Album Review : The Count And Sinden - Mega Mega Mega
- Written by Stef Siepel
It seems like a trend - producers or musicians who invite a host of singers to sing on their music. Earlier this year you had Kasper Bjorke, later this year you’ll have Maximum Balloon, and smack down in the middle of that you have The Count and Sinden with their debut Mega Mega Mega. This kind of approach makes sense, because it is so easy to do this. You don’t even have to meet the person (although the Mystery Jets collaboration was probably done together, them being neighbours and all), you can all do it via the internet. So collaborations are easier to do now than ever before, and it also makes more sense to do it now - think of the tags and consequent blog hits this can generate.
To keep in the contemporary vein, there has been an ongoing debate on how albums are consumed these days. People seem to shuffle, to make playlists, download individual tracks, and so an album with multiple singers and a variety of sounds makes sense because people don’t have to pick up the needle anymore to get to a certain track. They see Mystery Jets - they download it. They hear the catchy club beats of ‘Elephant 1234’, they buy it from an internet outlet. So if you look at the situation of the marketplace, if you look at it from a PR standpoint, and if you look at the ease with which you can collaborate with artists, a case can be made why one would make twelve killer tracks instead of a wholesome album. And I reckon that the former is what The Count and Sinden album is.
All the tracks are party tracks and potential club hits, but whether they can all be played on the same night at the same disco I doubt. ‘Do You Really Want It’, the opening track, is macho rap (and honey, “suck it until you really want it”, their words, not mine) – it features Trackademiks, which I can’t help but pronounce in a Chico Marx manner. A mere look at the tracklist and you’ll notice that the second song features boys from the Mystery Jets. Needless to say, that is neither macho nor rap. Add to that the desert rhythms of, ehrm, ‘Desert Rhythm’, and one might argue that not many DJs would play them during the same set, let alone place them right after each other. Not to mention the M.I.A. like sounds of Rye Rye on ‘Hardcore Girls’, a latino Carlos Santana vibe with Coolio Iglesias on ‘Llamame’, the straight forward instrumental club track ‘Panther’, and so forth.
I therefore hesitate to say that this would work as an album. However, in this day and age, one can wonder if it has to. Regardless of whether or not you can listen to it cover to cover, there is a cracking tune on here for almost everyone who likes to dance, shake their booty, club, or even trip at midnight, as you can even do that on the downtempo closer ‘You Make Me Feel So Good’. To use a cheesy metaphor, the quality of the tracks are all equal, but for every person individually some tracks might be more equal than others. Some might like the rap of ‘Do You Really Want It’ and the bold sounds, while others might like the catchiness of ‘After Dark’. Club fanatics might go bonkers over ‘Elephant 1234’. For me personally the latter two plus ‘Hold Me’ and ‘Desert Rhythms’ will get me up and moving.
You can say that The Count and Sinden really showed off their whole bag of tricks here. But the more tricks you do, perhaps the bigger the chance that someone might not like a certain thing. ‘Hardcore Girls’ I know I’ll skip, and someone else might skip another track not to their personal taste. The album deserves to be consumed, but I wonder if people will be ordering the whole album in a neat case or sleeve, or whether they will just buy some of the singles or individually download their favourite tracks via legal outlets. In the current market one can cherry pick, and the album seems a good example where the consumer might think modern.