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In anticipation of summer

Summer songs for regular people

By NICK SYLVESTER | May 22, 2007

Prinzhorn Dance School

In anticipation not of summer but of the ridiculous “song of the summer” dart-throwing contest, here are four reminders of what this summer holds for the lot of us: back sweat, no A/C, crowded streets, inappropriate people in inappropriate outfits, a sunburnt and smelly Chinatown, rats (newly minted baby rats), bugs in sinks and ants at picnics, bad tans and the people with nice ones.

Prinzhorn Dance School, “Up Up Up”
New DFA signee Prinzhorn Dance School play minimal, exacting punk rock that suggests Wire, though PDS take “restraint” to a more curious degree: if the terrifying slashes of cymbal and manic out-of-tune rubato and militant screams of “UP! UP! UP!” don’t land this in a Tarantino film, the hard-blues bass line will.

Baby Oliver, “Primetime (Uptown Express)”
Taking as its ostensible subject any number of MTA subway trains that go uptown express and downtown local, “Primetime” is Brooklyn’s Baby Oliver’s first disco-house single, sort of a streamlined novelty-hit hybrid of “Coffee Pot” and “Disco Duck.” “If you get on the train, you’ll never feel pain again” — on second thought, it’s probably not about the subway.

Lee Douglas, “New York Story”
There aren’t many low-cost opportunities to hear DJs play outdoor gigs, except for, like, parish carnivals, but if you’re lucky, you’ll hear this one, an instrumental filterhouse track with dovelike flutters of synth, an Italo-influenced bass line, and one massive break.

Ame, “Fiori”
This exhausting 16-minute monster comes off a new compilation called Shut Up and Dance that includes electronic dance music the Staatsballett Berlin is scheduled to perform on June 29 at Berlin’s Berghain dance club. From one unassuming synth arpeggio, the track blossoms with zero effort into an enormous Schaffel stomp, at a pace that’s not unlike the Carl Craig remix of Delia & Gavin’s “Relevee,” the “Fiori” of 2006.