-music being officially certified as 'dying', it's interesting to note the recent emergence of house-purveyors, Dirty Vegas. Comprising three modest lads from Kent and the South London suburbs, their previous single 'Days Go By' has not just initiated the band with a top-twenty smash in the US Hot 100 charts - but has also granted them a Stateside top-ten album.
And this is it, their eponymous debut full-length effort, finally released in the boys' own native shores. Hardly shocking, it gains accolade for sheer consistency over surprise-factor. Even if it is a little samey-samey after a while.
Kicking off with the mood-setting 'I Should Know', complete with bolshy male-vocals, soon segueing into second single and British top-40 hit, 'Ghosts', what stands out between the 'Vegas and their electronic contemporaries is the fact that they take preference over forming fully-fledged songs, as opposed to a monotonous sound-bite which is repeated for what seems like nigh-on eight hours. No, so anticipate compositions in addition to the sleeker club numbers, such as the hip-grinding 'Throwing Shapes', and a sound that recounts the Chemical Brothers (had they digested a truck-load of hash-cakes before wandering into the recording-studio).
They're best when composing trippy mood-pieces such as the sway-inducing 'Candles', serving as the perfect post-big-night-out ceremonial chill-out number, not to mention the subtle, sexy groove of 'All Or Nothing', a number Moby would probably wish that he had got his hands on first.
Sure, nothing revolutionary, but present-day dance-music doesn't need a big change - just a kick up the backside by artistes such as Dirty Vegas, who provide to the table that rare bit of substance to a genre that clearly consumes too many other substances to remain focussed for a significant period of time... Song-structures and invention - welcome back.
Artists in this article: Dirty Vegas
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