SOFI TUKKER - PURPLE HAT

Sofi Tukker share the wild, unrestrained vibes of their Animal Talk party series with "Purple Hat".

SOFI TUKKER - PURPLE HAT

If you've spent any time in the indie underground, you've likely encountered truly off-the-cuff live music, where the audience resembles an oil painting more than a frenetic gaussian blur of perpetual motion. The self-consciousness formerly restricted to uber-serious indie concerts and po-faced metal shows has even spread to dance parties. There is nothing weirder than hearing a DJ unleashing a non-stop barrage of pummeling 4/4 beats to a motionless crowd.

Many long-term denizens of the musical underground are addressing this fact. Call it the sub-underground, maybe, but dance music communities are popping up all over the Earth to bring back the heat, the wildness, the un-self-consciousness of early electronic music.

This raw, anything-goes approach is perfectly captured on Sofi Turk's new one, "Purple Hat." Inspired by the opening night of their on-going dance party Animal Talk, where Sofi Tukker was wearing a cheetah print shirt and a purple hat. People were climbing all over one another, sweat was pouring liberally, and it sounds like a wild time was had by all.

"Purple Hat" condenses that energy into a 3-minute blast, both lyrically as well as musically. "Purple Hat" would still be a blast if it were just singing about the unrestrained wildness, but the loose and personal production truly completes the vision. "Purple Hat" has the stuttering, handmade quality of booty bass and old electro, bringing to mind backroom dance parties in small neighborhood bars and basement dance parties. You know, where the action is, where people get down without self-consciousness.

So throw "Purple Hat" on your playlist and get a little freaky. We Are: The Guard recommend it!

J. Simpson occupies the intersection between criticism, creativity, and academia. Based out of Portland, Or., he is the author of Forestpunk, an online journal/brand studying the traces of horror, supernatural, and the occult through music, fashion and culture. He plays in the dreamfolk band Meta-Pinnacle with his partner Lily H. Valentine, with whom he also co-founded Bitstar Productions, a visual arts collective focused on elevating Pop Culture to High Art.