Bag Raiders – ‘Sunlight’ (ft. Dan Black)

I am thoroughly addicted to this song and I have absolutely no shame in admitting it. No, it’s not the most intelligent piece of music released in 2010, or even in the highly competitive field of Australian dance music, but by God, do Bag Raiders know how to craft a hook. Having spent the better part of the week pumping this here tune through my car speakers at an obnoxious volume (which seems to be a recurring theme in my family’s driving habits) so as to maximise enjoyment and perpetuate a sense of FOMO to all those who don’t have the exclusive pleasure of riding with me, I have come to appreciate all of the nuances that go into to crafting what will undeniably be a mega-smash hit from here to infinity.

There’s some rule that was established in the early ’00s which reads that for dance floor fodder to be quality, it has to be a banger, and for it to be a banger, it has to be mean/dirty/hyperactive and something that would make anybody over the age of 26 want to throw up. Certainly the success of menacing acts like Bloody Beetroots and to a lesser extent, Justice, aids that understanding, but my favourite kind of electro has always been the kind that is unabashedly, gleefully and even stupidly happy. That’s the kind of thing that Basement Jaxx (save for ‘Where’s your Head At?’, which is so killer is deserves its own genre) and Miami Horror do brilliantly, and that kind of joy pervades every highly compressed second of ‘Sunlight’.

The Dan Black-featuring single has everything I want in a song I don’t want to think too much about. It’s got sprinklings of timbale, hot synths, snapping bass and a chorus sung entirely in falsetto. For ear-driven search engine optimization purposes, the word used in the title is repeated many, many times. There’s those little counter lines which run underneath the main hook, as well as some sneaky harmonies to propel it out of your pedestrian, ‘check me out I can make a tune’ territory. The verses don’t really mean anything, which is cool because who cares about verses anyway? They just fill time between the choruses, which in this case, is so fucking unbelievable that I would happily listen to it twenty times without a break. If you listen hard enough, there’s a pan flute in there. And some claves. Make no mistake, these Sydney boys are not the Rain Man of dance music. They know exactly what they’re doing. And they’re doing it so well that earlier this year, Armand Van Helden offered to remix them.

Bag Raiders – ‘Sunlight’ (ft. Dan Black)

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