Bad Boy Bill: "The Album"
TobiasCanadian DJ Deadmau5, for no glaringly obvious reason other than his deft handling of the potential subtleties of cheesy techno, has had a huge effect on the house music scene over the past year or so. Thanks to him and Daft Punk, to blame just two, the gates have opened wide, admitting seemingly millions of hacks bearing vocoders, brash crunchy noise, and very little in the way of ideas.
But it’s hard to hate on Bad Boy Bill, first off because there isn’t a no-longer-titillating string of remixes for Britney and Ciara after his Wiki entry, but, more importantly, he’s got to be making Tiesto a little nervous. Nothing quantum-leap here on his artist debut, a record that will assuredly bum out dance-heads hoping that the vocoder will just go the way of the trilobite, but the songs are big, often stunning, and constructed with a head toward goals far past the under-distributed radio shows. The resident moll of this release, Alyssa Palmer, has a Havnevik/Bjork hybrid of a voice that lends welcome relief to those who’ve had enough of plain vanilla cute-white-chick-ness; and she soars on the galloping “Falling Anthem,” already a Billboard Dance climber.
Coulda done without the misfit snap-dance on “Headlock,” but even that has a shot.
By Eric Seager
Homepage: Bad Boy Bill
Homepage: Nettwerk Records