Mp3 Killed the Radio Star: Disco Dance With You

I’m going to jump on a bandwagon that will surely be massive soon and state the following: Kathy Diamond’s Miss Diamond to You is awesome. It’s one of those dance records for people who don’t like dance music even though the production and beats are good enough for an all-out disco party. The album essentially crams 30 years worth of disco and house beats into each bass line and guitar riff, then smooths everything over into cool, detached lounge songs . But you can feel every bass note, synth , percussive hit, hand clap and guitar riff; the bottom literally drops out of every one so it hits you in the chest. It’s an album that’ll work with both the Morning Becomes Eclectic Sia-loving dullards, geeks who obsess over crates of 7” disco and house vinyls for 30-second breakbeats and club kids who get crazy anytime Daft Punk comes on the speakers. It’ll work for lazy summer afternoons, except you will probably dance a couple of songs and ruin your nap.

Diamond, who's actually from Sheffield and can only be seen in one mysterious promo photo, has a pretty flat voice. There’s absolutely no warmth to it. But she’s capable of slinking around each rhythm section and bass line, staying out of the way while effectively using it as effective framing devices. Diamond is less the star than another effective part of the ambience. The album was produced by Maurice Fulton, the noted Baltimore house producer who’s one-half of Mu, the artsy-electro act who tries to add as many purposely annoying sounds into smug, fragmented pop songs. But his main objective with Diamond is to make the listeners feel like they're at Paradise Garage without actually going through the trouble of taking them there. There are no real club bangers, Diamond and Fulton aren’t interested in it. They’re more interested in chilling at the club, not dancing there.

Most people will compare this album to Sally Shapiro, another Euro electro chartreuse who totally deconstructed dance beats and then rebuilt it into a smooth pop record. And there's a lot of similarities to Lisa Stansfield, who had a couple of hits way back (as in 1990) with Euro-fied R&B songs. But I can’t help but compare Diamond to, of all songs, Maroon 5’s “Makes Me Wonder” because that's the song I hear the most on radio now. It’s not a fair comparison, Maroon 5 can’t come anywhere close to Fulton’s knowledge of, or making dance music. But they both try to co-op disco and funk into a smoother, shinier product. I’m not going to lie, I actually thought “Makes Me Wonder” was halfway decent when I first heard it. The song does swing a little, and the more denser and faster instrumentation masks whatever annoying quirks Adam Levine has. I always thought Levine works best in moderation, his fey falsetto can work to accentuate a song here or there. But three or four minutes of Levine is awfully cloying. But “Makes Me Wonder,” like Miss Diamond to You, just use the vocals as a frame to hang the beats on. And Levine’s better served that way.

But “Makes Me Wonder” got old for me fast because ultimately, it’s pretty boring. Where “Makes Me Wonder” differs from Diamond is how it approaches dance music itself. “Makes Me Wonder” makes sure the bass doesn’t drop too low, and it’s mixed in pretty tightly with some nondescript synth notes to defang it. It’s like whoever mixed that song is afraid of sounding too disco. They wanted the sound without actually sounding like it. So even though it kinda bounces a little, there's not enough actual energy to make it exciting. Miss Diamond to You, on the other hand, embraces disco and dance music and all that is good about it. It also wants to be boring in its own way, but the album also wants you to feel like dancing at some point. Again, it’s really not fair to compare Maroon 5 with Diamond and I don’t know what I accomplished with the comparison. And I should mention that Miss Diamond to You is only a $30 import right now and there's a good chance it'll never come to the States. But whatever, it's easily been the most enjoyable record I've heard this past week so I'll recommend it anyway.