As We Rock On, and on, and on...

Reading about Andres' Michael Jackson deep house edits got me very excited, but the results are so deep house-lite it's a blatant denial of all the seething emotion, sweat and invention present in the originals. As basic deep house tools they're pleasant and functional and chilled as the tamest examples of the genre demand, but their basis in the Jones/Jackson originals is baffling.

I was hoping to get my daughter excited by these babies, but she'll certainly be bored and like me disappointed. How much - of everything, audible and beyond - has been lost from 'Rock With You' to 'As We Rock On'? Furthermore, with its slow sensual pace, wispy synth solos and subdued strings, wasn't 'Rock with You' a kind of dreamy proto-deep house anyway?




As we rock on indeed, comatose, numb, too jaded by overexposure to everything to reach those previous peaks of excitement or, heck, ecstasy. Andres' spin on 'Blame it on the Boogie' is marginally better, more stuttered and distanced, but it too suffers from the same ills.




Perhaps Andres is telling us something with these, critiquing current music malaise, that the Jones/Jackson pop pinnacle of Off The Wall and Thriller can never be equalled, let alone topped, and it's all mourning from here. And if so, deep house is the language to use for this, mired within a dance music structure of resignation, defeat and depression, the music actually most well suited to Jackon's 'Thriller' zombie dance. I doubt it though, this sounds too cosily genrefied, too subservient, in thrall even, to the laziest of deep house tropes.