I've posted this track before, but that was more than a year ago, and eff it anyway: today is a effing fantastic day to listen to this track (again).
Some part of my brain wants to be embarrassed that I love this so much, but the better part of my brain is just like HELL YEASSS, and fortunately that last part always wins.
This record (a live Underworld performance in, I think, Belgium) was released in the fall of 2000, right around the time that I turned seventeen -- my first fall working at the record store.
The record store had hired me to play the role of indie rock girl, which was, to be fair, what I was suited for on date of hire. But, of course, as soon as I got in there I was listening to and learning about everything I could get my hands on, indiscriminate of genre.
(I didn't really understand that they had hired me particularly to fill that role until the manager, whose maybe favorite person of all time was Steve Earle, was seriously galled when I put Steve Earle's record that year on my year-end top 10 list. His reaction: "But you're the indie rock girl! You are supposed to like indie rock!" True and false, both, my friend. Also, a question that you, dear reader, should maybe be asking yourself is: How the hell did a guy with an attitude like that get to manage a record store? I believe the answer was that his parents had originally put up the capital for the place.)
At any rate, I knew pretty close to zero things about house/electronica before I started working there. I think I thought it was all alternately-impersonal-and-oversexed cheesy booty-club music, and maybe I had some inkling what candy ravers were. So yeah, clearly zero things.
The first time I heard this record was the first time I realized that electronic dance music can be just as personal and organic and emotional as any kind of music. For me, this record was revelatory. (Of course, this is something that many people have realized before and since, listening to many records. To be fair.)
On my way to work today, I put this on the headphones. It felt so, so good.
i want to give you everything, i want to give you energy...
Shoulders back, head up, face into the wind. Bring it, Chicago winter.
(Also, it should be noted that this is a fantastic breakup track, despite Rez's back-scratchingly-good distortion and popcorn/bubblegum bloopiness. Or maybe those things make it an even better breakup track.)
