Alicia Keys — “If I Ain’t Got You”

A brief excursion into the dark arts of vocalism.

Take one part Aretha Franklin’s “Call Me”, one part Stevie Wonder bridge. Mix evenly: instant pop soul goodness.

She’s got it. I thought the first album was only intermittently spectacular, and “You Don’t Know My Name” — the first single from the current album — sustained only a few listens before the Kanye West smug-soul production became overpoweringly sacharine. But she clearly has the timing and power to hammer this song home. It’s just right: taut enough to haul the listener into the chorus, just laid back enough to tease you back into the verse. Just enough tension to bear the arrangement into each line without the appearance of effort; just enough to promise explosive depths without ever going beyond the capacity of this fairly fragile little song.

Imagine what a Jennifer Lopez or Britney Spears would do with this song: it would just sit there, never more than a pretty album track. It’s not a knockout like “A Woman’s Worth”, and it doesn’t have the inherent tension of “Fallin’”. But this is a stunning single, and most of it is the vocal performance. Never too much, never too little.

Almost nobody can sing like this. Almost nobody. Let’s hope she doesn’t follow Whitney Houston and screw it up on bad material, bad production and being a pop star.

The sub-Chopin piano twiddlings can go, though.

Prince’s “Musicology”

The first Prince song for years that seems designed for people who have never been that crazy about Prince. I’ve always appreciated the minimalism of his arrangements — his willingness to let silence and space take their place. Okay, no one would ever accuse him of sitting back and letting a groove lay itself out; his music has always sounded rigorously planned. But in the 1980s, this was about as close as you could come to spontaneity, amid all the bombastic snare sounds, processed synth stabs, and horribly over-attenuated bass tones. Prince knew how to put together a tight, taut arrangement that didn’t ditch every standard of musical taste in a desperate attempt to get to the end of the song without going under.

There was the song-writing. And the musicianship. But the minimalism was what, in retrospect, stands out most.

On the other hand, his choice of how exactly to fill the space could be, well, quirky. A synth chord would come out of nowhere and just sit there. Or a falsetto gasp would pop out of the mix for a second and then vanish without a trace. Or the main vocal would completely disappear, replaced with hushed backing vocals to take up significant lines (an old Motown trick taken to extremes).

“Musicology” has all of the above. It’s a gloriously taut funk jam in a brazenly open arrangement. There’s a guitar lick that’s propulsively funky and charmingly laid-back (like The Detroit Emerald’s “Baby Let Me Take You”); Prince’s vocal wraps itself around the lick with a lilt and tension perfectly matched by the whispery hi-hats and claphand snares. The fluid bass self-consciously pops and bubbles around at the front of the mix. Even the falsetto notes work. It’s fantastic. It sounds like a Meters track. And you can’t say better than that.

But there’s also a synth that pops up in the background and just sits there for a few bars. For no reason at all.

ZEN RMX Highlights

Among the many high points of ZEN RMX, the recent Ninjatune remix compilation:

Mr. Scruff’s version of Manitoba’s “Sweetsmoke”, which sounds like Kruder & Dorfmeister scoring Heart Of Darkness.

Luke Vibert’s version of “Turtle Soup”, which couples a quirky stringy melody — and a lush summery interlude — to the classic (and curiously unbalanced) bass-and-strings loop of the original.

Cornelius’ everything-especially-the-kitchen-sink rendition of “Atomic Moog”.

The Herbaliser’s campy Bossa mix of the already-plenty-campy “Something Wicked” (is that a lift from Jimi Tenor’s “Outta Space” at the end?).

But the real highlight is Fourtet’s calamitous remix of Bonobo’s “Pick Up”, a great reminder of the strengths of 1999’s Dialogue, namely a taste for measured cacophony that Fourtet’s last two releases have sidestepped somewhat.

The first two minutes accumulate around a wonderful rounded bass tone: bits of clipped horns, brittle percussion, reversed radio interference, a shimmering guitar chord. Then there’s two minutes of free range breakbeat mayhem, while Bonobo’s synth and flute riffs are smuggled in underneath. And finally the original’s strident bass line enters to hammer home the fact that we’ve been listening to it all along. It’s a trick that Keith Jarrett specializes in: tricking you into listening to a familiar melody in an unfamiliar way, and then suddenly — quietly — restoring the original context. Except here there’s amps and breakbeats. Glorious.

There’s a stream available here, for the curious. And plenty more Ninja samples via this flyer.