"His Body, A Screen" by dogmarket

dogmarket may well have the  "SADGAYELECTRONICA"  genre to themselves but like any other thoughtful creator, the description is at best a signpost for new fans and not a restrictive straitjacket to hinder new material.

If you were at the ‘Hot Music Live Presents' fundraiser for The Tin last month and caught them live, you'll have experienced something of their breadth: not all the songs are necessarily sad (though the more extreme can come close to harrowing) and with a brass section on stage, it's not all electronic either.

The new single, "His Body, A Screen" to be fair does head for maximum electro with the processed acoustic guitars of other tracks not present, but on the other hand it's a pop orientated song and not really sad at all.

As with some of their other compositions, I do note a nod back to classic early days of the form which certainly helps me to get a handle on it and in this case, they cite New Order as an inspiration.

As the years roll on, my dislike & distrust for autotuned vocals certainly does not diminish and in the case of more mainstream pop and R&B nearly always makes the difference between my feeling I have enough positivity to review something or not. You won't find many examples amongst my archives.

However I do concede that this process actually feels appropriate (rather than bloody irritating) when the autotuned vocals sit within a similarly electro arrangement & here is a good example of where it works & is more than justified.

In facts the sound itself comes across not only as quite joyous as well as danceable: in fact the track which popped into my head was the Lipps Inc disco classic "Funkytown": albeit a mutant and bastard offspring which had been subjected to repeated and witty cutting up: nevertheless, the vocal sound and pulsing beat did nudge me into an analogy I could never have dreamed of making  during the time I equated dogmarket music with the likes of "Stray Animal".

There is definitely fun in there (the protagonist sounds to be having fun too) but it's also not "just" a dance track as not only do moods shift but the intensity does too: passages can be pretty relentless and even overwhelming. Doubtless these accurately reflect depths of passion but if you're looking for a smooth consistency of beat to dance steadily to, you'll need to up your game as it swerves off on new trajectories regularly. Pay attention on the dancefloor  please.

It's very rewarding to experience an artist who over a relatively short sequence of releases has shown such variation and growth (a lot of it apparently via the methodology of experiment which is also encouraging).

I try not to fetter myself with expectations of artists I review however much I like them initially: however I'll be honest and say that I couldn't really have anticipated the live dogmarket sound based on the first songs I heard (check out "mousebites" on ‘Hot Music Live Presents Volume Sixteen‘) and certainly not "His Body, A Screen". I've been delightfully surprised and I think that you will be too.