There is a moment in Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young where Duke Dumont’s remix of the Haim song “Falling” plays. The film is a model ship in a bottle: an older generation of creatives begin to hang with a younger hipster generation at the looking glass of sorts that is gentrified New York City. It’s a delicate and intricate situation that occurs in a microcosm at once parodying the thing itself by scaling it down and beautifying it.
While that may be an oversimplification of what the film’s about, it’s an analogue of electronic music itself too. Songs such as this remix of “Falling” are themselves oversimplifications: an original track boiled down to a glaze of vocals and its barest rhythm overlaid with juicy beats and melody.
It’s worth repeating, for it never wears on one, but something simple can yield a multitude of results. The simple is often transparent and direct. It’s the stuff of pop songs and twelve-bar blues. And as the above song demonstrates, demonstrably potent. Enough to get this kid off his high horse and admit the goofy remix is just plain old good.