FELIX DA HOUSECAT - Devin Dazzle And The Neon Fever

In case anyone is still waiting for the musician who will finally, once and for all, update the countless pop or hyper-danceable codes of the controversial eighties melting pot to today's schizoid tunz-digital tendencies, well, they should know that this musician has finally arrived, and his name is Felix Da Housecat. We might have expected one of the rising stars of British synth pop (Ladytron? Zoot Woman? The Faint?), or the prolific, hyperactive white American techno manipulators who've been flirting with electro for a few years now (Adult? Fischerspooner? The Postal Service?), or, why not, the sudden epiphany that might have struck, across the Channel, the ineffable and already-legendary Daft Punk. Instead, no: the task falls to this very Black Chicago DJ, who, incidentally, was already responsible for a previous attempt, "Kittenz And Thee Glitz" (2001), already a fixture in the perfect electroclash handbook, which had already crowned him as the maitre a penser of the genre, arriving at the tail end of a series of prior collaborations and solo ventures that had already made his name a cult figure of the American underground techno-house scene.

"Devin Dazzle And The Neon Fever" is a sprawling, kaleidoscopic record: it's hard to sum up its schizophrenic contents, which draw with disarming ease on rock, new wave, funk and disco music, delivering fifteen tracks whose only common thread is the sheer, unbridled ease with which every possible playful and intoxicating facet of dance pop is served up.

So it should come as no surprise that, alongside tracks built for parties with (un)certain outcomes — "Rocket Ride", where Adult-style electro(rock) pops up with a chorus you can barely shake off — we also get dazed, Talking Heads-flavoured funk ("What she wants"), with the ghost of the most sensual bassist of all time, Tina Weymouth, materializing again on the following track, this time disguised as Tom Tom Club, in the irreverent female chants recited by the Neon Fever, five girls handpicked by Felix for this record, on "Short Skirts".

Just as the album seems to have finally settled into a stretch of dance frivolity seasoned with (moderately) high bpm, Felix goes back to winking at the space disco of "Kittenz and Thee Glitz" days, with the warm, linear sequencer of "Ready 2 wear", halfway between Dee D. Jackson and Visage, embellished, like "She so d*mm Cool", by an Air-flavoured vocoder (the one from "Sexy Boy", to be clear) that underpins the voice of a thoroughly inspired Tyrone Palmer. On "Romantique", what could have been tired, trendy bits of Frenchness instead turn into two minutes in which Stereolab are handed over to Tarwater: it's one of those "interludes" Felix has long accustomed us to, the kind that sketch out, in a handful of seconds, danceable watercolours that others would build an entire record around, but which our man instead abandons with detachment the moment they start to take flight.

The vividly colourful kermesse continues with disco-music seasoned with phrasing reminiscent of Human League at their most frivolous ("Dare"?) on the umpteenth floor-filler "Let your mind be your bed", while a very likely sample of early Art of Noise peeks out from the techno-trance of "Watching Cars go by", which rides on a trashy-guitar-style groove.

The arrangements are always clean, linear, orderly, just like the vocals, which are deliberately conceived, every single one of them, to be contagiously whistled (try to get the tune of "Nina" out of your head, if you can), drawing without hesitation, whenever needed, on the vocabulary of early analogue electronics flirting with pop, as in the syncopated yet minimal beats of "Devin Dazzle" or the intro to "Neon Human", which, before turning into a Moroder-style track, opens with the electric whip-cracks of early Human League's "Being Boiled" (them again?).

Although a few tracks give in to a certain electroclash mannerism ("Rocket Ride", "Hunting Season", still thoroughly enjoyable all the same), in which the trademark sound doesn't come through quite so explicitly, there's a mysterious lens running through this record that bends all its reference points, steering them back toward the recognisable, unmistakable style of a production touch that has by now become a must of the new easy pop: asked whether "Devin Dazzle And The Neon Fever" is a "techno house" or "techno electro" record, the only possible answer is: "None of the above, this is... 'techno Felix'"

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13/12/2006