Clinton: Disco & The Halfway To Discontent : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Punk is often misunderstood as the antithesis of disco, but since the heyday of Blondie and the Clash, it has toyed with club beats without sacrificing its subversive essence. With their dance side project, Clinton, English multicultural rebels Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayres of Cornershop flirt with naughty grooves, shoddy synths and various anachronistic gadgets while serving up deadpan social critiques and rudimentary tunes. The unabashedly crude results suggest a lackadaisical slant on the Beastie Boys' garage-funk jams. Plodding cuts such as "Electric Ice Cream (Miami Jammies)" ply clumsiness over combustion, partly because the players just lack the skills to bang the boogie. Yet when the pair fuel their samplers with source material as catchy as it is kooky, Clinton reach booty nirvana: Songs like "Buttoned Down Disco" - a riot of horn riffs, hand claps, girlie Israeli vocals and those freaky late-Seventies synth drums - are perfect for those moments when your body craves nothing but the electric boogaloo. (RS 833)

BARRY WALTERS