There’s not – and never has been, really – that much discourse about commercial dance music as music. It’s either talked about by ageing doomers (“oh the kids just want to film on their phones, they don’t dance any more”), as spectacle or social phenomenon, without ever really differentiating EDM from big room house from bassline from whatever else. Not that musicians like Sonny Fodera probably care, mind. Over 13 years and now six albums, racking up quarter-billion stream songs at a time, and ubiquitous in pop radio as much as mega-raves, Fodera has constantly trodden an interesting line within the dance mainstream.
He’s always assiduously maintained a connection to house music’s Black, urban US roots: his first albums were released by Chicago’s Curtis “Cajmere” Jones, and he regularly – including here – collaborates with Detroit house star Mark “MK” Kinchen (both of these notably underground artists who’ve successfully pivoted to mainstream in this century). He’s never really touched on the maximalist production value ear-bleed of white America’s EDM, but has often veered in and out of bonky, clonky, narcotic Euro tech-house albeit without ending up in its most nihilistically characterless zones Here, though – as the half-yearning, half-"LET'S GO!" title maybe hints – he’s taken a dramatic swerve back to the populist dance of the 90s.
There are pianos and big vocals galore, rippling bits of trance synth that give it an airborne feel, little melodic nods to a K-Klass piano house classic here or an ever-popular Etta James sample there. It’s relentlessly hook-hook-hook-hook, absolutely designed to keep a level of euphoria going at all times. But by the same measure, even though it might have a big whoosh before a beat drops back, there are no real dynamics, just forward momentum, and the character of the songs depends a lot on the different guest vocalists, or occasionally co-producers like MK and D.O.D. adding a little extra crunch here and there.
Fodera actually sounds like he’s having most fun on the later tracks where he strips back to pure trance or even escapes the four to the four kick with a little UK garage bass wobble. It’s all fine, but 18 tracks and an hour long, it feels more like a content pipeline than an album as such. It all fulfils its function, but one can’t help wondering what someone with Fodera’s resources might achieve if he did let go of the momentum of the eternal on-to-the-next-club “can we do it all again?” DJ mix conveyor and craft something more structured. But maybe he doesn’t need that any more than he needs critical appraisal.
Listen to "My Love":
