Appearing here in the form of a live recording, Low Island’s Who’s Having The Greatest Time? has been the song I’ve had most stuck in my head this week. It barrels in with an anxiety-fuelled repeated synth stab and clipped drums, a vocal delivered with a certain sardonic style that seems to ask, “Are we actually having a great time, or just trying to convince ourselves we are?”
I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic of late for 00s-through-early-2010s electronic music. What happened to the experimentation, attitude and excitement of Electroclash, French Touch, Ghostly International and Italians Do It Better? Whilst some of these things arguably all still exist, there doesn’t seem to be the same energy pulsating around our electronic music as there once was.
Who’s Having The Greatest Time? manages to push my nostalgic buttons — recalling those sounds that seem to have been left behind. Ironically, Low Island evoke those sounds by feeling like they still believe in the future. The deadpan vocal feels like Matthew Dear at his Black City-era peak, with Caribou’s Dan Snaith on production duties. The song bubbles with discontent, the sort of constructive frustration on display on LCD Soundsystem’s Get Innocuous!
Check out Who’s Having The Greatest Time? below, and look for Low Island’s debut album If You Could Have It All Again when it drops via Emotional Interference on April 16th.