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Press / KIN in the press

Selected Press Quotes


classic synthpop
WIRE

stunning, sassy spectral pop
DUSTED

21st century Aphex Twin
MIXMAG (#11 of 2004’s Hot New artists)

I know why people are talking about it. Killer
DE:BUG - 5/5

it’s hard to see how this group can go wrong in the future
STYLUS - 9.7 / 10

androgynous, fragile, exquisitely tender. 2step infused with the subtle melodic grace and glistening delicacy… By some distance my favorite track (outside gutter-garridge) I've heard this year.
SIMON REYNOLDS – author of Generation Ecstacy / Energy Flash

I should say the Junior Boys are the best band you've never heard of, but that's a bit unfair to the J.B.'s, whose "Birthday"/"Last Exit" is almost certainly the year's best single.
SEATTLE WEEKLY

minimal moroder white-boy-soul-pop that flirts with garage, dallies with disco, then decides it's too darned vulnerable and irresistable for any genre-hassling and sashays off into it's peculiar Canadian world
VICE - 8.5 / 10

an alchemic sound that, after only one EP, is both identifiable and unique…… Luomo-versed Junior Boys have made two of 2003's best indie pop singles... bleeding their songcraft into groove and rhythm, creating a delicate sculpture of broken dreams and beats
PITCHFORK - 8.5 / 10

a beguiling kind of ghost pop that cross-breeds the unlikely strains of UK garage, Brian Wilson and hauntingly deconstructed dub techno with a twitchy grin, teasing the conventions of pop to the brink of collapse
JOCKEY SLUT

electropop enigmas drift silently within radar range and grab us unsuspectingly by the nuts and hearts. Naïve lyrics and melodies wrapped in gauzy mystery, coming on like the bastard sons of Marc Almond and Maurizio
SLEAZENATION

makes me want dance and prance and scream and shout and scribble and press repeat again and again
CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES

something really special is happening here. Unmissable
BOOMKAT

truly original…. bloody great
CMU update

heirs to Timbaland and David Sylvian, Junior Boys are equal parts emotive wistfulness and stop start stutter rhythms; a combination that's as unique yet natural as their ever so (slyly) generic name.
KODWO ESHUN author of ‘More Brilliant than the Sun’

bring as much rhythmic inventiveness to the table as any producer in hip hop and garage combined
TIM FINNEY – journalist

S.P.E.C.T.A.C.U.L.A.R. A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. B.R.I.L.L.I.A.N.T.
JAPANESE press


collection writing about KIN and the Junior Boys :





Labels are pretty spineless, aren't they? (Bye-bye, promo copies . . . ) Anything that "falls between stools" confounds marketing departments . . . don't call us, we'll call you, OK? Which is probably why the Junior Boys—Canadians Jeremy Greenspan, Johnny Dark, and Matt Didimus—waited so long for a deal. Call them blue-eyed garage or swingbeatclash, but just don't call them IDM: The two EPs released so far on England's very brave KIN are a tantalizing introduction to the JBeez aesthetic. "High Come Down" is the not at all impossible meeting place between Hall & Oates and Timbaland. "Birthday" rigs up a rainy-day 2step pattern and chills it the most with nuvo wavo romanticism. "Last Exit" bristles with thickets of beats as spiny and spare as those of the new darkside U.K. garage, but the bruised fruit vocal hiding within couldn't be less grimy.


It's reductive, though, to call the Junior Boys the alternative to Dizzee/Wiley/et al. They simultaneously invoke a half-dozen other genres (heroin house, synth pop, electro, modern U.S. r&b), and grime's ruffneck soldiers are very much slaves to the vibe of Londontown. But the Boys seem to have soaked up all the nimble fluency and sheer beauty that grime sloughed off while escaping the pleasure principle. Like A.R. Kane in the late '80s, who smeared their post-Mary Chain guitar spuzz over then current house pianos and hip-hop breaks, the Boys' combo of neutered soulboyisms and jiggy electronics gives the impression they could be the start of something new for indie rock. Or the public could settle for another wave of emotionally constipated electroclash crypt robbing. In which case, fuck you all, I'm moving to Neptune.

jess harvell - Village Voice

IDM, the "intelligent dance music" spawn of Aphex Twin and his disciples, is embracing the organic at an ever-increasing rate. Four Tet, Manitoba, and the Notwist each made fans outside the genre's hermetic ghetto by embracing a world outside their laptops. Postal Service's half-breed Give Up soundtracked every geek party of 2003, its mixture of plaintive songcraft and Day-Glo pings and whistles crafting a soulful wonderland out of aural Play-Doh. But Junior Boys (a.k.a. Jeremy Greenspan of Hamilton, Canada) might be the most talented of the bunch. Greenspan swaddles his homebrewed tracks--two-step garage twitter-steps covered in winter flannel--with cottony synths, curious little melodies, and a vocal style that's unabashedly emotional, if self-effacingly low in the mix.


"Birthday," the title track from a Junior Boys EP released last fall, is a devastated-slash-devastating breakup song set to a rhythm that's as stop-start as the relationship it describes: "Is it true that it's me?/You can say all the things you want to/But you don't easily/If you take all this weight behind me/And let it go...You're not here in the end/So there's nothing left to say." Greenspan's voice arcs dangerously high on the words "let it go," as if he's about to do just that with his emotional hold, but he stops short, riding the tension throughout the song. (His voice sounds like an uncanny cross between Daryl Hall and David Sylvian, minus the former's overplayed grit and the latter's pompousness.) The title cut of the newly released High Come Down is less heartbroken but just as swoon-worthy, with Greenspan's wispy sing-song vocals hinging on the beat like the proverbial ghost in the machine. Musically, "High Come Down" evokes a cross between Luomo's glitch-house soul and an Aaliyah ballad with an especially fragmented rhythm--current R&B minus the sonic glitz.


Which isn't to say that Junior Boys avoid traditional IDM altogether. The weakest links on both EPs are the instrumental doodads and remixes that abet the original songs: High Come Down features a clunky remix of "Birthday" by Dan Snaith of Manitoba, while Fennesz turns the songful "Last Exit" into a swarm of drones on Birthday. But what makes Junior Boys necessary is that, unlike the bulk of their laptop brethren, their sonic experimentation improves when it's attached to songs--songs that evoke the music bleeding through the walls as you hear a man cry in the bathroom stall of the hottest club in town.

M.Matos - Citypages

KIN002 - Birthday, the first 12" from Hamilton Ontario's Junior Boys sounded utterly unlike anything else in the pop spectrum, fusing falsetto crooning, delicate electropop arpeggios, and the wide open syncopations of US R&B and UK Grime; Fennesz's shoegazing remix made you wonder if there was any limit to the sounds they could call their own. On their second EP they expand their range yet again, essentially redefining in a single stroke the limits of electronic pop.
The title track takes off where 'Birthday' left off, smoothing over a stuttering, pothole-riddled beat with icy synthesizers and Jeremy Greenspan's bedroom croon. But the six minute epic 'Under The Sun' sounds like another group entirely, fusing a grinding electro disco groove with the sun-kissed harmonics if 4AD's Dif Juz. Deep in the mix, a sampled yelp punctuates every beat abd brooding chicken-scratch guitar carves a deep indelible funk, but it's the airy, billowing feedback that captures you. Taking yet another direction, Manitoba reprises 'Birthday' in his own fashion, pasting the original vocals over a scuffed beat battered with bells and scratched vinyl.

Philip Sherburne - WIRE

Ce single, signé par des anglais encore inconnus mais promis à un avenir radieux, est une bombe mélancolique, illuminée par un chant à la douceur imposante, des boîtes à rythmes programmés avec des doigts de fée robotique, et des synthétiseurs qui auraient pu être mis en boucle par New Order (sous codéine). En plus de ce morceau, une poignée d¹autres vignettes, plus abstraites, explorent des paysages différents, mais tout aussi attachants. Un excellent remix nocturne, signé Fennesz, clôt le disque en le noyant sous d¹élégantes couches de guitares rêveuses, ralenties et progressivement saturées, qui évoquent un hommage implicite à My Bloody Valentine.

Joseph Ghosn - les inrocks

Man redet drüber. In England. Junior Boys sind irgendwie die kleine neue Sensation und sogar Kodwo Eshun ist aus seiner Versenkung aufgetaucht und feiert die Junior Boys. Mir erschließt sich nur nicht so ganz, warum. "Birthday" ist ein süßer Track, keine Frage, mit Oktavbass und irgendwie sehr zerbrechlichem Gesang und irgendwie ist das auch ein völlig neuer Take auf die 80er. Das geht schon in Ordnung. "Last Exit" erinnert mich an frühe Factory Sachen, wäre 2Step damals schon erfunden gewesen zumindest. Bleibt im Ohr. Will nicht weg. Langsam wird mir einiges klar. Doch, doch, das funktionert. "Unbirthday" ist dann zusätzlich noch viel mehr als eine einfache Instrumentalversion, sondern macht eher den dubbigen Horizont auf, rauscht vor sich hin und kitzelt den Vocals ein Stakkato aus der Kehle, Gewitter-Streicher inklusive. Zum Schluss dann der Fennesz-Remix von "Last Exit", der New Order als Erfinder des Bitcrushers glänzen lässt und somit alles zu einem guten Ende bringt. Jetzt weiss ich, warum man drüber redet. Killer.

Thaddi - de:bug

This 12" is the first release on an upstart English label, from a group of Canadians who are capable of plucking elements from numerous styles within the span of a few minutes. Theirs is a cunning approach that results in a sound that is urban, bittersweet, vulnerable; these songs might just unravel in your hands if you were to mishandle them. From a production standpoint, lead track "Birthday" falls somewhere between the jitter-twitch of Jay-Z's "Nigga What,Nigga Who" and the arctic chill of Ultravox's "Vienna," with the limited but effective voice of Jeremy Greenspan singing with tender resignation. The relatively hushed "Last Exit" "relatively" because "Birthday" could've been recorded beside a napping studio-hand is even better, with Greenspan's whisper an instant pull. This has a similar solitary drive at dusk feel. Two exceptional remixes fill out the flip side, including a Fennesz remix of "Last Exit" that wobbles and squeals around until bursting into confetti. If you happen to be a DJ who has been searching high and low for a way to link Berlin dub techno to Timbaland, or Japan to Dem 2, here is your fix. What amazes most about this group is that they can be easily appreciated by those who are oblivious to the all of the sources.

Andy Kellman - dubscrape and freelance

PITCHFORK review

Birthday EP [Kin; 2003]
Rating: 8.5 / 10

In his review of Tujiko Noriko's From Tokyo to Naigara, fellow PFM writer Nitsuh Abebe placed an umbrella over ambient indie popsters who use delicate electronic melodies to convey the wistful yet wounded sensations that were once frequently articulated by jangly guitars and boy/girl vocals. Nitsuh gathered half of the Morr Music roster, Solvent, and Ulrich Schnauss, among others, and made them compatriots in a sort of un-named movement of bedroom electronica-- a marriage of indie sentiment and sensibility with sleepy laptop-driven melodies.

In one sense, the Junior Boys fit here as well. On the EP's two vocal tracks, "Birthday" and "Last Exit", singer Jeremy Greenspan's fragile vocals relay lovelorn lyrics soaked in indie's too-familiar, almost inevitable cycle of pain and resignation. "Take all this weight behind me/ And let it go," he pleads on "Birthday", trying to come to grips with rejection and strip himself of some of its debilitating weight. And yet, in another more engaging and encouraging sense, Junior Boys don't fit that lap-pop model at all. Pigeonholing Junior Boys amongst most of those artists negates their considerable command of more complex rhythms, as well as their grasp of dance and avant-pop traditions.

Sonically, Junior Boys have condensed a large group of very apparent touchstones from (deep breath) Timbaland's icier more futurist production work to the texture and syncopation of two-step pioneers such as Todd Edwards and Dem 2 to the shimmer of early 80s synth-pop to Basic Channel's blissful tech-dub. In the process, they've created an alchemic sound that, after only one EP, is both identifiable and unique.

Of the EP's other three songs, the graceful romanticism of "Birthday" spills over to "Last Exit", seven minutes of swoon and sigh, dance grooves and bedsit mournfulness, in which Greenspan whispers things like "you make me feel more than real" over a heart-tugging shiver of sound. The instrumental "Unbirthday" echoes the ghosts of a scrum between Herrmann & Kleine's "Kickboard Girl", Rhythm & Sound, and dubstep. And the EP closes with possibly its most immediately striking track, a Fennesz remix of "Last Exit". The Austrian star leaves the track's pop heart intact and offers it a series of trembling electroshocks.

Despite that accomplished second half of the record, it's those two vocal tracks that nicely highlight the band's strength: effortlessly bleeding their songcraft into groove and rhythm, creating a delicate sculpture of broken dreams and beats. Sure, plenty of glitch or tech-house pioneers have tried the same in recent years, but they've mostly rushed arms wide open to disco-pop, swinging swiftly from clicks and cuts to digital disco. Surprisingly-- until this EP-- only Coloma and Vladislav Delay's Luomo project have attempted to bridge that gulf and position themselves somewhere between those two poles with any success. In an odd way, then, it's those three (Junior Boys, Coloma, Luomo)-- each of whom sound far less like the most frequently resurrected memories of "80s music"-- that best capture the elegance and sophistication in some of that decade's synth-pop.

I almost hesitate to even mention that decade because the inherently selective nature of revivalism already gives specific connotations to anything that is either electronic or reminiscent of the 1980s. But never mind the prevailing cycle of today's nostalgia. Junior Boys don't come across like the more synthetic, decadent end of electroclash. Instead, they trade in the slightly scuffed sheen of the decade's more heartfelt soundscapes, delivering tracks for the day after the disco-- soundtracks to mental slideshows of good times, the paradoxically cold reality of daylight, and the potential pain of wondering how soon is now.


Scott Plagenhoef - Pitchfork

VICE review - 8.5 / 10

Before everyone creams themselves over the magical Fennesz mix at the end, it's worth pointing out that Birthday is minimal moroder white-boy-soul-pop that flirts with garage, dallies with disco, then decides it's too darned vulnerable and irresistable for any genre-hassling and sashays off into it's peculiar Canadian world.

Vice Electro Department - VICE

KIN001
At first blush, Hamilton, Ontario's Junior Boys ­ the shifting configuration of Jeremy Greenspan, Johnny Dark, and engineer Matt Didimus ­ bring to mind the English/German duo Coloma. Both groups use minimal electronics and breathy vocals to evoke the classic synthpop of groups like New Order, Depeche Mode, and Bronski Beat, and both balance their music carefully between rhythmic filigree and empty space. But where Coloma's constructions expand, extending and looping like vines, the Junior Boys' songs stick to a handful of chords that just seem to soak up more and more sound, like sponges. Both Birthday and Last Exit pair quaint synthpop arpeggios with irregular rhythms more suggestive of contemporary R&B; the array of wiry analog tones highlights Greenspan's shadowy voice as though illuminating him in profile. The most striking track here, though, might be Fennesz remix of Last Exit, which sends Greenspan to the back of a reverse wind-tunnel and sucks the words right out of him. Turned up a notch or two, Fennesz device whips up a storm of feedback that converts shoegazing impulses into a cyclone that threatens to tear up everything ­ cart, horse, roadway ­ until there¹s no way home but down.

Philip Sherburne - WIRE

Emerging from beneath the Maple Leaf, Canada’s Junior Boys have produced one of this year’s most exquisite electronic pop releases. After numerous rejections and near misses from near-sighted record labels had reduced head boy Jeremy Greenspan to confining his genius to the bedroom (no sniggering at the back) he has, with the invaluable assistance of engineer Matt Didemus and the people at KIN, been given a chance to share his wonderful creations with a hungry world. The two lead tracks Birthday and Last Exit showcase their stuttering, cascading rhythms and glitches, whilst simple keyboard melodies combine beautifully with Greenspan’s softly whispered, heartfelt vocals, lavishing themselves upon the world’s dancefloors. If one of these tracks was dropped at an ’80s nostalgia night, it would easily pass as some newly discovered New Order or Pet Shops jewel, culled from the infamous lost sessions where Arto Lindsay took on lead vocals. Junior Boys have managed to achieve that rare thing - music that is aesthetically pleasing and yet intellectually engaging - proving themselves undaunted by the alienating techniques of the avant-garde, whilst displaying an ear for a damn catchy pop song. Rare indeed.

Each of the original lead tracks is partnered by a re-construction/deconstruction. The first of these, Unbirthday, is all instrumental snap, crackle and pop which recalls Pole’s finest tech-dub creations, leaving intact only the faintest ghost of the original. The track shuffles along before introducing the glacial synth signature from its namesake, only to dissolve again into the ether. Very nice.

A Christian Fennesz remix of Last Exit revisits the territory previously explored on the Viennese sound sculptor own glitch-opus, Endless Summer, compressing the delicate melodies of the original into brilliant new shapes through echoes and distortion. Whereas the vocals of Last Exit had once provided warmth and humanity, they now create a feeling of detachment and isolation. A wonderful, if slightly troubling finale, to a collection of stunning, sassy spectral pop.

Spencer Grady - Dusted

JUNIOR BOYS - "Birthday"

So, context: The Junior Boys make skippy, snappy 2-step ala Dem 2 and filter it through chilly-the-most nuevo wavo romanticism. Fair enough.

"Take all this weight behind me, and let it go." He sings this, and then the chimes or strings or xylophone or synth or whatever it is ripples in counterpoint: if this was a Chuck Eddy book he'd probably talk about how the sound of the ripple - light, upward, maybe even jaunty in a dejected sort of way - is the sound of that proverbial weight being let go. (Except Chuck Eddy would likely hate the Junior Boys. So it'd probably be a clumsy device to him. But pop music draws nearly ever emotional response it can from clumsy devices, and whether said clumsy device speaks to you (Mary J Blige style histrionics vs. drippy Pavement guitar Cream of Wheat) is largely a matter of taste. The creation of a NEW clumsy device is a claim to fame on par with the guy who first isolated a breakbeat or figured out that a drop D chord makes for good nu-metal.) It's a sad song though, in the end, because he doesn't sound relieved when he sings the line; maybe resigned, maybe exhausted. Relief will come in time, perhaps, when he realizes letting go of the weight was a good thing, that moving on doesn't equal sinking like a stone. It's a feeling I understand all too well right now, which is why I won't be listening to this much as the weather turns cold.

Fucking indie records.

Jess Harvell - NYPLM

Skykicking

......Of course, if you're clever you can do both, foregrounding the groove and the song without either seeming to detract from the other. The Junior Boys' debut EP (which you can obtain by talking to them) makes this balancing act its mission and its purpose, and as a result sounds like that imaginary Horsepower Productions excursion into songform. Of course, the garage trio would have to swap their Jamaican influences for arch Euro affectation to sound like these guys, but hell, Timbaland's certainly bridged bigger gaps. The bigger problem would be how to negotiate the songs themselves, which tend to defy any easy equation of pop + dance. Sometimes the Junior Boys are, like Coloma, dance-dabblers, with the songs themselves the undeniable center of these concoctions, looking out uncertainly but visibly through the maze-like web of rhythmic detail that surrounds them. Other times they are groove-scientists, constructing dense rhythms within which only mirage-like glimmers of a song can be discerned, the fleeting vocal hooks manipulated with as much ruthlessness as in any Dem 2 production.

When you're not listening to these songs, it's easy to underestimate the sheer perversity of their rhythmic excess - the songs are just too easily memorable to countenance it. Listen again though, and you are inevitably struck by the pole-vaulting elasticity of their grooves, shivering and bristling so naturally that it seems likely that the duo have never even heard of a four-to-the-floor beat (they have; the bouncy "Bellona" suggests a potentially lucrative detour into microhouse-pop, sounding like Jurgen Paape producing The Aluminum Group). Needless to say, these guys bring as much rhythmic inventiveness to the table as any producer in hip hop and garage combined; their insolence lies in incongruously combining it with glittering arctic romanticism.

The Junior Boys join a long tradition of sonically rich effete Anglophilic pop, evoking New Order, The Associates, Bark Psychosis, The Blue Nile, Talk Talk, even latter-day Depeche Mode - the singer (Jonny? Jeremy? I can't remember which) reminds me slightly of Martin Gore, actually. Certainly the music is chilly enough, though it's as much the frostbite of cloudless nights as it is electroclash machinery, all sparkling synth twinkles and lush chords, spiked with the skyscraping glitter of guitar (or whatever the duo use to suggest the presence of one). What Junior Boys share with all of these groups perhaps is a love of the swoon; their songs always seem to be in the verge of emotional intoxication. "You make me feel more than real", the singer sighs with a hint of ambivalence to his desire, as if the intensity of the other's presence induces an instant and dangerous state of deliriousness, of larger-than-life unreality. In another song he croons in near-falsetto "When I see you, you make my high come down, and I want to see you shake this whole damn crowd." Voyeurism - as far as I can tell a recurrent theme here - is not merely used for its own sake, but as a vehicle for a seductive form of self-negation. The singer is deflated by the presence of the object of desire, and enjoys it, enjoys the sense of awe-filled unworthiness. "Baby, put your trust in me," he pleads, and the groove swerves into darkness, stuttering uncontrollably around zapping bass hits. We have given up too much blood in this sacrifice of subjectivity, and the final stages of emotional vampirism are as disturbing as they are pleasurable.

Surprisingly, given my usual conceits, I actually think the Junior Boys could afford to retreat slightly from the cliff of abandonment-in-groove - their rhythms are so endlessly delightful on even their most songful tracks that they really have little to gain in drowning themselves in grooves, and certainly if I line up my favourite moments on the EP, they're the ones that favour clarity and lightness of touch rather than the more dystopian rhythm tracks. A strong song-focus also allows the duo to play around with the basic structure of the grooves; the petulant, morose "Birthday" pumps quietly but steadily on a simple Moroder bassline, allowing the rhythm to stomp and stamp around like a sullen and pouty child, less danceable but more evocative. Similarly the gossamer sighs of "Last Exit" alternates classic "One In A Million" stutter-beats with ever-retreating dub-refracted snares, as if the song is constantly running from its destination, scared or shy of what it might find.On the other hand, I still find myself returning to the cut-up madness of the Honeys + Skrilla Mix of "High Come Down" (reviewed here a while ago), with its Squarepusher-like hysterical groove. But this is slightly different to the duo's more minimal groove tracks like "You Want To" or "I'm So Into You", in that its song, shattered into a thousand shards as it is, still exerts a magnetic force on the random-seeming drum hits, gathering and assorting them around it like armour. This groove still has a song's imprint, the suggestion of an emotional imprint rendered untranslatable but still for all that visible, and still capable of arresting you with its force.

Tim Finney - Skykicking

Junior Boys - Birthday/Last Exit - Kin - 2003

{9.7}

It’s been a long time since I’ve actually listened to the Junior Boys’ first release, Birthday/Last Exit EP. Oh, I’ve been playing it tons. In fact, I love it. It’s just that I play it now as a security blanket. It’s become so familiar, so ingrained, so personal to me that I just smile when I hear the opening chords, the synth squiggles, the voice intonations, every little detail. I don’t listen to it anymore. I just play it and have it on while I’m focusing on other things. So, when I pushed play again (it was already in the CD player), I really listened to it for the first time in ages. And this is what I heard:

An almost ska-esque rhythm opens “Birthday” the EP’s first track, run through an extremely 80s indebted synthesizer. Every backbeat is hit until the snare announces its entry into the proceedings, sounding like unreleased Timbaland. The syncopated rhythms mixed with this lovely bed of melody create an intense dichotomy- the softness pushing hard, probing at all times against the martial skeletal snares. And then the voice of Jeremy Greenspan enters. This isn’t a happy birthday we’re a part of- “You’ve gone and missed my birthday/you’ve gone and left me on my own.” The lyrics are an added twist on top of the already innovative backing- detailing a melancholic situation, giving the relatively light background music a decided sadness. The ecstatic moment of the track? Upon the end of the line “if you take all this weight behind me and let it go” a descending counter-melody enters the song, simulating the proposed reaction to the weight being pushed upon Greenspan.

Greenspan gets up long enough to turn in the highlight of the disc next, “Last Exit,” before retiring for the rest of the EP. Once again, the backing track reminds of an even sparser and colder Timbaland- if he chose 80s synth pop as his genre of the moment. This time, though, the melody is even further subsumed into whispers and echoes, as opposed to the overt nature of the opener. The track is nearly seven minutes long, but, in actuality, it feels almost too short. Taking a page again from Timbaland, the track ends with an extended instrumental passage, restating the theme and reveling in the obvious mastery of the form that the group has achieved.

“Unbirthday,” which takes elements of “Birthday” and inverts them is a meditative instrumental, which features a stuttered vocal sample of Greenspan. The song is similar to “Last Exit” in its reserved nature and follows the same production style until near the end when a processed sample enters into the fray, taking over the track until the click rhythm is completely overpowered and lost in the digital ether of the original melody frayed and crackling. It acts as a beautiful lead into the final track on the EP- a remix from noted digital processer, Christian Fennesz.

Fennesz’s contribution to the disc continues in this same vein- placing Greenspan’s “Birthday” vocals as a secondary attraction to the echoed and flanged treatments of the other varied elements present. His arrangement of the original synth melody rises and soon falls revealing an unsure and wavering composition that is only given a form and shape near the end of the track by a driving guitar addition that ends the release on a triumphant note.

And what a triumph it is. Somehow connecting the synth pop of the 80s to the 2-step and syncopated hip-hop of Timbaland today, the Junior Boys have fashioned an incredible debut that is suffused with the sort of assuredness of true innovators. With a template like the one that they have fashioned here, it’s hard to see how this group can go wrong in the future.

Todd Burns - Stylus Magazine

Junior Boys - Birthday - KIN
‘Birthday’ is actually bloody great. It’s electro-pop, only it’s not; it’s dance music you can’t dance to, it’s Morten Harket singing a Frazier Chorus over a bassline nicked from any record Blondie or Duran released back in 1981. Combine all this with requisite existential ennui, a healthy dub influence and a willingness to experiment within the confines of a structured pop song, and you’re left with a curiously captivating track that somehow manages to sound truly original. Whilst everyone else gets on with the business of trying desperately too hard to look cool, Junior Boys, like other great discoveries this year from Canada (The Hidden Cameras, Stars), offer up some simply thrilling and emotive music. And, as quirky pop songs called ‘Birthday’ go, it’s even better than the one by The Sugarcubes. Do you need any more incentive to go discover it?

MS -The Update

What's most impressive about this song is how much it manages to stretch the pop format while still remaining intensely catchy and accessible. Taking a page from Timbaland, the Junior Boys strike an ideal balance between pop music's structure and immediacy and the detailed complexity of electronic music.
There's never a lull in this song's four all-too-short minutes. A gigantic beat-- spliced up with precision and laid over 80s synth flourishes --commands it from start to finish. The pristine electronic backdrop and constantly-shifting rhythm perfectly match Jeremy Greenspan's soothing voice. The interplay between Greenspan's somber delivery and the upbeat music gives depth to the song's otherwise familiar subject. The music and vocals alternately shade each other so that at times the effervescent beat and wispy keyboards seem determined to cheer Greenspan up. During the irresistible chorus, however, the yearning in Greenspan's voice is emphasized by descending synth tones.
Masterfully executed, "Birthday" is a truly gripping song. If more people were exposed to this, I have a feeling it would be wildly popular.


#1 of 2003 - Atrocity Exhibition

K-Punk

PS ON IP: TRACES OF POP'S FUTURE

'if theres one thing i think is the future it's finding a way to resuscitate electronica's dry formalism with//in SONG {cf. some of Coil, some recent Sylvian, and who knowssome as yet still 13 yr old genius who will hopefully grow up to be the next JOHN MARTYN except influenced by i dunno gary numan & kid 606 rather than the rev gary davis and pentangle ......... '
Already traces of this, in Luomo . AND MORE THAN a trace of it in the Junior Boys (even if the J-Beez themselves are really only traces, hints, superfine precious slivers).
JBs imagine a future for pop, and, in doing so, provide it.... It's like electropop didn't get locked into a certain moment or modality.... It's like the return of the past had never happened.... White pop just kept moving forward, wasn't tempted down into those Sixties cul-de-sacs and guitar (bottle)necks...
JBeez - and what of Wood Beez? To the Junior Boys' pantheon of already-acknowledged blue-eyed influences and analogues - OMD, Blue Nile, Japan, Foxx, Prefab Sprout, Steely Dan (and Fagan solo - Nightfly especially), should surely be added Scritti, for aNy number of reasons: the pristine, perfectionist hygiene of the production; the androgyny; the immersion in pop at its most honeyed and seductive.... And also: the smooth absorbtion of black musics (in Green's case, soul and reggae; in the Junior Boys' case, 2 step/ Timbalandesque hip hop) into White Pop --- Neither an empty aping of Black forms, nor an ignoring of them: a genrerous assimliation, a contribution to a dialogue which White Pop - in opting for one or other of those possibilities - has ducked out for too long.

The JBs sound like a city at night.... they are not so much psychogeographic as AFFECTgeographic: each song exploring terrain as feeling, feeling as terrain. Dub House(s), the borders and bridges, highways and highrises of Calvinoesque semi-visible cities ... Full of SPACE, everything here is here to emphasise the gaps; that dub paradox, a sorcerous formula which the Junior Boys understand much better than many more literal(istic) would-be dubsters, those who think that turning up the bass and turning down the vocals is ENOUGH....when dub is about re-defining what COUNTS as enough, about (need)LESSNESS.... Junior Boys' (2-step) (heart) beats* punctuate time irregularly (mark an irregular Time) just so as to open up space, spaces...

And so many of the songs seem like emotions translated into dreams, or the mind recalling a day's (daze) events as it succumbs to dream, or emotions from a dream being recalled. Dreamotions....

* Not Timbalandelic coked-out hyperspasms, but lover's hesitations, breathless pauses, interruptions, restlessness....

If that has whetted your appetite - and I should have mentioned this before - you can get streaming audio here .... Check them out, you lucky people:

Neon Rider : languid late nite drive through the mournful majesty of the semi-sleeping metropolis, electro-echoes like streetlights flitting past the windshield; an impossibly plaintive synth (every bit as moving as a keening Miles solo) lingering with all the steady purpose and imperturbable patience of a Tarkovsky pan....

Birthday : Elegantly refurbished synthpop, 2-step denuded of R and B's presence .... Jewel-glittering irridescent electro.... whispered hurt, quiet pain, a lovely falsetto hook... a Dream scenario - 'You've gone and made me miss my birthday'----

Last Exit : another oblique micronarrative, delirium-garbled Dream Story - smuggling a lover across the border to Annexia? - another journey down the highways of the demi-conscious.... Electronic trails, swirls, pulses, just the hint of an 'I'm Not in Love'-style multitracked vocal.... A track which demonstrates, perhaps better than any other, that the JBs construct all their tracks as dubversions, leaving (just) enough --- which, naturally, by dint of dubsorcery, becomes more than enough, a superfluity....

... and every track has the UNEXPECTED INEVITABILITY of great pop.... uncanny familiarity ....

Mark Fisher - K-punk

DO YOU KNOW A SECRET?
Luomo - The Present Lover
Junior Boys - 'When I'm Not Around'/ 'Three Words' / 'Unbirthday' (unreleased)

Both Luomo and the Junior Boys know a secret: The Groove and The Song don't have to be played off against each other.

They have more than one secret, actually. And if you let them, they will whisper what they know into your ear. After all, it's their capacity to intimate that distinguishes them from most other groove-based music. There is none of R and B's brassy stridency, none of House's evangelical certainties in Luomo or the JBeez; just doubts, cautious promises and compromises, half-articulated hopes and anticipated disappointments.

Vocalcity may well have been Luomo's unsurpassable masterpiece. By dissolving House's clear, clean lines, by extrapolating the space(s) which Pop confines or hurries past, Vocalcity synthesized a sound that was desubstantiated but not ethereal, desolidified but not liquid. It was viscous, gloopy, misty. Instruments - whether virtual or actual - were smeared into one another, globules of indiscernible voice-bass-synthesizer.

The vocal city was a city (re)constructed from Dub Housing, but Luomo have always understood that dub doesn't entail the removal of voice, still less the elimination of Song. On the contrary. Voice was multiplied and multiplexed on Vocalcity , refracted into many voices, many different types of voice, some of them - gasps, whispers, sighs, breaths - barely there . Far from being expunged, the Song, now unfastened from Pop's 3-minute straitjacket, was dubverted, diverted, derrived, delayed, dilated. Faints and feints, hints and potentialities, were lingered, dwelled upon.

A plateau : that which could end at any moment, or persist indefinitely.

The Present Lover feels like a version of Vocalcity compacted 'to fit on the radio' (one indicator of this is the track lengths: Vocalcity's twenty-minute excursions are compressed into about half the length here - still ridiculously long by Pop standards, but somewhat attenuated by comparison with the previous album's necessary luxury ). You can't help feeling it should have been the other way round - Pop should have accomodated itself to Vocalcity , not the reverse.

On The Present Lover - the latest lover? the lover of Now? - pop and House's more traditional architecture is restored --- a little. It is as if Vocalcity's Turneresque fog has receded, and the bass, vocals and rhythm synthesizers - smoothed into a synthetic integrity on Vocalcity - can now be distinguished. The voices - still hazed by echo, still prone to drop into whisper - are more prominent in the mix, quicker to dominate the arrangements. On Vocalcity voices, and songs, would typically emerge only gradually, shapes gradually coming into focus then disappearing back into the fog. The Present Lover's seduction technique is a touch more direct: hooklines (as deliciously, exquisitely, habit-forming as ever) are introduced with very little ceremony. Yet they have the familiar insidious subtlety - what apparently passes you by the first time will lure you back for a second listen, and by the third time you find yourself ravished and compelled.

And there's the same androgynous quality of the desires voiced/ the voice of desire as on Vocalcity . (It's not only the vocal of the title track that reminds me of Prince at his most gender-indeterminate).

It seems I disappear

Junior Boys' vocals are the opposite of full-on: emptied out, emaciated, exhausted. On second thoughts, 'exhausted' doesn't quite capture their quality. Jeremy's is a very, very late night voice, certainly, and these are very, very late night songs. But it is not so much exhausted as on the cusp between waking and sleep, in that state where you are tired enough to relinquish the everyday, but awake enough to want to defer falling into unconsciousness. It's that state - where vulnerability, openness, reflectiveness, calm, anxiety, bliss, blend and blur - that is the Junior Boys' signature affect.

'When I'm Not Around' begins with a swirl of electronics, like a light flurry of snow on a windowpane. Then - with the trademark post- 2-step/Timbaland breakbeat fluttering and kicking - the vocal - simultaneously tentative yet sure of itself, confident in the commitment it offers - swoons in.

(Incidentally, doesn't the title 'When I'm Not Around' sounds like something Gershwin could have come up with? You can almost remember Sinatra singing it...)

The track floats out on an ice floe of lovely electrojazzpop, Jeremy just humming. It seems to end too quickly, a delicate dream prematurely terminated. (Sure sign of a great song - but I could definitely handle a Luomo-length remix).

(By the way, if one is tempted into cold imagery with JBs - snow, ice, what have you - it is not because they are Kraftwerk-Adult 'cold.' Far from it.)

'Three Words' - built around a shivering and shimmering bass synthesizer figure - is even more still than 'When I'm Not Around.' The breaks are deliberately unassuming - just gentle flicks and clicks, the sample-era equivalent of drums played with brushes- and the lovelorn vocal - what is it expressing this time? Regret? Melancholy? Hope? More a kind of diffuse, non-specifiable longing - is more sublimely insubstantial than ever.
Junior Boys are custom-built to illustrate the concept 'uneasy listening' - the unsettling of MOR, ambient and Pop. Make no mistake: for all their rhythmic inventiveness, these are great Pop songs, much catchier than anything you are likely to hear on the charts this or any other week.

Both Luomo and the Junior Boys know a secret. Yeah. Unexpectedly, unaccountably, Pop has a future....

Mark Fisher - K-punk

Some responses by Junior Boys' Jeremy to my remarks on influence -----
Yes: this was exactly the point. Diversity in taste is absolutely essential for a producer. But eclecticism in sound is a killer.

This actually takes us right back to the discussion about the function of the proper name. Producers achieve a proper name when they find the plateau where their influences commingle. This is when they have discovered a new abstract machine. It's a case of overriding the impulse to 'express one's subjectivity', to demonstrate one's 'breadth of taste.' It's better to see, say, 'Timbaland' as the name for a set of techniques (think of the way, in athletics, the most frequently-used high jump technique, the Fosbury flop, is named after the first person to use it) than as the name for a discriminating subject.

We all know that feeling: ah, 'this is something I've never heard before/ this is something I've always been waiting for' - the deja-vudu moment. You never get that with something which merely recapitulates the past serially , only with something that melts and modifies the past.

To take the Junior Boys, again. The Bad Model, the Tasteful Subject Model, would see them doing a Dem 2 -type 2 step track, and then a Durutti Column-type uneasy listening thing, and then an OMD ballad, and then a Foxx-type electronica piece. The Good Model, the Abstract Machinic Model, sees them weaving all of these influences together at once. The past is uprooted, unsettled, not repeated.

The great albums are never eclectic. All the tracks on Unknown Pleasures, Tin Drum, Replicas, are variations on a theme. Eclecticism is the vice of the third-rate. Think of what happens when New Order start to move away from the JD brand and 'just be themselves'.... Or you only have to imagine what a Jools Holland album would be like ... Or those awful things that feature the singer from Faithless, Robbie Williams, some ethnic sounds, and some 'contemporary dance beats.'

On the MBV and Blue Nile thing - again, I would emphasise the Borges point. It is possible to hear MBV and Blue Nile as 'precursors' of the Junior Boys, even if the Junior Boys had never heard them or taken any heed of them - because something in the JBs sound reveals a complicity between them. (In the same way, Kafka would not have read all of the precursors Borges ascribes to him).

As to the supposed 'datedness' of Jeremy's Foxx piece. Yes, it is 'dated' in the sense that it is Foxx as heard from 97. 'Dated' in the sense of lacking purchase now? Not so, in my view.

There's a whole discussion to be had about 'datedness', anyhow. Seems to me that the best culture is always dated, in that first sense. Something that aims to be 'timeless' would probably be as vapid and dreary as the 'placeless' music Simon attacks....

Mark Fisher - K-punk

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