You have to imagine it’s a pretty sweet life being Calvin Harris. From bedroom beginnings he’s gone on to become a legitimate dance music superstar. He’s worked with Kylie and Mary J. Blige, sold a metric tonne of records and played giant gigs everywhere, including a residency in Las Vegas and a tour supporting Rihanna. It’s the kind of career trajectory that many dream about but so few achieve. Not even the fact that he turned down the chance to work with Lady Gaga just before she went global seems to have slowed him down.
Last album ‘Ready for the Weekend’ debuted in the UK at number one, before going gold and spawning a glut of hit singles. The follow up has been rumoured for quite some time, with some expecting it appear last year. The latest intel suggests we can anticipate the next Harris LP sometime in 2012, but details remain sketchy. What does seem certain is that the album will reflect his evolution from small fry to big fish.
“I’m going for pretty epic-sounding dance records,” he told Beatportal. “I guess the whole sound has just moved on in terms of production as I’ve got a new studio and some new gear to make the sounds I wasn’t able to make before.”
It’s fair to say ‘Let’s Go’ lives up to Harris’ bigger and bolder ambitions. It kicks off with the kind of euphoric synth hits that practically demand hands be raised in the air. This is combined with some enjoyably dirty bass to construct a track that will undoubtedly play at well at the mega-venues Harris finds himself inhabiting these days. The addition of Ne-Yo’s vocals ties the whole things up nicely. He’s used sparingly in the more full-on moments, but adds a bit of focus to the breakdowns, giving Harris time to cue up the inevitable dancefloor-slaying crescendo that follows.
Scottish pop/dance producer Calvin Harris is a man who’s experiencing a real purple patch of late. Not only is he responsible for two of the year’s most popular electro pop moments, namely his number one single ‘Not Alone’ and his work with Dizzee Rascal on the already huge ‘Holiday’, he’s also managed to put together the world’s first human synthesizer. Calvin’s unimaginatively named ‘Humanthesizer’ would appear to work by the use of special electronic paint and a series of pressure points hooked up to a laptop running state of the art sequencing software. Curiously, a prerequisite of the ‘Humanthesizer’ would seem to be that you need a gaggle of scantily clad bikini babes in order to operate the thing successfully. It’s all a little pointless – but pointlessness can often be good fun!
In other Calvin related news; you can also take an upfront peak at Harris’ new album, ‘Ready For The Weekend’, by streaming it from iTunes. Simply click on the image below to check it out the album before it goes on sale in the UK.
This week US House maestro Ian Carey storms to the top of the UK Shazam Pre-release Tag Chart with his undeniable summer dance smash, ‘Get Shakey’. Meanwhile, new releases come from Kristinia DeBarge, Simian Mobile Disco and lanky production wizard, Calvin Harris.
After the success of the electro tinged ‘Dance Wiv Me’ and the ravetastic ‘Bonkers’, it should come as no surprise that Dizzee Rascal’s latest single is yet another mish-mash of 3am trance flavours and cockney tinged R&B rhymes. Debuted on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury two weeks ago in front of 80,000 festival goers, ‘Holiday’ is already being touted as a future number 1 – a fact supported by its presence as ‘Hottest Record In The World’ on Zane Lowe’s tastemaking Radio 1 show. Featuring grinding peppy electro beats, cheeky lady loving lyrics and an almighty big room house crescendo that provides an almost guaranteed hands in the air moment; ‘Holiday’ is an unquestionably fun record and miles away from the inner city paranoia of his first album, ‘Boy In Da Corner’. Production duties are taken care of once again by lanky Scottish beatsmith Calvin Harris, a man whose knob twiddling skills have earned him two UK number ones in the last nine months. With Black Eyed Peas dominating the world’s charts with their own brand of energy charged dance music and Kelly Rowland experiencing some of her biggest success after collaborating with commercial house star David Guetta, it looks as though Dizzee’s flirtations with glow stick infused sounds are set to consolidate him as the UK’s premier urban music talent.
