Pickadoll’s mixed by John Dahlbäck

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  • A few weeks ago, British label Resist Music released a triple-CD compilation entitled ‘The World’s Greatest Electro House’ (it’s the one with what looks like a bruised-lips whore on the cover), supposed to compile ‘grinding electro hits, remixes and underground anthems’. Of course, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the still mighty ‘Mandarine Girl’, ‘Do What U Do’, or ‘Drop the Pressure’, but calling them underground in this day of age is a bit of a stretch if you ask me. For slightly more unconventional cuts, though, you could turn to John Dahlbäck’s own imprint, Pickadoll Music, and the new mixed CD he just recorded for it, compiling the label’s most famous recent offerings. For two years, now, Dahlbäck have used Pickadoll to release his most upbeat and cheery electro house tracks (compared to the more furtive stuff recorded as HUG, for example). Incidentally, out of this 14-track DJ mix, nine cuts are from Dahlbäck himself, next to stuff from Zoo Brazil, Özgur Can, Dada Life (the jacking ‘The Great Fashionista Swindle’, the best non-Dahlbäck track here), and Sébastien Léger (the cute housey ‘Little Bug’). Needless to say, it is the Swedish producer that shines the most here, though, and ‘Pickadoll’s’ serves as a great induction into his whirlwind releasing schedule while making a welcomed coherent narrative out of what could otherwise sound like aural electronic drivel to some. The mix starts slowly and atmospherically with ‘Leave the Breadcrumbs’ and peaks with the metronomic and elliptical (and actually a bit creepy) ‘If You Give Me’. That sole track is Dahlbäck at his most effective and, funnily enough when you think about it, at his most self-referential: by having what sounds like a MacTalk fembot revealing that it “can give you what you want if you give [her] what [she] needs”, it immediately makes you want to forget that nasty bruise-lips whore and her commercial poses. Face it: these ARE the real underground anthems worth caring for right now, made by the people who actually created the scene instead of looking at it from some foam-ridden Ibiza dancefloor. Maybe not the world’s most well-known and populist tracks, but surely Sweden’s greatest electro house package.
  • Tracklist
      1 John Dahlbäck – Leave The Breadcrumbs/John Dahlbäck – Skrutt 2 Mark & John – Hoodinge 3 John Dahlbäck – Bobobear 4 John Dahlbäck – The Call fet. Yota 5 Mark & John – Jagging 6 John Dahlbäck – King Kong 7 Zoo Brazil – Resist 8 John Dahlbäck & Steffan Linzatti – Outside 9 Özgur Can – Lets Do This Again 10 John Dahlbäck – Snowman 11 Dada Life – The Great Fashionista Swindle 12 John Dahlbäck – If You Give Me 13 Sébastien Léger – Little Bug 14 Mark & John – Rince Nr. 1
RA