Image by Emilie Pria
2012 was an important year for electronic music. The renewed interest in the sound of underground club music had brought about the birth of modern EDM and the superstar DJ, and by then this interest was reaching its peak. Also in 2012, a new music broadcasting concept conceived at the start of the electronic music boom was just beginning to make strides on the internet. That concept was Boiler Room, and that same year one of their first guests was a UK house veteran with three decades in the game under his belt. That would be Mr. G, who up until that point had quietly enjoyed success within his scene for his grooving, bass heavy funk-house sets and productions. Unbeknownst to him at the time, Boiler Room would beam his set across the world to thousands of house enthusiasts online. His display of the infectious sound and undeniable skill that earned him legendary status would catapult him to a new level of fame and international recognition. An entirely new generation was introduced to the tech-funk world of Mr. G, and they wanted more. Mr. G largely credits that set for changing his life, with thirty eight years worth of old-school underground house music suddenly being given new life in the age of Swedish House Mafia and Calvin Harris.
The Forced Force Is Not The Real Force (hereafter: TFFINTRF) arrives as the latest addition to Mr. G’s masterful oeuvre, and a striking departure at that. TFFINTRF is an exploration into the emotional side of Mr. G. By way of sonic frequency experimentations that at times lapse into Burial-esque ambient design, TFFINTRF sees Mr. G ruminate on pandemic induced isolation. It should be noted that this is not the first time Mr. G has worn his heart on the decks. In fact, the artist has a history of emotionally attuned releases. It’s impossible not to recall Personal Momentz, on which Mr. G both tributes and processes the death of his father. While the music on TFFINTRF falls into this category of house balladry, it does so with a distinct shift in tone for Mr. G, revealing across its twelve tracks Mr. G in a particularly ruminative and sombre meditative mood.
Download The Forced Force Is Not The Real Force here
New Normal begins with a looped sample of an exasperated sigh, later building against a skeletal house beat and abstract, lilting keys that impart a tilting anxiety. Life’s Cycle is a pensive minimal track that lacks any percussion, composed of slow, spaced out synth stabs against the portentous tick-tock progression of a synthetic metronome. The resonant, reverberating synth sound used here is one that appears as a sort of leitmotif across the album, an ominous twang that colours everything melancholic, even in TFFINTRF’s bright moments. Life’s Cycle crescendos with a straining, shrill organ synth that’s mournful and alarmingly gothic. The doleful aesthetics continue across most of TFFINTRF, culminating with the trip-hop/witch-house gloom of Fizzy and the menacingly broody closing track, Search. Search in particular is quite emblematic of Mr. G’s thesis statement on this album; an undulating and distorted ambient cut designed to reflect the discombobulating vexation of lockdown.
There have been multiple iterations of the lockdown inspired album from dance music tastemakers over the past year, but Mr. G’s feels like a distinctive addition to this cannon by virtue of its tonality. TFFINTRF is devoid of Mr. G’s signature effortlessly cool funk of the Birthday Jam ilk, instead refracting the artist’s lachrymosity. It’s entirely funereal, reflective and depressive in what is essentially a eulogy to the dance floor. As such, the ghosts of Mr. G’s blazed beats linger across tracks like Basement Jam 9 and both Meditative States, but they are never in focus. Rather, they are memorialised. This is a new accent for Mr. G but mostly he speaks the same language on TFFINTRF, one of affable soul-infused house. It’s a new side to an already iconic master, and one which speaks volumes in its approach. TFFINTRF simultaneously commemorates the past but also inspires hope for the future. By reminding us what we’ve been missing, Mr. G’s critique of the present moment inspires us to dream towards a future that recalls the pre-pandemic past, one where his legendary rhythms soundtrack our dazzling return to the dance floor.
Preview the album below.
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