david a:
"As functional dance music, Chic was perfectly of the moment. This glimmering instrumental lets us in on one of their other qualities - a devotion to seamless, cinematic easy-listening soundscapes that was -..."
more
david a:
"As functional dance music, Chic was perfectly of the moment. This glimmering instrumental lets us in on one of their other qualities - a devotion to seamless, cinematic easy-listening soundscapes that was - I think - very ironic. Such tranquil sounds - a perfect backdrop for the kind of middle-class aspirations that I grew up with: a life generated through hard work, and the well-chosen battles of prior generations who may not have had much opportunity to enjoy much of anything. This is - of course - the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and that pot of gold is a mirage, but still - you gotta keep your eyes on it. Chic were this to a T, and as the 70s (chaotic and ideologically charged, but somewhere, hope still lingered) slid into the grim 80s (money, neo-racism, greed, coke, guns, cold wars), Chic knew, or sensed, the dissonance between what we'd like, and what we have. And this led to escapist music with an ironic undertow: nervous hedonism, widescreen suburbanism of a very artificial variety, textures that obliterate reality, dreams deferred."
