Saturday, April 01, 2006

"I Feel Love"

I've got two things to say about this song.
From time to time I listen to drum 'n bass music, that frantic thudding stuff you can often hear emanating from low-rider cars with blacked-out windows. The car slowly cruises by andd you stare at it, wondering how the occupants can hear themselves think, talk, shout with that killing beat shaking their innards and those of anyone nearby. To quote Garry Trudeau, this is music that "could sterilise tree frogs at a hundred paces." What I get out of it is the utter relentlessness, the constant wash of air over you as the speakers judder in and out at something like four hundred beats per minute. Once in a while it's fun to get yourself pressed up against the wall by sheer volume and physics.
Think back, oh, thirty odd years to the late 70s and the summer of disco, when this piece of heaven came bursting out of the ground like a Jules Verne mining machine. It's drum 'n bass! It's Donna Summer! Immediately you're whisked into an alternate universe with this song, somewhere where spaceships, silk capes, platform heels, glitter balls, strobes and ecstasy all seem to come together for a moment when you're lifted out of your body. It's breathless, heady stuff.
And then, on another level, this song is pure unadulterated erotic science-fantasy. It's speaking to your hands, lips, fingers, throwing your body onto an enormous bed where the rest of the world disappears and you're left, two of you, together in some sort of timeless moment of discovery. It's laughter, silence, roaring noises in your head as you are taken from one world to another. And all the time, Donna Summer, the high priestess of music-as-sex, stands over you with an arm raised in benediction, urging you on to higher planes of knowledge. Or, as you might say as the song winds down after its interminable journey, "fuck".

3 comments:

Evil Minx said...

Yeah, baby.

Russell CJ Duffy said...

sexy as soft flesh

Natsthename said...

I am one who despised this song as well as "Love To Love You Baby" from Summer. Your review kicks ass, though, and is far better than the song itself!