- Pleasure in four forms—from dubby house to banging techno—on Jennifer Loveless's latest.
- About halfway through the original mix of "Pleasure," Jennifer Loveless whispers in a smoky deadpan, "Touch that hi-hat." Amidst a barrage of club cliches ("Feel the pulse / Feel that beat"), it comes right at the moment she lets a closed hi-hat fly. It's somehow both seductive (is "hi-hat" a euphemism?) and also funny. This little wink is a perfect distillation of what Loveless does so well. Her music can be intense, sure, but it's also meant to be fun. This is the producer who brought us track titles like "Reverse Cowgirl 2" and "Syzygy (Scissor Me)." "I catch myself being too serious all the time," she recently explained to Resident Advisor. "And as church-like as the club is, and although it's given me so many epiphanies and euphoric moments, sometimes you also just need to flip it and think, you've been at the club for eight hours… like, what have you been doing?" This is an excellent primer for her appropriately titled EP, Pleasure, that is both sexy and silly in equal measure.
The original version is particularly indulgent. Loveless starts with a heavy kick before she unleashes a barrage of hand drums that could have come from a Twisted America release circa 1997. The track is edgier than the endless summer jams of her last EP, but smudged pastel chords pitched low in the mix brighten it up. She completely ditches the sunshine on the other highlight, "Dom Sub Mix." Here, Loveless goes straight for the sweaty warehouse. She ups the BPM, chops the melody into a skeletal quivering arpeggio, and increases the bass pressure. The result is Loveless's first techno track. It absolutely goes off.
The other two mixes are also great: the "Indubmental" is slightly funkier than the original, with Loveless swapping the sequencing of the drums, while the "Deeper Mix" slows things down into a dubby downtempo session. These are four excellent club tunes that don't need theories or theologies to make sense. Instead, Loveless reminds us that pleasure can be an end in itself.
Tracklist01. Pleasure (Original Vox Mix)
02. Pleasure (Indubmental Mix)
03. Pleasure (Dom Sub Mix)
04. Pleasure (Deeper Mix)