Too Much Happiness

Photo by Shawn Mortensen

I don’t get it. Robots are the future. This is uncontroversial. Robots have been taking over the world since 1921, they took their first human life in 1979 (not long after Kraftwerk‘s Man-Machine, btw) and since then they’ve been takin’ the jobs of hard-workin’ Americans. And . . . well, that’s about it, really. Robots are getting lazy. Damn robots, resting on their laurels when they could be taking over. Some robots these days even have drinking problems.

Oh sure, there’s still a dozen movies every year where robots push humanity to the brink of extinction in ever-more-creative ways, only to be defeated by an American man who shouts a lot and believes in the power of love. Doesn’t count. Movies are fiction. All robots do these days is make disco music. And I bet you thought I was going to mention Daft Punk in this sentence; good call. But I didn’t come here to talk about Daft Punk. I came here to talk about Golden Bug.

I’ve never met Golden Bug personally, so I can’t tell you if he is a robot himself or if he just comes from a robot family. What I do know is that he’s already conquered France and Germany and, if Bang Gang is to be believed, Australia as well. And his disco is fucked-up. It’s nasty. Heavy on the two-and-four with flashing lights and the distorted synth lines that Herbie Hancock foresaw but could not stop in time. I didn’t come up with this, I’m lifting it from Bigstereo, but Golden Bug is “nu-disco with robotic vocals, cut up fervently like powder on a glass table at Studio 54.” Sounds about right.

His earthly masters La Tebwa think they control him. Yeah right. Just like Carl Denham thought he controlled King Kong.* See how long you can control a robot fueled exclusively with pure cocaine. My message to La Tebwa is simple: melt him down while you still can.

Here’s some of his tracks. I recommend you take off your shirt before you listen: it seemed to do the trick for me. If you’re moved to buy it, start here.

Golden Bug – “Assassin”
Golden Bug – “Last Dance in Tokyo”
Golden Bug – “ExExEx (In Flagranti remix)”

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